Zombies

Since the release of the 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead, most “zombie invasion” narratives have dealt primarily with zombies as an external threat, an anonymous, unreasoning force that can never be controlled or incorporated into human society.  As such, the typical zombie story is driven by the fear of the living survivors of the undead; the zombies can be killed, evaded, or fortified against, but never empathized with. But what if, instead of being an unthinking, unknowable threat to civilization, the zombies were only shadows of our loved ones who passed away, and the true “zombie apocalypse” was the horror of humanity trying to understand why their beloved family members had returned from the grave? In Handling the Undead, John Ajvide Lindqvist, author of Let the Right One In, tells a tale of a civilization in crisis as it tries to communicate with the “reliving”—zombies risen during an intense electrical disruption that pose no violent threat to humanity, but challenge society’s philosophical notions of what it means to be alive.

R is a zombie. He can’t remember his name so he is down to one letter. R lives in an old airplane and collects pieces of his crumbling civilization.  He loves Frank Sinatra and the Beatles and listens to them on old vinyl records. He reminds me of Pixar’s Wall-e. R is in the early stages of decay so he doesn’t look too bad, but he does eat brains. He grunts and groans, he shrugs, and he shuffles in classic zombie fashion. A typical male, he is a man of few words. Although it is hard to be a fan of the walking dead, Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies charmed me and also made me think about what it means to be human. We sometimes need monsters to remind us of our humanity.

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World War Z by Max Brooks: "Brooks tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts "as told to the author" by various characters around the world. A Chinese doctor encounters one of the earliest zombie cases at a time when the Chinese government is ruthlessly suppressing any information about the outbreak that will soon spread across the globe. The tale then follows the outbreak via testimony of smugglers, intelligence officials, military personnel and many others who struggle to defeat the zombie menace." (Publisher's Weekly)

If you enjoyed World War Z and other books dealing with pandemics and global menaces, here are some other novels you may enjoy:

Death Troopers by Joe Schreiber
When the Imperial prison barge Purge breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space, its only hope appears to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting, derelict, and seemingly abandoned. But soon after a boarding party returns from a scavenging expedition, a horrific disease breaks out and takes the lives of all but a half-dozen survivors whose only option forces them to return to the Star Destroyer--and the soulless, unstoppable dead waiting aboard its vast emptiness. (worldcat.org)

Feed by Mira Grant
The year was 2014. We had cured cancer. We had beat the common cold. But in doing so we created something new, something terrible that no one could stop. The infection spread, virus blocks taking over bodies and minds with one, unstoppable command: FEED. NOW, twenty years after the Rising, Georgia and Shaun Mason are on the trail of the biggest story of their lives-the dark conspiracy behind the infected. The truth will out, even if it kills them. (catalog description)