The opening story of Allegra Hydes sophomore short story collection, The Last Catastrophe, is called Mobilization. In just a few short pages and narrated in the collective we, it follows an entire society of people caravanning in RVs across America from a time of relative ease they can outrun all the bad news; they can chase the sunsets and form a tight-knit, freewheeling family until theres no more gas, and the end of time on Earth is rapidly approaching. Its a stunning opener that encapsulates the level of writing featured throughout this short story collection.

Hyde explores imagined possibilities of and for humanity from a couple in a moose costume trying to save the last remaining moose to a teacher who drinks Gatorade until her skin glows to ease the pain as she faces the end of her marriage, to mega-algorithms and the effects of late-stage capitalism and extraction and the book is a perfect balance of imagination, humor, darkness, and hope. Hyde has won three Pushcart Prizes, and her previous book, the novel Eleutheria, which also deals with ecological crisis, was a big hit last year and landed her on Late Night With Seth Meyers and The New Yorkers Best Books of 2022 list. The Last Catastrophe is a shining example of what it means to hold hope and despair at once in the face of the climate crisis, and the possibilities inherent in both.

Shondaland spoke with Hyde about catastrophe and hope, science and art, and global weirding.

SARAH NEILSON: Can you talk about the title of the book and about your relationship with the word catastrophe?

ALLEGRA HYDE: When it comes to the title of the book and the word catastrophe, I wanted there to be some ambiguity or maybe some possibility around how we conceive of that word. Because the last catastrophe could be read as the final catastrophe that ends us all, or it could be the last catastrophe before we make a change. And so Im interested in catastrophe as both something to be worried about and to recognize as a very real possibility but also as an opportunity for rethinking how we exist.

The Last Catastrophe: Stories

The Last Catastrophe: Stories

SN: Something that your work just engages with a lot is this small pivot between disaster and utopia or despair and euphoria, and how those things are so close to each other even though theyre kind of perceived as polar-opposite things. How do you explore the nearness of those things in your writing?

AH: I think when we open ourselves up to big possibilities or euphoria or utopia, lets say were also opening ourselves to potential disaster and disappointment and pain. And I think in that way, those two seemingly very disparate experiences are actually quite close, and they both have to do with a kind of vulnerability and risk.

SN: In the story Afterglow, you write, Shed appreciated scientists restless, unsatisfied demeanors, their near-spiritual commitment to failure in the pursuit of a granule of knowledge. The story goes on to say, She considered her work experimental in the scientific sense. She, too, sought stable earthly truths. Can you talk about the ways that science and art are intertwined for you?

AH: I admire scientists and admire people who devote themselves to studying an animal, or a particular place in the world, or a particular chemical process. I think theres a devotion or even a kind of spiritual commitment that can go along with that kind of work in the world. And in another universe in another multiverse, I guess maybe I would have been able to be a scientist, and Id be studying frogs. But that didnt pan out, and instead Im a writer. But as a writer, I do think I sometimes bring a kind of scientific approach to questions that interest me. Especially when working in a speculative mode, youre asking, What if, and youre testing possible answers to that question. And stories are our hypotheses, really, and so when Im writing, Im trying to write in a way that has a sound logic, even when its going to these absurd and sometimes silly places. I really admire writers like Ted Chiang, who has also talked about bringing that methodical, scientific approach to his work.

SN: Can you talk about the ways that you write about community and love in the book, and in what ways you engage with those ideas as a writer, especially as a writer of fiction in the face of a catastrophe or in the face of an ending that could be a beginning?

AH: I think in the end, all we have are each other, right? Its kind of sappy, but all we have is love. Theres so much pain and suffering and struggle in the world, and thats part of the human experience, but the great counterbalance to that is our ability to transcend circumstances through care and appreciation and through love. So, I tried to really highlight that in this collection. The stories go to some grim places, but I always wanted to show that even within the most terrible disasters, theres the possibility for mutual aid, for creating connections. And I hoped that by ending the story with the novella The Eaters, which ends on a note of trying to find connection and making a choice out of love, I offered up that possibility to the reader as an ending note.

SN: What is your relationship with nature and animals and landscape, and how did that inform some of the stories in this book and your work in general?

AH: I would describe the governing premise behind this book as that of global weirding, which is another way of thinking about global warming where its foregrounding not just temperature, but the fact that as our climate changes, everythings getting weird migration patterns, when things are blooming and thats affecting us as human beings in our societies and how we live. I wanted to take this idea of global weirding and think about it in fiction, often using metaphor and figurative devices to illustrate the reality of being alive now and probably being alive in the future. Im really interested in bringing ecological principles in general into greater focus but applying them to our human experiences. So, in a story like Endangered, which is about artists being endangered, Im clearly taking what we know about endangered animals and animals going extinct and applying this to a human profession. And my hope was that that kind of makes very real the reality of both animals out of nature and human beings doing their human things.

