poachedeggs's review
4.0
McHugh has this amazing ability to write hyper-realistically about societies that are just a shade different from ours. Her characters are fascinating psychological studies but you also care about what become of them. This collection of short stories explores what happens 'after the apocalypse': there aren't just zombies, but 'special economics' and death by chicken nuggets in a non-conventional family unit.
mjfmjfmjf's review
4.0
Pretty good collection of sf short stories set in the near future. A bit creepy and stylistically a bit weird - a number of them basically with beginnings or endings - but a bit what I expect from decent sf short stories. Good to see anything from McHugh - though it looks like I may have missed an earlier collection and don't recall if I've read Nekropolis.
nia_guy's review
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
chefboyavi's review
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
An interesting mix of concepts in the stories. Some are quite sad and a couple are hard to read post-pandemic. It felt like the author made a lot of the characters racist, homophobic, ableist and/or fatphobic as passive character traits as though that’s all she needed to do to flesh them out as people and the stories suffer for it.
corpsewhale's review
3.0
Only the first and last stories deal with an apocalypse in any real way. In the others it's either just mentioned briefly or is completely absent. I'd say the common thread running through all of the stories is change. Each of the main characters has had a significant change happen in their lives. I enjoyed all of them for different reasons, though the one I was most interested to read ended up being my least favorite.
bellatora's review
5.0
Wow – McHugh knows how to write a short story. It’s hard to find a writer who is so consistently good at it. And it’s all sci fi as diverse as realistic fiction to the zombie apocalypse – nothing too big or showy in terms of sci fi; it’s grounded in the real world and either in the here and now or Five Minutes in the Future.
The Naturalist – Starting with a bang! It’s kind of The Hunger Games meets the Zombie Apocalypse. Zombies have popped up in Ohio and probably other places (though no one really seems to know why). And the government is using it as a penal colony (hoping that the zombies will take care of their criminal problem). The main character ends up feeling connected to the dopey, flame-obsessed zombies and capturing the other criminals to perform experiments in zombie perceptions.
Special Economics – Story set in futuristic China (which I love! More of these!) about girls trapped in servitude (one of those deals where debt to company will always be higher than their wages) to a factory making something top-secret. This could’ve gone a lot of ways, but luckily the feisty heroine comes out on top and clevers her way to freedom.
Useless Things – A very “quiet” story despite the fact it involves a mysterious annual order for a creepy life-like baby doll and a break-in early on. Mostly about how charitable impulses can turn sour after one bad experience (woman typically helps out illegal immigrants passing through, but after a theft she no longer is willing to help them).
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large – Different tone, but well-done. A faux-news report (like something you’d find in the NYT Magazine) featuring a boy who developed amnesia in the aftermath of an atomic bomb in Baltimore and his (disappointing) reunion with his family – the boy still has no memory of them and seems mostly weirded out that these people and this past of which he has no idea of has interrupted the life he’s comfortable with.
The Kingdom of the Blind – Programming girl develops a fondness for an AI program that’s starting to gain sentience (the program isn’t doing much…yet. It’s just playing around with creating rolling back-ups and fucking with data…kind of a testing of the environment thing).
Going to France – Probably one of my least favorites. Because I have no idea what is happening or where it intended to go. A host of people are struck with the intense impulse to go to France – and some of them spontaneously develop the ability to fly in order to get there. I…don’t get it. Sounds like the beginning of what could be an interesting story, but not complete enough to stand on its own.
Honeymoon – More sciency then sci fi; a woman who occasionally signs up to be a test subject in medical experiments for the cash is in one that goes really, really bad where people in the room develop intense, possibly fatal reactions. But that’s it…just this drug had possibly fatal side-effects in humans but it didn’t turn anyone into zombies or gave them superpowers (that we know of!!)
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces – Also not my favorite story and I mostly forgot what happens. Mad Cow Disease equivalent hit the American poultry industry and an unknown number of people have the fatal disease (and there’s no test for whether you have it until it’s too late, so it’s a lot of people waiting around hoping they’re not dying). The main character is a troubled girl in a grief support group, who is angry at her mom for dying (and being a hoarder) and her stepmom for…being her stepmom (and also at her second mom for abandoning her).
