McHugh, Maureen F. Books

China Mountain Zhang

Maureen F. McHugh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

really original and absorbing 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

this book depends more on its exquisite characterizations and fascinating vision of a future where china dominates as the global superpower than on plot, and it totally works. it presents a "slice of life" of zhang, a gay half-chinese american, as he navigates a world in which his sexuality and americanness make him not the ideal. along the way, it also gives glimpses into the worlds of a cyber-kite flyer, martain settlers, and an "ugly" chinese expatriate trying to make her way as a young adult in america. interesting technologies and cultures. beautifully written and imagined.

Editorial Review:

When talking about this book you have to list the awards it's won--the Hugo, the Tiptree, the Lambda, the Locus, a Nebula nomination--after that you can skip the effusive praise from the New York Times and get to the heart of things: This is a book about a future many don't agree with. It's set in a 22nd century dominated by Communist China and the protagonist is a gay man. These aren't the usual tropes of science fiction, and they aren't written in the usual way. But, wow, it's one heck of a story.

Mothers & Other Monsters: Stories

Maureen F. McHugh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A balanced and pleasing collection of short stories 4 out of 5 stars.
20 of 25 people found this review helpful.

Maureen McHugh has given me some really nice and thought-provoking reads in her novels over the past few years and I was pleased to see this collection of of short stories from her, most of which I had missed. I always approach short story collections with some trepidation.....when the stories are not on par with the writer's novels there is inevitable disappointment, and if the short stories are extremely good then there is still disappointment because the pleasure in reading them is so fleeting! However, every so often, there comes along a collection that does not fall into either trap and provides a haunting and lovely series of well-crafted little gems that are perfect in their own right. This is one such collection. I heartily recommend this one to anyone who has read McHugh in the past and enjoyed her works, and I invite those who haven't sampled her novels to test her writing first with these short stories. You won't be diasappointed with this one!

Editorial Review:

In her luminous collection of short stories, Maureen F. McHugh wryly and delicately examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using beautiful, deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations. A woman has to introduce her new lover to her late brother. A teenager is interviewed about her peer group’s attitude to sex . . . and baby boomers. A missing stepson sets a marriage on edge. McHugh’s characters, her Alzheimersafflicted parents or her smart, rebellious teenagers are always recognizable: stubborn, sharp, human, and heartbreakingly real.

Nekropolis

Maureen F. Mchugh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Hariba, a poor young Near Eastern woman, sells herself into a slavery guaranteed by "jessing," a biochemical process that makes her permanently loyal to her owner. She would be content, if not happy, in her new house-servant's life--if her mistress didn't own a harni. A harni is a chimera, a genetically engineered man who may or may not be human, but who is stunningly handsome and who treats Hariba with a gentle, attentive consideration she has never before experienced. The chimera, Akhmim, is so unlike Hariba's expectations that her fear and hatred give way to love and, impossibly, to dissatisfaction with her scientifically cemented loyalty. Hariba and Akhmin flee to the Nekropolis, the Moroccan cemetery/ghetto in which she grew up. But her family and best friend are unhappy to see her and horrified by the chimera, and running away from her bonded master precipitates a serious, potentially fatal illness. Her family and friends are too poor and too afraid of arrest to hire a physician. And the unfailingly patient and considerate chimera begins to have strange effects on the women in Hariba's life.

Like Maureen F. McHugh's previous novels, Nekropolis is beautifully written, thoughtful, and powerful, with complex, sensitively delineated, always believable characters. McHugh portrays human behavior with a rare and sometimes heartbreaking honesty and with an exceptional insight into the interplay of male-female relationships and the dilemma of the stranger in a strange land. Like McHugh's debut novel, China Mountain Zhang (winner of the Hugo, Tiptree, Lambda, and Locus awards), the chapters are narrated in alternating first-person viewpoints that offer fresh and contrasting angles and understanding of the characters and their world. --Cynthia Ward

Mission Child

Maureen F. McHugh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Mission Child is an expansion of Maureen McHugh's "The Cost to Be Wise," a fascinating novella from the original anthology Starlight 1.

Janna's world was colonized long ago by Earth and then left on its own for centuries. When "offworlders" return, their superior technology upsets the balance of a developing civilization. Mission Child follows the journeys of Janna after she and her young partner escape marauders who attack their hometown. The girl, fast becoming mature beyond her years, sets off across the planet on an odyssey of adventure, poverty, hard work, war, famine, and rebirth. Janna uses her meager skills to eke out a living in a changing world; she gains and loses a husband, a child, friends, jobs, and more.

McHugh weaves together anthropology, sociology, psychology, and gender relations in this wondrous journey. Janna assumes the guise of a boy for protection, but eventually becomes "Jan" to herself as well as others. Reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin's insightful works set in the Hainish universe, Mission Child will doubtless be nominated for a Tiptree Award for its exploration of Janna's gender identity. --Bonnie Bouman

Half the Day Is Night

Maureen F. McHugh

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Big disappointment 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

The book starts well but after 170 pages I completely lost interest. The underwater scenario is very promising but the whole atomoshpere is destroyed by boring politics and all too sudden events. After a while I stopped caring for the main characters because their aimless wandering (very realistic, no doubt) was simply boring. I don't want to give any spoiler, anyone who still considers reading this book will soon know what I mean.

This is not a real SF book and it doesn't come close to the great "China Mountain Zhang" or the moving "Nekropolis". Considering the hazzle to get this book in Germany it was a big disappointment.

insightful cyberpunk... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

When French/Asian war veteran David Dai accepts a job as a security guard to a female banker in the Caribbean, he's expecting to be able to get away from the violence and trauma of fighting in Africa. However, the underwater domes of the cities of Caribe and Marincite are hardly the tropical paradise he was unconsciously expecting. Rather, they are torn by poverty and social unrest, and plagued by corrupt and incompetent authorities. The resentful former holder of his job is still at his employer's home, and to top it all off, his employer, Mayla Ling, seems to have mysteriously become a target of a terrorist group. David wants nothing more than to quit the job and go home - but underwater cities aren't always so easy to get out of, and every incident seems to get him more deeply embroiled in the local situation - and Mayla's life.
While containing a good deal of social criticism/commentary and 'humanist' insight, the story is primarily a tense, action-filled thriller. With the elements of shady business deals and takeovers, illegal drugs and colorful, dangerous underworlds, rich CEOs and shady crooks, virtual reality gaming and illicit neural stimulators, it had a very 'cyberpunk' feel - I'd highly recommend it for fans of William Gibson.

Read it in one day.... not that it's short, I just couldn't put it down!

I was really depressed when I finished this book, thinking that I'd now read all of McHugh's published work - but then I found out that she actually just had a new short-story collection released in July! Yay! (It's small press, though, so it might be a little hard to find - but it's now on my wishlist!)

Editorial Review:

War veteran David Dai has come to ocean-bottom Caribe to work as bodyguard to Mayla Ling, banker and scion to the undersea city's old-money set. But as Mayla negotiates the biggest deal of her life, she draws the attention of terrorists who threaten to plunge her, and David, back into the nightmare of his violent past. HC: Tor.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction April 1995 (volume 88)

ray bradbury, maureen f. mchugh, marcos donnelly, robert reed, ray vukcevich, linda nagata

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