An interview by Erin Stocks

“After the Apocalypse” by Maureen McHugh will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Pre-order here!

You chose to set this story after the apocalypse had already happened. Will you tell us a little about what inspired that decision and the story itself?

I have never been a particularly important person. I don’t influence foreign policy, although I often have opinions on it. I don’t feel like I am having a huge effect on climate change. It is possible that there is a kind of apocalypse happening around me and unlike Luke Skywalker, I’m not doing much about it. It’s like reincarnation. Everyone who ever talks about reincarnation talks about their interesting past lives. I’m pretty sure if there is reincarnation, I’ve been a peasant all the way back, at least until hunter gatherers. Then I was probably a gatherer.

I think I end up telling the stories of people like Jane because they’re compelling to me but they also in a sense are about me. I was terribly afraid that I wasn’t a good enough mother. My first collection of stories was called Mothers & Other Monsters. The mothers in it try and many times fail, but they’re dong their best. Kelly Link challenged me one time to write a story about a really bad mother. It took me ten years because to write it was to admit that part of me, the part that could be a bad mother. But I finally think I managed to write it.

It’s potentially easy to write off Jane’s behavior, especially around men, as a coping mechanism given the circumstances, but her decision at the end is a strong one. Why does she decide to abandon the one responsibility she still has?

I don’t know that I can explain Jane’s behavior. I would hope that reading the story, people find her behavior believable and human. It’s quite gratifying to me how many people have been horrified by the story because morally I find her action unforgivable. That said, I don’t find it unthinkable. I have a lot of sympathy for Jane and find a lot of myself in her. I expect people to cope, damn it, and I don’t forgive easily when I think they aren’t. At the same time, who hasn’t dreamed of escaping the burdens of responsibility? I’ve never actually done any of the things that Jane has. I never sold furniture, I was never a runaway on the street, I’ve never even had a daughter. I’ve behaved a lot better than Jane. But I suspect Jane would survive a disaster a lot better than I would. I’m pretty sure she’s a lot tougher than I am.