I never knew there were so many ways to tell a zombie story. I pretty much thought that the George Romero version was it – dead people wandering around holding their arms out in front of them and calling out “braaaaaaains,” looking to munch on the living. I never did know why they had to hold their arms that way, but they all did – I thought.

John Joseph Adams, who has appeared on the reprint anthology scene with six reprint anthologies in the last two years (including Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (post-apocalytic science fiction), Federations (about future intergalactic governments), and By Blood We Live (vampires), has chosen his material wisely in this collection of short stories about zombies by some of the biggest and best names in the horror business, as well as the newest and hottest. I resisted this book for a long time because I’ve never been fond of zombies, but upon diving in, I discovered that the zombies aren’t really the point; the point is to tell a good story. And these authors do that, with a vengeance.

My favorite story is “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man” by Scott Edelman, a metafiction about a writer caught in the library when the zombie plague hits. He tries to tell the story of what has happened in several ways, meandering through several false starts, before he latches onto the notion of just telling the truth without any veneer of fiction. It doesn’t have an ending, exactly, because our author is still alive when we leave him, unable to write of his demise – he doesn’t know yet how the end will come. This Stoker-Award nominee is just flat out brilliant.

John Langan gives Edelman a run for his money in the only original tale in the anthology, “How the Day Runs Down.” This take on the classic play “Our Town,” written as a script narrated by the Stage Manager, will likely never be performed, but it brings vivid images to mind (particularly if you ever cried your eyes out watching your baby sister play the lead in the original). Langan is a remarkable new talent on the horror scene; I have yet to read anything he’s written without being bowled over. I can’t wait to read his first novel, House of Windows, due out next month from Night Shade Books.

“Death and Suffrage,” by Dale Bailey, will make anyone who has ever hailed from Chicago chuckle, as the dead line up to vote. Sherman Alexie’s “Ghost Dance,” which turned out to be the only story in The Living Dead that I’d read before, finally lets the Native Americans get their revenge on Custer. Susan Palwick looks at zombies from a completely different angle in “Beautiful Stuff,” portraying the dead as infinitely distractible beings with no malign intent – until one zombie shows signs of thinking for himself. Clive Barker contributes “Sex, Death and Starshine,” in which the dead seek only to continue doing what they loved doing in life, with a single-minded passion. Joe Hill, another fairly new horror writer who seems never to set a word in the wrong place, is represented by “Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead,” something of an aberration in this anthology as it is about filming a zombie movie, rather than actual zombies, though it does speak – movingly – of the end of things.

There are 34 stories in this mammoth anthology, with contributions by almost every horror writer a regular reader of the fantastic will want to see: Dan Simmons, Kelly Link, Jeffrey Ford, Norman Partridge, Joe R. Lansdale, Neil Gaiman, George R.R. Martin, Poppy Z. Brite, Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison among them. Usually anthologies have a few throw-away stories, a few that just don’t work as well as the others do; one expects it, understanding that one’s own taste will not correspond 100% with the editor’s. But either John Joseph Adams had such a wealth of stories at his disposal or he and I are utterly simpatico, because there was not a single story here that I feel one could skip without regret. Everyone who wants to understand contemporary horror fiction needs to read this book. If you’re a critic, reviewer or scholar, you’ll most definitely want to own a copy.

The Living Dead is offered by small publisher Night Shade Books, which has been producing high-quality work in recent years. Lately I’m finding that I want to read almost every book it publishes, and I have a pile of its books vying for my attention. I’m glad Night Shade is out there. ( )

This anthology was a bit uneven for me: some of the stories were just AMAZING, but quite a few....*sigh*. Let's just say I read them to get it over with so I could go on to something else. Personally, my favorite story in this collection by far was "This Year's Class Picture", by the always fabulous Dan Simmons. Granted, it may appeal to me more than you, unless you too are a.) a teaher b.) a zombie fanatic c.) slightly disillusioned with the job and/or d.) have ever considered the laudable defense capabilities of most elementary schools (specifically in the North East) built in this country. :) ( )

I’ll admit that zombies can be tiresome; not much personality, kind of slow, easily defeated on a one-to-one basis. Certain liberties must be taken with the mythos to make such creatures interesting over the course of 400+ pages, but Adams puts in just the right mix of classic monster mayhem and mythological experimentation to make the whole of The Living Dead an absolutely spectacular collection. There is everything a zombiphile could want; gore, satire; parody, gore, emotion, comedy, gore, sex, nostalgia, and gore.