After the Apocalypse – Typical post-apocalypse story of the survivors…except that in this one the heroine is not some superwoman mama-bear but instead thinks her daughter is whiny deadweight…and abandons her. This is like a down-the-rabbit-hole version of [b:Aftertime|9065272|Aftertime (Aftertime, #1)|Sophie Littlefield|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1288994261s/9065272.jpg|13943357].
The Naturalist – Starting with a bang! It’s kind of The Hunger Games meets the Zombie Apocalypse. Zombies have popped up in Ohio and probably other places (though no one really seems to know why). And the government is using it as a penal colony (hoping that the zombies will take care of their criminal problem). The main character ends up feeling connected to the dopey, flame-obsessed zombies and capturing the other criminals to perform experiments in zombie perceptions.
Special Economics – Story set in futuristic China (which I love! More of these!) about girls trapped in servitude (one of those deals where debt to company will always be higher than their wages) to a factory making something top-secret. This could’ve gone a lot of ways, but luckily the feisty heroine comes out on top and clevers her way to freedom.
Useless Things – A very “quiet” story despite the fact it involves a mysterious annual order for a creepy life-like baby doll and a break-in early on. Mostly about how charitable impulses can turn sour after one bad experience (woman typically helps out illegal immigrants passing through, but after a theft she no longer is willing to help them).
The Lost Boy: A Reporter at Large – Different tone, but well-done. A faux-news report (like something you’d find in the NYT Magazine) featuring a boy who developed amnesia in the aftermath of an atomic bomb in Baltimore and his (disappointing) reunion with his family – the boy still has no memory of them and seems mostly weirded out that these people and this past of which he has no idea of has interrupted the life he’s comfortable with.
The Kingdom of the Blind – Programming girl develops a fondness for an AI program that’s starting to gain sentience (the program isn’t doing much…yet. It’s just playing around with creating rolling back-ups and fucking with data…kind of a testing of the environment thing).
Going to France – Probably one of my least favorites. Because I have no idea what is happening or where it intended to go. A host of people are struck with the intense impulse to go to France – and some of them spontaneously develop the ability to fly in order to get there. I…don’t get it. Sounds like the beginning of what could be an interesting story, but not complete enough to stand on its own.
Honeymoon – More sciency then sci fi; a woman who occasionally signs up to be a test subject in medical experiments for the cash is in one that goes really, really bad where people in the room develop intense, possibly fatal reactions. But that’s it…just this drug had possibly fatal side-effects in humans but it didn’t turn anyone into zombies or gave them superpowers (that we know of!!)
The Effect of Centrifugal Forces – Also not my favorite story and I mostly forgot what happens. Mad Cow Disease equivalent hit the American poultry industry and an unknown number of people have the fatal disease (and there’s no test for whether you have it until it’s too late, so it’s a lot of people waiting around hoping they’re not dying). The main character is a troubled girl in a grief support group, who is angry at her mom for dying (and being a hoarder) and her stepmom for…being her stepmom (and also at her second mom for abandoning her).
After the Apocalypse – Typical post-apocalypse story of the survivors…except that in this one the heroine is not some superwoman mama-bear but instead thinks her daughter is whiny deadweight…and abandons her. This is like a down-the-rabbit-hole version of [b:Aftertime|9065272|Aftertime (Aftertime, #1)|Sophie Littlefield|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1288994261s/9065272.jpg|13943357].
thenerdjournals's review
2.0
I know, I know. I always preface these reviews with "I don't really like anthologies but--" Well, I decided to give this one a shot and I was very disappointed in most of the stories in this book. I read about two-third of the stories and skipped the rest. The ones I read I didn't really like much. EXCEPT. EXCEPT!! The last story, which is coincidentally where the title from the book came from. The last story is a good one and it gave me such mixed feelings over the mother character when I realized what exactly happened. Very good story, very poor collection of stories overall.