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Book List: Zombies Can’t Swim (Or Can They?)

        

Apparently, much discussion has been devoted to this topic. Honestly, I don’t see how there can be any right answer. Dylan, the original Monster Librarian, was a huge fan of zombies in movies and books, and he observed that there were many, many variations on a theme.  Zombies have been portrayed as fast, slow, smart, brainless (haha), almost human and about as far from human as possible. Given the many ways they’ve been written and imagined, there’s no reason they couldn’t be expected to swim… is there?

Well, I guess there is that issue of gross motor coordination, but we can’t let details get in the way of imagination. And there is at least one book with an author imaginative enough to create swimming zombies: Sadie Walker is Stranded by Madeline Roux.

There seems to be more evidence that zombies can travel underwater, though. In theory, the undead wouldn’t need to breathe, so there’s no reason they couldn’t just stroll along the ocean floor.  Underwater zombies appear in Max Brooks’ World War Z, and also in Brian Keene’s Dead Sea. In popular cinema, there’s evidence of this in Pirates of the Caribbean. And in not-so-popular cinema, but probably familiar to zombie lovers is this scene from the Italian zombie movie Zombi 2, which Dylan described to me over and over again.

 

To conclude this brief overview of the deep and meaningful topic of whether zombies can swim, I submit that if you would like to offer me your thoughts on the topic, along with your recommendations, you might just get someone new hooked on the zombie genre. Next up, we will try to address the question: is there such a thing as a “good” zombie?

 

Posted on July 12, 2015 by , Reply

So You Want To Write About Horror Fiction

 

Stephen King

Never read horror fiction? That’s no reason you can’t write about it. Surely you have a fresh new perspective on a genre that 99% of the population has already decided is lowbrow trash read only by maladjusted teenage boys. Except for Stephen King. You probably know perfectly normal individuals who read Stephen King.

Especially if it’s around Halloween, you should have no shortage of opportunities to pitch your idea to someone in the mainstream media who is only familiar with horror from reading articles by experts like you. Although that person has probably read Stephen King, too, and maybe once saw an episode of The Walking Dead with their teenager.

The first thing your article/blog post/whatever needs is a photo that will grab the viewer (not literally, of course) and add some kind of legitimacy to your article. A photo of Stephen King, or of popular titles next to images of their cover art, is probably the ticket. Or, you could use movie or television stills from popular media. The faces of movie stars and monsters will always draw the eye.

Make sure your article title mentions vampires, zombies, and/or the apocalypse. That’s really all there is to the horror genre anyway. Don’t worry about doing actual research– just read a couple of past articles from the mainstream media. You can make up future trends yourself (who will know?) or talk about how literary authors are finally starting to write about the supernatural and make horror a legitimate genre with actual good books. If you want to take a historical angle, make sure to mention Frankenstein and Dracula. If you want to include details like the authors’ names, there’s always Wikipedia, which is a completely accurate and unbiased source of information.

Another great topic to write on is the harmful effects of horror fiction. You don’t actually need to consult studies to do some good old-fashioned fearmongering about how horror fiction is causing the degeneration of society, promoting abusive behaviors towards women and girls, or damaging our fragile youth. You’re writing out of genuine concern for the youth of today; they need to be sheltered from the gratuitous, misogynistic violence of the horror genre, which is much more of a concern than the gratuitous, misogynistic violence found anywhere else throughout popular culture. Certainly, actual readers and writers of horror fiction don’t have anything to say about the problematic nature of their preferred genre, a literary form intended to zero in on the worst fears in a tremendously flawed world.  It’s much easier to ask protective parents and cultural critics like your next door neighbor leading questions to get the quotes you need and generate public outrage.

Once you’re done with your piece, you should immediately post a link to it on Twitter so everyone who follows you can instantly access it and express their appreciation for your fresh take on the state of horror fiction today. Congratulations, you’ve published your piece and made the world a better place with your insightful views on a genre of fiction you’ve never read. Except for that one book by Stephen King.

 

—With thanks for the inspiration to Jessica Tripler at BookRiot

Posted on July 7, 2015 by , 10 comments

Book Review: Thinner Than Thou by Kit Reed


Thinner Than Thou by Kit Reed

Tor, 2005

ISBN-13:978-0765311955

Available: Paperback, used hardcover, Kindle edition.

 

I haven’t gone back to them lately, but I remember how breathtaking and gruesome I found the stories of Kit Reed as collected by Connie Willis in Weird Women, Wild Women when I first discovered them.  Reed’s stories push the edge of our existing world just a step beyond into a reality that is both plausible and unreal.  In general, her stories have a feminist slant, and focus on taking issues and situations that primarily affect women and taking them to the next level. Even for her, though, this novel is message-heavy.

Thinner Than Thou is a novel that expresses in detail the consequences of taking “beauty culture” to extremes on a systemic level. It’s told from multiple points of view, but is centered on teenage anorexic Annie Abercrombie, whose parents sign her over to an organization called the Dedicated Sisters, which treats extreme cases of people with eating disorders. Annie’s siblings, Betz and Davey, angry at their parents, run off to search for their sister without a clue as to where she might be. Annie’s mother, who regrets signing her daughter away, is being pressured into getting plastic surgery in order to look younger, resists it and takes off to find all three of her missing children. A connected storyline involves the wealthy, overweight Jerry Devlin, who has signed up for a weight-loss “boot camp” run by the “Reverend Earl”. Devlin has a strong personality and his insider’s view helps shape the story as Annie’s family searches for her, unable to find her from the outside. Betz and Davey’s storyline, as well as their mother’s, is pretty random, as they wander from place to place seeking out the facilty in which Annie is being held. Eventually they run into each other, manage to discover where Annie is and rescue her, and lead a resistance movement to the headquarters in hopes of publicly overthrowing the Reverend Earl on television.

As grotesque as this future is, the stereotypes are taken to such extremes that character development suffers. The plot is unsatisfying because of the randomness of events and the convenient way everything falls into place at the end. While individual characters are interesting, especially those who change (like Devlin and Annie’s mother) and Reed does an excellent job of creating a disturbing near-future that can be easily pictured in the mind’s eye, I think that she is a much better writer in the short story format, and that this novel would have been more successful as a group of linked short stories. Thinner Than Thou isn’t the most satisfying book I’ve read recently, but it is still well worth reading, and provides a great deal of food for thought. Recommended.

Contains: Torture, sexual situations.

 

 

Posted on June 30, 2015 by , Reply
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