A review by rsurban
After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh

4.0

The good news is, many of us will survive the various end-of-the-world scenarios that befall mankind in this fascinating short story collection; it is also the bad news. For those who fear the end of order that the cataclysm foretells, there is the comfort of knowing that at the micro-level of our individual lives, friends and family will continue to disappoint, personalities will follow dependable trajectories, and the basics of existence will remain the same: find food, avoid danger, live to see another day. But that comfort is also a strait-jacket, and McHugh offers little in her worldview to those who believe that when the end comes, they'll take that leap and do something heroic, or act on a socially-suppressed evil thought, or leave the world in their own way. The stories in this collection range from zombie take-over, to "Colossus; The Forbin Project"-like computer system sentience, to bird-flu decimation. The sheer number of ways in which McHugh indulges her imagination is bracing, but even more admirable is her focus not on the event itself, or it's god's-eye view of the collapse that happens in the aftermath, but on the myriad ways in which the individual carries on and adapts to the changing landscape. In McHugh's worlds, not only cockroaches and Cher survive...the human animal does as well, for better or worse.