SN: Can you also talk about the role of the body, human and nonhuman, in the book? How does the body show up for you as something within this global-weirding paradigm?

AH: I want to show that whats happening in our environment and whats happening with the environmental crisis is not just a separate issue for birds and trees its also a human issue. By applying known aspects of our environmental crisis to the human body, Im attempting to show how we too are very much implicated in the impact of global weirding. So, in a story like Afterglow, I was trying to, on one hand, talk about pollution in the air and creating these dramatic sunsets, and also talk about pollution toxicity in the body. In the story, that means the character is drinking lots of Gatorade and consuming lots of chemicals. Shes doing that for her own reasons, shes coping with the end of her marriage, but again Im trying to create a parallel and to transpose a known environmental framework onto a human experience in a way thats recognizable.

SN: Whats the importance of humor for you as a writer?

AH: To be perfectly honest, it makes writing more fun when youre amusing yourself on the page. Because I never know if a story is going to be published, let alone whether its going to be a part of a book. And if I can be giggling alone in my room at my desk, thats a win. And the fact that humor might ultimately serve our future readers is really exciting. On another level, I think approaching the climate crisis and the ill effects of the Anthropocene with a sense of playfulness alongside a sense of steely resolve is easier because so many of these catastrophes are hard to look at, and thats why most people do not look at them or think about them at all. Myself included sometimes. Its a lot, its painful, but if we can look at things sideways, and if we can see things with a sense of mirth, its easier to process them and to ultimately maybe make decisions that move in the right direction.

SN: In the first story, Mobilization, theres a part where they say, Cant stop now. Its such a short line, but it captures a lot about the world of the story and the world we live in too, where we are on a trajectory that we cant stop, but we also have this need to keep moving. Is that something you were actively thinking about while you were writing? How does the theme of movement sort of show up in the stories and for you?

AH: I hadnt really thought about that before, but Im reflecting on the fact that I wrote a lot of these stories during the pandemic lockdown. So, I was writing them in this moment where everyone stopped moving, for the most part. And the pandemic lockdown proved to me and many other people that actually, we could abruptly all change everything about how we live and everything about how our society operates. That is in fact not impossible. I think when it comes to actually addressing something like climate change, theres a general feeling that we cannot change. We have to all use cars, we have to work five days a week, we have to be constantly consuming, living in single-family homes, etc., etc. But in fact, its well within our capability as a society to completely change that and to maybe live in ways that not only are more sustainable and will not bring us to climate catastrophe, but that actually would be more pleasant in many ways. Maybe that means having a three-day workweek to de-escalate capitalist ruin. I dont know. But I think that the idea of movement in the book is tied to the time when I was writing this, which was a time of no movement.

SN: Can you talk about the presence of the moon in the stories?

AH: The moon in some ways is just a recurring motif that, whether consciously or subconsciously, was a touchstone that can bridge stories. But I also think the moon so very much belongs to the natural world, or to the world of dreams and the subconscious and pagan celebrations and rhythms of the body that are inescapable. And maybe its secretly representing this god of ecology that is present through all the human drama and bulls--t that is swirling around through the stories.

SN: Can you talk about the role of tech in the book and how you engaged with tech, real and imagined?

AH: Yeah, I see technology, and the speculative technology like that super-algorithm, as being one facet of global weirding, although thats not necessarily obvious. I think its part of just a human apparatus connected to maybe consumption and hyper-productivity and control that feel ominous. Because this book does contain a lot of anxieties about what it means to live in the Anthropocene, exploring the dangers and potential ramifications of our technological trajectories was just part of capturing that overall vision of where we seem to be heading.

SN: Speaking of where were heading, the dedication reads, For who well be. Right now at this moment, who do you hope we will be? Who do you imagine we will be? What is your relationship with the word hope for us in the future?

AH: Despite everything, I for the most part remain committed to hope. And it doesnt mean I dont feel extreme fear and worry all the time when Im looking at the news and looking at projections, because I know that human beings do have such a capacity for adaptation, for ingenuity, and for care. The moments when Ive experienced either personal crises or been in disasters that are larger and affecting a larger group of people, Ive seen how people step up and come together and use that break in that habitual reality to reach out and support one another. And I really hold fast to that human capacity.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Sarah Neilson is a freelance culture writer and interviewer whose work regularly appears in The Seattle Times, Them, and Shondaland, among other outlets. They are an alum of the Tin House craft intensive, and their memoir writing has been published in Catapult and Ligeia.

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