Q. Consciousness and identity emerge as two strong themes within the collection. What did you want to say in dealing with these?
A. I don't know that I wanted to say anything. I think I don't understand consciousness or identity. There's a saying in fiction, 'Write what you know.' I think better fiction comes out of writing about the things that are important to me, but that I'm fundamentally uncertain about. That doesn't mean I sit down and say, 'I'm going to write a story about identity.' I always think I'm writing a story about a girl who thinks her best friend is a werewolf. It just happens that I circle back to those issues of identity.
As a writer, I have a couple of itches that I scratch, things I return to again and again. I tend to be drawn to motherhood because I'm trying to find a way to convince myself that I wasn't a monster. I'll get an idea for a story and think, I know, I'll make the mother have Alzheimer's. Not thinking about the connection between a teenager finding her way and an old woman losing her way and a mother helpless in the middle to ease either passage. I find out about all those things years later. I put them there, because those things are by default interesting to me. But it's not conscious.
Q. [)id you learn anything new about these stories in the process of choosing and ordering them for the book?
A. I find it difficult to reread my own fiction. It was nice to see that a lot of it had held tip. And I was surprised at how much the same things kept corning up, again and again. The mother in "The Lincoln Train," for example, has some form of dementia.
Q. How are these stories different from your novels, if at all? How does your writing process differ between the two?
A. I often write short stories to a deadline. Often, anymore, a workshop. They are more likely to be ideas that I'm not at all sure will work out. I can take more risks because most of the time I know that in a couple of months I'll at least have a draft.
Two of my novels have come out of short stories, so at some level, there is some overlap. But when I intentionally start a novel, I'm thinking it will have more ingredients than a short story. More loose ends. More questions and more stuff.
Q. You've talked in the past about workshopping with other writers being an important part of your writing life. What do you take from those experiences?
A. As I get older, I think I get better at reading and understanding stories, and some of that is from workshopping.
Mostly it's been very rare for someone not to tell me something that didn't show me a way to read the story I'd written. A lot of times it wasn't the way I wanted the story read. And a lot of times it said stuff about the story and about my writing that I wasn't very good at hearing.
But it's the only way I know to get better.
Q. Who are some writers you admire or who have influenced your work?
A. At any given time, anyone I'm reading who strikes me is going to have a pretty strong affect on me.
When I was in my twenties I was really taken by the work of Samuel R. Delany and the novels of Joan Didion. I think I was drawn to the romanticism of Delany. I was also really taken with the way so much of Didion's stories happened off the page. I was also strongly drawn to a little hook by Marguerite lourcenar called Coup de Grace. I reread it a couple of years ago and saw all sorts of aspects of it that distress me now that I'm in my forties but it affected me powerftilk when I was younger.
A few years ago I found myself utterly charmed by the sheer artificialness of Raymond Carver's stories. I had always thought of them as very psychologically realistic. Minimal. All that. But what I like about them now is how artificial they are. Perfect little setups that spring shut at conclusion. Lately I've been reading the short fiction of Joy Williams. It's really astonishing.
I like the work of Kelly Link a lot.
I like the Harry Potter novels. Great escapism.
When I was younger, I expected what I thought of as a rigorous kind of lack of sentimentality in novels. Anything else struck me as cheating. Lately I have been drawn more and more to certain kinds of sentiment. Books like 1 Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.
Q. What can we expect to see from you next?
I'm working on a novel. I've been working on it for six or seven years. But this time, I swear I'm going to finish it.
Interview by Gwenda Bond.
Talking Points
Some things to talk about. There are no right answers.
1. What is your take on the title of this collection-Mothers & Other Monsters? Is it that mothers are monstrous? How about the mothers in this collection? Who are the Other Monsters?
2. Science-fiction stories may be set in places real or imaginary, in real or imaginary times. Even so, they are usually about the here and now. Do you feel McHugh is able to address contemporary issues in a more-or a less-effective way through the use of her imaginary settings? What contemporary issues seem to interest her most?
3. Advances in technology allow parents to monitor their children in ways that were impossible a generation ago. What along these lines has already changed since you were a teenager? Would you prefer to be a teenager now? Would you prefer to have been a parent then?
