Maureen McHugh is the author of six books, including the award-winning sci-fi novel China Mount Zhang. Her two most recent books, a collection of short stories After the apocalypse and Mother and other monstersfocuses heavily on the lives of female characters.
“I was thinking, ‘You know, I’m not a guy, so maybe I should write some books about women,'” McHugh said in Episode 508 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy audio file. “It was a really conscious decision not to try to write in a tradition — in an accent — that isn’t mine, and more in a voice that comes from my own experience.”
Many stories explore the relationship between mothers and their children, an element often overlooked in fantasy and science fiction. “Mothers often live with the support of other characters,” says McHugh. “And it’s probably the most essential relationship in most people’s lives. That was the first big relationship. It’s a relationship that I think we can never really look into because it’s almost too close to us. ”
McHugh credits fantasy author Karen Joy Fowler with inspiring her to write more about mothers. “Bruce Sterling McHugh wrote a story called ‘The Bicycle Repairman’, and in that story the main character – a 20-year-old bike mechanic in the cyberpunk world – talks on the phone with his mother. And Karen said generously, “I’ve always loved seeing mothers in stories,” and I started thinking about that a lot. “
For years, McHugh wrote only stories of trusted and kind mothers. She reversed that to chilling effect in her 2011 story “After the Apocalypse,” about a mother and daughter struggling to survive after a dirty bomb attack. “Final Link Kelly McHugh said to me, “Why don’t you write a story about a bad mother?” “It took me a long time to get around it and be able to write it.”
Listen to the full interview with Maureen McHugh in Episode 508 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Maureen McHugh on Austin:
It’s a great writing town, quaint enough. Everyone knows music, but there’s a small but very active writing community that I admire so much in Austin… My husband and I went there just a few days when we went to have breakfast at a small venue in downtown—incidentally, we just picked it at random—and Bob, my husband, who had never met him, said, “Is that Howard Waldrop? Because Howard is a very special person, even if you only see pictures of him. And a bunch of people — Bradley Denton, Warren Spector, Caroline Spector — were all sitting down to breakfast. So I go and say hello to Howard, and then they immediately say, “Oh, you’re here? Well, you are part of the family now. ”
Maureen McHugh on Small beer press:
It was horrible in the days of traditional publishing that short story collections were a gift from publishers to writers, because they weren’t making any money. So you will sell two novels and a collection of short stories, and then two novels at a price enough to make the loss on the collection of short stories small. I’m really lucky for Gavin and Kelly [of Small Beer Press] are geniuses at getting people to look at the work they’re setting out for, which they think is interesting. They went to ABA a year, and they’re promoting a book by a man named Ben Parzybok summon Couch, it’s an interesting little book. So, at the front of their booth, they have a blown-out couch that you can take with you — people take it all over the ABA. They get everyone’s attention.
Maureen McHugh on description:
What I mean is the “why” of engineering. Vladimir Nabokov There’s a rule that you should only use about two colors in a description. Since then, there has been research in psychology, not related to Nabokov – he did not know about it; they don’t know about him – which is to say it’s about the amount we carry in our memories. What happens is that the more color you put in that description — about the sunset or your room or whatever — the darker it gets in people’s heads and the less visual it becomes. more to them… When I describe, it’s not my job to make the reader see exactly what’s in my head, my job is to conjure up a very powerful image in the reader’s head, and I Can do it better with a little less than with a little more.
Maureen McHugh on employment:
It amazes me how often people lose or quit their jobs in fiction and it’s not even a big deal. Because in life, if I lose my job or quit, it’s a big deal. I don’t know about getting another job. It is just difficult. There was another writer, a man named Nathan Ballingrudwho I actually recommend—North American Lake Monster is a collection of his short stories. He and I bonded over the fact that we write about jobs, and we often write about youth jobs. I can’t tell you where it came from. It’s just that I don’t see it often, I guess, and it’s a huge part of my life. But now I’ve discovered that if you really want to know what a profession is like, you just go to Reddit and you find a subreddit where the people who do the work are funny about it. You can learn a lot.
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