Zed's undead, baby. Zed's undead.
Several months ago I was at CD/Game Exchange buying concert tickets for some show or another. When I looked up I saw one of the classic Iron Maiden posters from the 1980s. Like pretty much every Iron Maiden poster and album cover, this one featured Maiden's mascot, the zombie Eddie. This particular poster was for one of my favorite Maiden tunes, The Trooper, a song based on the famous Tennyson poem The Charge of the Light Brigade. Naturally I bought it. The poster is one of the very few things I have actually bothered to hang up in my apartment.
Coincidentally, The Trooper is one of the very few explicit pop culture references made in World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. The American military uses it to psyche up the troops and to bait the zombies ( referred to interchangeably as Zed, Zack and a host of other nicknames ) into charging to their doom.
theferrett brought WWZ to my attention with a review several months ago that I am too lazy to find right now, and I am glad he did. It was written by Max Brooks, son of Mel, and is a companion piece to his earlier book, The Zombie Survival Guide, which is actually referenced by characters in WWZ. As the title implies, the book is a collection of people's recollections on the great zombie outbreak that killed 80% of the world's population. The book is set 10-15 years after the outbreak began, with most of the world now having been reclaimed for humanity. The book is closely patterned on the oral histories of Studs Terkel, who is pretty much unarguably the finest practitioner of this form and who I recommend to everyone. Anyway, Brooks 'interviews' a wide range of individuals from around the globe about the initial stages of the outbreak, the Great Panic where civilization collapsed, the long hard campaign to reclaim the world, and the mopping up that continues to the present day. Just like a real oral history, the characters may have an idea of what was going on elsewhere or of an overall strategy, but they talk in detail about what happened in their little corner of the world. Very few 'real' people are directly mentioned - aside from Iron Maiden the only direct reference I recall is a throwaway line about Michael Stipe, although the identity of many political figures is clearly implied.
In my opinion the big loophole in zombie fiction is that it is always assumed that the military would be overrun. I am sorry, but a slow-moving army of undead with no overall strategy, no ranged weaponry and no ability to climb barricades except on an army of their own corpses should not threaten a Marine battalion. OK, there would be a strong psychological effect in seeing your buddies rise and fight you, but if you stick a couple of platoons in a well defended area, give them adequate ammo and a clear escape path the zombies will never get close enough for this to happen. I was therefore gratified to see in WWZ an interview with an Army private who fought in the Battle of Yonkers, where the zombies broke the US military. His explanations of why the battle was lost - namely, too much reliance on fancy technology that relies on your enemy having a nervous system, insufficient ammo, difficulty getting troops to go for head shots instead of chest shots, morale issues, and a general lack of understanding of the enemy - fill this loophole nicely. Hopefully when the *real* zombie army arrives we will all remember this :-)
WWZ communicates how horrifying living in a post-apocalypse world could be much more clearly than almost any other piece of fiction in the genre. It is also the most original piece of zombie pop culture I have encountered. I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes either zombies or alternative histories. It runs about 325 pages in hardcover, but it is a quick and compelling read, with most of the 'interviews' run 3 to 6 pages. My only real complaint is that despite the characters coming from all different countries, ethnic groups and education levels, they use basically the same tone and vocabulary. Brooks could have done a better job of differentiating people, but this was something I noticed more in retrospect. It certainly did not hurt my enjoyment of the book at all, and it won't hurt yours either.
Coincidentally, The Trooper is one of the very few explicit pop culture references made in World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. The American military uses it to psyche up the troops and to bait the zombies ( referred to interchangeably as Zed, Zack and a host of other nicknames ) into charging to their doom.
theferrett brought WWZ to my attention with a review several months ago that I am too lazy to find right now, and I am glad he did. It was written by Max Brooks, son of Mel, and is a companion piece to his earlier book, The Zombie Survival Guide, which is actually referenced by characters in WWZ. As the title implies, the book is a collection of people's recollections on the great zombie outbreak that killed 80% of the world's population. The book is set 10-15 years after the outbreak began, with most of the world now having been reclaimed for humanity. The book is closely patterned on the oral histories of Studs Terkel, who is pretty much unarguably the finest practitioner of this form and who I recommend to everyone. Anyway, Brooks 'interviews' a wide range of individuals from around the globe about the initial stages of the outbreak, the Great Panic where civilization collapsed, the long hard campaign to reclaim the world, and the mopping up that continues to the present day. Just like a real oral history, the characters may have an idea of what was going on elsewhere or of an overall strategy, but they talk in detail about what happened in their little corner of the world. Very few 'real' people are directly mentioned - aside from Iron Maiden the only direct reference I recall is a throwaway line about Michael Stipe, although the identity of many political figures is clearly implied.
In my opinion the big loophole in zombie fiction is that it is always assumed that the military would be overrun. I am sorry, but a slow-moving army of undead with no overall strategy, no ranged weaponry and no ability to climb barricades except on an army of their own corpses should not threaten a Marine battalion. OK, there would be a strong psychological effect in seeing your buddies rise and fight you, but if you stick a couple of platoons in a well defended area, give them adequate ammo and a clear escape path the zombies will never get close enough for this to happen. I was therefore gratified to see in WWZ an interview with an Army private who fought in the Battle of Yonkers, where the zombies broke the US military. His explanations of why the battle was lost - namely, too much reliance on fancy technology that relies on your enemy having a nervous system, insufficient ammo, difficulty getting troops to go for head shots instead of chest shots, morale issues, and a general lack of understanding of the enemy - fill this loophole nicely. Hopefully when the *real* zombie army arrives we will all remember this :-)
WWZ communicates how horrifying living in a post-apocalypse world could be much more clearly than almost any other piece of fiction in the genre. It is also the most original piece of zombie pop culture I have encountered. I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes either zombies or alternative histories. It runs about 325 pages in hardcover, but it is a quick and compelling read, with most of the 'interviews' run 3 to 6 pages. My only real complaint is that despite the characters coming from all different countries, ethnic groups and education levels, they use basically the same tone and vocabulary. Brooks could have done a better job of differentiating people, but this was something I noticed more in retrospect. It certainly did not hurt my enjoyment of the book at all, and it won't hurt yours either.