4. How much oversight is too much?
5. Does McHugh's treatment of stepmothers seem accurate? What are some of the difficulties stepmothers face here? Why are stepmothers traditionally seen as wicked? With more families being headed by single parents, will the stereotype of the wicked stepmother lose popularity?
6. McHugh works within a number of literary traditions including realism ("Eight-Legged Story"), ghost stories ("In the Air"), science fiction ("The Cost to Be Wise"), fantasy ("Ancestor Money"), fairy tales ("The Beast"), and narrative nonfiction ("Interview: On Any Given Day"). Science fiction has been characterized as a literature of exploration and therefore seen as especially appropriate for teenagers. Are these stories you would give to a teenager to read? What aspects of these stories would you have enjoyed as a teenager?
7. One of the effects of Alzheimer's Disease is that life decisions for an individual have to be made by someone else. Do the reactions of the Alzheimer's sufferer's families in these stories seen realistic to you? How about the treatment of and the treatments for the disease?
8. What would you do if your partner were cured of Alzheimer's but was not quite the person they had once been? (As in "Presence")
9. In "Laika Comes Back Safe," is Tye a werewolf or a kid who thinks he's a werewolf? Which is scarier?
10. In "Ancestor Money," a woman burns an offering for her grandmother. In China, these offerings include paper money called 'Hell Money' and elaborate paper models of houses, cars and even things like paper model fax machines and paper model cell phones. The idea is that when they are burned, the ancestors receive them as goods and money. What would you send your ancestors?
II. McHugh's protagonists are frequently trapped in some way-by love, by law, by history, by illness. How do you feel about reading stories in which the narrator has little power and few choices? How well do you think McHugh's narrators do in the circumstances in which they find themselves?
12. When it's possible to rejuvenate your body, will you?
13. Would you describe these as love stories?
14. 1)id this collection remind you of any other books? What did these stories gain by being collected together? What differences do you experience between reading stories separately in magazines as compared to reading them in a collection or anthology?
About the Author
Maureen F. McHugh has spent most of her life in Ohio, but has lived in New York City and, for a year, in Shijiazhuang, China. She is the author of four novels. Her first novel, China Mountain 7_han~, won the Tiptree Award and her latest novel, Nekropolis, was a Book Sense 76 pick and a New I" rk Times Editor's Choice. McHugh has also written for the I Love Bees and Last Call Poker alternate reality games. McHugh has taught at John Carroll University and the Imagination and Clarion workshops. She lives with her husband and two dogs next to a dairy fare. Sometimes,
in the summer, black and white Holsteins look over the fence at them.
Publication History
These stories were previously published as follows:
Ancestor Money, Schction, October zoo;
In the Air, Killing Me Softly (HarperPrism)
The Cost to Be Wise, Starlight i (Tor)
The Lincoln Train, The Magazine of Fantasy tr Science Fiction, April 1995
Interview: On Any Given Day, Starlight ; (Tor)
Oversite, Asinrov's, September 2004
Wicked appears here fur the first time.
Laika Comes Back Safc, Polyphony (Wheatland Press)
Presence, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 2002
light-Legged Story, Trampoline (Small Beer Press)
The Beast, Asimov's, March 1992
Nckropolis, Asnnovs, April 1994
Frankensteins Daughter, SciFiction, April zoo;
Small Beer Press
Alan I )eNiro - Skmun Dipping in the lake of the Dead - 19052178 • sds "I lore's Alan I )eNi ro, whose Skinny Ihppng(+ in the lake of the Iliad was always my favorite. ]'in thrilled to see him in bookstores at last:'-Jonathan I-011011 the fortress ,4 Solitude
Carol Iintshwiller Ile Mount • t9;ts1oo;8 sib " Hest of the Ycar'"-Be k .lfagarint, Lotus, .an frannstc Chrotndt
* "Brilliantly conceived and painfully acute:'-Pnh6shers Ilrekly starred review
