If you have the impression that the world is about to be gobbled up raw in a frenzy of bleeding body parts by hordes of undead, I will reassure you straight way: this is not an impression. In case you’re not convinced, do have a look at the huge bibliography and videotheque on the topic: chances are you’ll have your head spinning. I have never attempted a “body count” (quite appropriate in this case), but I bet there are hundreds of them, of different genres – horror, comedy and even political satire – with some recent, good titles in the press and a blockbuster movie like World War Z in 2013.
Z like Zombies. Who are them, anyway? The subject clearly bewitches the human fantasy. Differently from other monstrous, legendary creatures like vampires and werewolves, zombies are relatively more recent – even though it can be argued with some merit that ghouls feasting on human flesh have a glorious tradition too, and old as much. And since Romero’s brilliant series on the walking corpses some decades ago, which turned a Central American folklore in one of the most successful movie subjects, fiction had kept zombies among its favourite pets. (Incidentally, if you also think that’s telling an awful lot about the American psyche, again, you are not alone: check this out http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-why-americans-are-paranoid-about-everything-including-zombies. Chomsky can easily prove one thing or two about it, even though I can happily confirm Europeans are not that different.)
In the following weeks I am going to talk about a series of books that shares this common subject – zombies, obviously – often a common incipit – coming out of nowhere in a normal terrestrial day as any other, the ghoulish creatures start wreaking havoc among humans – and sometimes even the same plot – the breaking down of civilisation, a few survivors scattered, splatter and gore all around. Said that, the stories I will single out for review are as far away from one another as they could possibly be. And a few of them are admirably original. Feed by Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire is the one that really got me, but others also qualify in a way or another. Stay tuned.