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A review by lisawreading
After the Apocalypse by Maureen F. McHugh
3.0
The nine stories in After the Apocalypse focus, for the most part, on what happens next, once the worst has already happened. Whether disaster strikes in the form of zombies, computers run amok, bird flu, dirty bombs, or other types of contamination, life as we know it no longer exists. What the characters do next is what makes these stories interesting.
Particularly good were "The Naturalist", about a zombie preserve where condemned criminals are sent to serve their sentences; "Useless Things", about a dollmaker getting by while the world dries up around her; "The Lost Boy", whose main character has been in a fugue state for five years; and "Honeymoon", about a girl who just wants to have fun, scary medical experiments notwithstanding. For sheer quirkiness, though, I'd pick "Going to France" for its lovely absurdity.
On the downside, this collection seems to have been rather shoddily copy-edited. Typos abound: Acronyms have their letters reversed from one page to the next, character names are often misspelled (June/Jane, Franny/Fanny, etc), and on several occasions I had to stop and reread a sentence that was either mispunctuated or had a word missing.
Given that I typically don't care for short stories, I was more engaged by After the Apocalypse than I'd expected to be. Interesting stories, but the editing problems definitely were a distraction.
Particularly good were "The Naturalist", about a zombie preserve where condemned criminals are sent to serve their sentences; "Useless Things", about a dollmaker getting by while the world dries up around her; "The Lost Boy", whose main character has been in a fugue state for five years; and "Honeymoon", about a girl who just wants to have fun, scary medical experiments notwithstanding. For sheer quirkiness, though, I'd pick "Going to France" for its lovely absurdity.
On the downside, this collection seems to have been rather shoddily copy-edited. Typos abound: Acronyms have their letters reversed from one page to the next, character names are often misspelled (June/Jane, Franny/Fanny, etc), and on several occasions I had to stop and reread a sentence that was either mispunctuated or had a word missing.
Given that I typically don't care for short stories, I was more engaged by After the Apocalypse than I'd expected to be. Interesting stories, but the editing problems definitely were a distraction.