Here Be Zombies: World War Z

I read World War Z while in Glendale for work and after a few days to reflect on it, I think it may be the best book I’ve read all year.

It’s told as a series of interviews ostensibly for a government report on the ten year old zombie apocalypse.

Yep. Zombie Apocalypse! How awesome is that as a backdrop. A quick aside to point out that while I really liked 28 Days Later for its eeriness I think fast moving zombies are a gimmick that doesn’t work in the genre’s favor. the point of zombies, I think, is that they are scary because while they appear slow and lumbering, they are absolutely relentless and are totally driven to kill you by coming towards you… slowly but surely without distraction. Simon Pegg (of Shaun of the Dead fame) put it more eloquently here.

World War Z’s zombies (or ghouls, or G’s or Zack) are of the slow and steady kind. There are some really blood curdling descriptions of the zombie mindset.. or rather the lack of one and the problems that humanity faces in trying to stop the zombies. In an extremely clear example of how wrong-minded the armed forces are the latest in high power technology is brought to bear on a zombie infestation and yet the zombies keep coming. They are undeterred. Nobody is prepared for the fact that you can’t “Shock and Awe” an enemy that doesn’t care if its bones are shattered as long as it can bite you!

Originally I thought the narrative style of interviews made it hard to identify with a character and watch it develop, but what really comes out is a feeling of shared experience after a while. I started to piece together a hypothetical me in the time of these zombies and I’d borrow elements of the various stories as I went. Max Brooks does a great job of swelling a big picture story from he first signs of infestation to the pockets of overrun towns then cities then whole regions. The reaction of nations, the chaos of political machines and the destruction of economies are all well represented in the book through the interviewees and you get both a global and an individual sense of what’s going on in a really well done way.

Supposedly, the audio-book version is very good. The different interviewees are voiced by different actors. I’d consider “reading” it again via the audiobook if I can carve out the time. I also heard that a movie version is being made written by J. Michael Straczynski (of Babylon 5, Spider-Man comics, and a lot more), and it could be ok.


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