Synopses & Reviews
Publishers Weekly Top 10 Best of the Year
In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague.
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"Gorgeously crafted stories." Nancy Pearl, NPR
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"Hauntingly beautiful." Booklist
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"Unpredictable and poetic work." The Plain Dealer
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The stories in After the Apocalypse will catch many readers off-guard; they're suspenseful, but they never quite go where you expect them to. The end of the world as we know it will never be the same again.” Salon
Review
The best stories in this mesmerizing collection from the L.A. writer are the ones that elude categorization the struggles of a troubled doll maker in Useless Things,” the fantasies of an impulsive man in Going to France.” It's the ordinary and everyday that we should be afraid of, not the prospect of big explosions and world-ending catastrophes. This is a pro stretching a genre to its limits subverting, inverting, perverting, disturbing.” Los Angeles Magazine
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McHugh brings a subtle grittiness to the end of days. There is no post-apocalyptic glamour in these post-apocalyptic tales.” Cleveland Plain Dealer
Synopsis
Self aware computers. Zombies. Clinical trial volunteers. Chinese factory workers. Dolls that look like newborn infants. After the apocalypse.
About the Author
Maureen F. McHugh has lived in New York; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of a Story Prize finalist collection, Mothers and Other Monsters, and four novels, including Tiptree Award-winner China Mountain Zhang and New York Times editor's choice Nekropolis. McHugh has also worked on alternate reality games for Halo 2, The Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others.
Table of Contents
The Naturalist
Special Economics
Useless Things
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large
The Kingdom of the Blind
Going to France
Honeymoon
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces
After the Apocalypse