Read the rest of the review here. ( )

This book was fantastic. If you are a fan of zombies like I am then you totally dig this book. Some of the stories weren't that great and some others weren't what you'd expect when thinking of a zombie story, but all in all I thoughly enjoyed this book. It was pretty neat to see a whole bunch of different perspectives on zombies. You woouldn't think there'd be so many different ways to write about them. This book stands as my #2 favorite zombie book. My first definately being Brain Keene's City of the Dead. ( )

This short story collection from indie publisher Night Shade Books gathers together 34 examples of the best of the zombie short story genre. And yes, it's a larger genre than you might think, and home to some very unexpected authors (Sherman Alexie, anyone?) as well as some very familiar to fans of horror (Joe R. Lansdale and, yes, Stephen King.) Although there's very little original work here, it's a treat to have a sampling from such diverse sources and spanning so many years collected under one cover. For anyone who just can't get enough zombie apocalypse in their lives, this is the book for you. ( )

A one word review of this book would be pretentious and this is coming from someone who really likes zombie stories. The Living Dead is a massive collection of short stories about the living dead, now I know that the living dead or zombies encompasses a large variety of creatures; from the flesh eating ghouls of the Romero films to the animated corpses of Haitian legend. However, after reading the back of this title I thought I was getting a collection of (Romero-ish) stories from the best horror and fiction writers of this decade. Unfortunately most of these stories take the form of pretentious (there’s that word again) yarns about animated corpses who seek a variety of reasons for their animation vengeance, a misunderstanding, a good time/end to they’re suffering??? Now what do I mean by pretentious, let me elaborate; I mean that they are trying to tell a message that is none too subtle and hasn't been done to death (sorry pun not intended.) The 9/11 zombie victim story “Beautiful Stuff” is a perfect example, it screamed message. The one that really put me over the edge was a story about a zombie contingency plan, that wasn’t about a zombie contingency plan. In fact I’m not quite sure what it was about… The Neil Gaiman story was very much along that line too, but then again it's Neil Gaiman. Now I’ve read several zombie anthologies and I’ve come to expect these types of stories thrown in with the usual fair of living running for their lives, but in this book it was just one of these aforementioned stories after another. Even reading Stephen King's story couldn't redeem this collection for me. On a final note just be warned the first story is a good one, it’s the hook you can guess at what most of the rest are. ( )

Note that the print version apparently has more stories than this ebook. In this case the luddite dorkbrains who think what is good for Stephen King isn't good for them include Dan Simmons and This Year's Class Picture, Sherman Alexie's Ghost Dance and Douglas E. Winter's Less than Zombie. Alexie's Ghost Dance isn't very good so leaving it out improves the book. I think Winters might be a lawyer, so maybe not surprising, as they are a big part of the fool complex that brought us DRM etc. Simmons however does sell his books electronically, and even multiformat occasionally, so he must have had a sudden attack of stupidity in this case of this multiple award winner.

A big heaping helping of zombies, as the editor explains :

"In the process of assembling this anthology, I read more zombie stories than you could possibly imagine, and I found more good ones than could possibly fit in one volume, even a mammoth tome like this one. So, in order to help narrow down my selections, I created a few loose guidelines for myself. First, I wanted to avoid taking too many stories from any one source. Second, I wanted to avoid taking too many stories from other zombie anthologies. I discovered a lot of great zombie fiction elsewhere and thought that this book would be more valuable to zombie fans if it were to collect that material."

That is, he wanted to mostly avoid stories you could already get in other zombie anthologies. So there's a variety here, science fiction zombies, non-horror zombies, the origins of Anita Blake, vampire slayer and necromancer and the odd story with no zombies at all that will likely annoy some - and are usually among the weakest stuff, too.

So there's an intro, an introduction to each story, but no zombie bibliography or other reading or viewing lists like in Wastelands. So I suppose this is 'another zombie anthology' as opposed to a retrospective study approach.

Still rather good though, I'd call it a 4.25 rounded up.

