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A review by batrock
After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh
3.0
The short story: the scourge of mankind. I bought After The Apocalypse because it showed up on best of 2011 lists. And some of it is amazing, but some of the stories let the side down. It's probably not coincidental that the stories that don't sit as well as the others are those with typos or words that simply have no place in otherwise complete sentences.
Looking at the listing of nine stories, approximately five of them qualify as "very good", two as "kind of pointless" and two as "nearly there". Perhaps it was a mistake front loading the book with three of the best; who can say.
McHugh's conceit for these unrelated short stories (sold by their intriguing and blatantly nostalgia-baiting cover) is a series of scenarios in which something about the world is slightly dystopian, if not wholly and overtly so.
The first story is about a future after the zombie problem has been contained, with zombies kept alive in preserves and prisoners sent there to be eaten. The sense of place and the delicate balance of sympathy and sociopathy is grand; this take on zombies is relatively refreshing in an arguably saturated market.
Not all of the rest of the stories are so overtly fantastic; the superlative "Useless Things" is merely about an extreme economic downturn and the means which one woman employs to keep herself solvent.
Despite the breadth of topics covered, it can't help but feel like McHugh is treading water when she talks about a brand of wandering amnesia, and the piece about sentient AI slouches into gross caricature masquerading as brand recognition.
As with many short story collections, some click and some simply don't. So I'd like to give this collection four, but I can't quite stretch myself that far. Maybe if there hadn't been a cat called Scott Pilgrim between its pages I might be more generous, but McHugh knows what she did.
Looking at the listing of nine stories, approximately five of them qualify as "very good", two as "kind of pointless" and two as "nearly there". Perhaps it was a mistake front loading the book with three of the best; who can say.
McHugh's conceit for these unrelated short stories (sold by their intriguing and blatantly nostalgia-baiting cover) is a series of scenarios in which something about the world is slightly dystopian, if not wholly and overtly so.
The first story is about a future after the zombie problem has been contained, with zombies kept alive in preserves and prisoners sent there to be eaten. The sense of place and the delicate balance of sympathy and sociopathy is grand; this take on zombies is relatively refreshing in an arguably saturated market.
Not all of the rest of the stories are so overtly fantastic; the superlative "Useless Things" is merely about an extreme economic downturn and the means which one woman employs to keep herself solvent.
Despite the breadth of topics covered, it can't help but feel like McHugh is treading water when she talks about a brand of wandering amnesia, and the piece about sentient AI slouches into gross caricature masquerading as brand recognition.
As with many short story collections, some click and some simply don't. So I'd like to give this collection four, but I can't quite stretch myself that far. Maybe if there hadn't been a cat called Scott Pilgrim between its pages I might be more generous, but McHugh knows what she did.