Rcl rt to the Men's (dub . iq;t52 ootx st6 I'.Iliptical. hinny and stylish:'-Tirnr (hit ,'m )Zrk
Angel ca ( iorodischer • fsalpa Imperial . 19M20054 ' u6 Iranslatcd by I.'rsula K. Lc (iuin
* "Should appeal to I_c Gums fans as well is to those of literary fantasy and 1-mil Amerman fiction.--library Joenwl starred review
I'.Ilen Kushner the Privilege of the Sword 19315202114 - s45 ''I. nholv tilt and wholly fun... an elegant riposte, dazzlingly executed:' -(ire gory Maguire (IIieked
Kelly Link .Magu to, Beginners • 1941{20151 - s24 "{'lay in a place few writers go. a netherworld between literature and fantasy. Alice Munro and I.K. Rovclutk:'-/mv Magazine &si Pwks of 200S
Stranger Thongs llapptn tq;t5tooo; • st6 "Rest of the Year Salon, Iillage 6bitt, San francisce C,hron iclt
- editor . Irarnpelune an anthology' t94I5211046 • $17 20 astounding stories by tinuhwiller, Jeffrey Ford, Karen low Fowler, & others. No unblinkered. gloveless reader can resist the stream of associations unleashed bv. Ford's stun and the rest of Irarnpdine influences as disparate as science fiction, magic realism, pulp. and I:vilighi lone morality plays -/he I illagr liver
jenndcr Stevenson - bash .Sec Map ' 1941520127 ' $16 " This just absolutely rocks. It's Ivrical, it's weird and it, sex, in a yen' funky ,at.' -Audrey Nlffenegger. the brie travelers Ilifr
Scan Stewart • Purled Circle - 19415211119 - $15
* "All-around ternfic:'-Pu klnst , starred review "Stephen King meets Ibsen. hrust me. -Neal Stephenson. He Confusion
Morkngh,rd 11)4152111197 $14 "f lands down the best novel I have road in 2005, and one of the best I've ever had the privilege to read:'-Park Road Books, Charlotte, N(:
Kit 'ukcevich . Meet Me in the Moon Room . t93r52oon sit, '''ukceviclt is a master of the last line.... ingenious with the short-story loom:' -Review of Conternp,rarv iirtari
Kate Wilftelm - iiouarller IIrmng !owns & More from 2' Wars of the Clarion IIriters'Ilerkshep 193152016%' u6 `Oh, but this is a lovely book.... Wilhelm fills Sionveller with lesson, about how to write, and just as important, how not to write'-Strange Ilorcons
Peapod Classics
Howard Wildrop' Howard 11 ho" t93i52ot86 • $14 Revised introduction by George K.R. Martin A Song of let and fa : "If this is your first taste of Howard. I envy You. Bet you can't read just one:"
"Clever, humorous, idiosyncratic, oddball, personal, wild, and crazy." -l.ibrarv Journal
The resident Weird Mind of his generation, lie writes like a honkvtonk angel:' -Ilashtngton &v k florid
Naomi Mitchisun • Travel Light' 19fijZ0i43' $14 I lalla's travels take her from the darkest medieval forests to the intrigues of early modern Constantinople. Every page glitters with imagination. This is a hook to treasure. A fabulous novel which will appeal to fans of Diana Vynne Jones, Harry Potter. and T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone.
"A 78-year-old friend staying at my house picked tip Travel Light, and a few hours later she said, 'Oil, I wish I'd known there were hooks like this when I was younger!' So, read it now-think of all those wasted years'"-Ursula K. Lc Guin ( Gifts)
Carol Iimshwiller • Carmen Dg' 1931520143 • s14 "An inspired feminist fable.... A wise and hinny hook:'-The New York Times
"A first novel that combines the cruel humor of' Candide with the allegorical panache of Animal farm "-Entertatnrnnn Fkekly
Chapbook Series
Richard Butner, Horses Blow 11p Dog City
Christopher Rowc, Bittersweet Creek
Benjamin Rosenbaum, Other Cities
Mark Rich, Foreigners, and Other Familiar faces
Judith Berman, Lord Stunk and Other Stories
Alex Irvine, Rossetti Song: Four Stories
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
A twice-yearly fiction &c zinc ''Tiny. but celebrated:'-The IJ shmgtort /Pest) edited by Kelly Link and Gavin ~. Grant publishing writers including Carol Emshwiller, Karen Joy Fowler, jeffrey Ford, liliot Fintushel, James Sallis, Molly Gloss, and many others. Fiction and nonfiction from [(.'RUT has been reprinted in 7br liar's Best fantasy C-' Horror, The Best of the Rest, and The /mr Frarhis'k Many subscription options (including chocolate" available on our website.
Mothers & Other Monsters: Stories Page 28