Living Dead : Some Zombie Contingency Plans - Kelly Link
Living Dead : Death And Suffrage - Dale Bailey
Living Dead : Blossom - David J. Schow
Living Dead : The Third Dead Body - Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Living Dead : The Dead - Michael Swanwick
Living Dead : The Dead Kid - Darrell Schweitzer
Living Dead : Malthusian's Zombie - Jeffrey Ford
Living Dead : Beautiful Stuff - Susan Palwick
Living Dead : Sex Death And Starshine - Clive Barker
Living Dead : Stockholm Syndrome - David Tallerman
Living Dead : Bobby Conroy Comes Back From the Dead - Joe Hill
Living Dead : Those Who Seek Forgiveness - Laurell K. Hamilton
Living Dead : In Beauty Like The Night - Norman Partridge
Living Dead : Prairie - Brian Evenson
Living Dead : Everything Is Better With Zombies - Hannah Wolf Bowen
Living Dead : Home Delivery - Stephen King
Living Dead : Sparks Fly Upward - Lisa Morton
Living Dead : Meathouse Man - George R. R. Martin
Living Dead : Deadman's Road - Joe R. Lansdale
Living Dead : The Skull-Faced Boy - David Barr Kirtley
Living Dead : The Age Of Sorrow - Nancy Kilpatrick
Living Dead : Bitter Grounds - Neil Gaiman
Living Dead : She's Taking Her Tits To The Grave - Catherine Cheek
Living Dead : Dead Like Me - Adam-Troy Castro
Living Dead : Zora And The Zombie - Andy Duncan
Living Dead : Calcutta Lord Of Nerves - Poppy Z. Brite
Living Dead : Followed - Will McIntosh
Living Dead : The Song The Zombie Sang - Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg
Living Dead : Passion Play - Nancy Holder
Living Dead : Almost The Last Story By Almost The Last Man - Scott Edelman
Living Dead : How The Day Runs Down - John Langan

Simple monsters, with jailbait.

3.5 out of 5

Worldwide zombie political comeback.

3.5 out of 5

Zombie bondage asphyxiation nasal dentata.

4 out of 5

Serial killer victim zombie revenge.

3.5 out of 5

Zombies make you obsolete, and sell well as sex toys.

5 out of 5

Zombie fort resident leave school beating right direction.

3.5 out of 5

Horror leftover transform.

3 out of 5

Corpse revival kerfuffle.

3.5 out of 5

Undead theatre.

4 out of 5

Billy please lose my number.

4 out of 5

Romero reunion.

3.5 out of 5

Anita Blake raises a woman's husband from the dead, but realises his death was not as described.

4 out of 5

New model zombies.

4 out of 5

The dead remains.

3 out of 5

Including this story.

2.5 out of 5

Need a zombie plan.

3.5 out of 5

Fundamentalist zombie abortion.

4 out of 5

Dead love handles.

4 out of 5

Undead familiar bugs.

4 out of 5

You're going to be an officer in my zombie army, mate.

4 out of 5

Omega woman.

3.5 out of 5

Coffee girl presentation.

3.5 out of 5

Zombie bimbo.

2.5 out of 5

Zombie faking.

4 out of 5

Jealous writer's Haitian zombie chat.

3.5 out of 5

City Living Dead tour.

4 out of 5

Corpse bad reminder.

3 out of 5

Wired performance.

3.5 out of 5

Anti-zombie performance.

3.5 out of 5

Zombie audience.

3.5 out of 5

In this act, the zombies keep on truckin'.

4 out of 5

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2008/11... ( )

I love zombies. They are, without a doubt, my favorite horror monster. I love zombie movies, unless they really suck. I love zombie songs. I even have a cool zombie t-shirt. So, I just had to get an anthology of zombie short stories when I heard about it. It's mostly worth it.

The anthology isn't perfect. There are a few stories whose inclusion I question (I'll get to them later). There are a few people who's absence I wonder about (why no Brian Keene?). Also, almost all of the stories are reprints, which doesn't matter so much to me, because the only one I'd previously read was the King one. If you're like me, this is a good anthology to buy.

Now, let's briefly look at the individual stories that I didn't like:

"Some Zombie Contingency Plans" by Kelly Link: WTF? There are no zombies in this one at all. It has nothing to do with zombies except that the main character is obsessed with zombie contingency plans. He's also obsessed with icebergs, so I can't help but wonder if Adams would have included it an an Iceberg anthology.

"Those Who Seek Forgiveness" by Laurell K. Hamilton: OK, this isn't actually a bad story, but it isn't all that hot either. It's part of Hamilton's Anita Blake series, which while popular, isn't one of the best series in the genre. This story doesn't really heart the collection, but it doesn't really add to it either.

"Less Than Zombie" by Douglas E. Winter: This is a parody of Less Than Zero, which I haven't read. Also, I didn't actually see any zombies in this one either, except maybe, in the snuff film they watch.

All of the other stories ranged from good to excellent. So there a re three stories that I at least would consider clunkers in an anthology of 34. And really, even those three aren't bad stories; I just think that two are a bit out of place in this anthology and the other is just in it to cash in one one more big name--which in unnecessary when you have Stephen King,Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Harlan Ellison, and several other writers who are well known in the genre. It is really still a pretty good book. ( )