John Joseph Adams

My decision to go back and read the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy anthologies for years I'd previously missed continues to pay off spectacularly. There are maybe two stories in here that didn't 100% work for me, but those are among the shortest in the book, and are interesting even in their failure to completely click with me. Otherwise, the contents range from pretty good to fan-fucking-tastic, making it a terrific reading experience, as a whole.

One could probably spend a lot of show more time analyzing the interesting trends and patterns and repeated themes to be seen in this particular collection of stories, despite their widely varying perspectives and voices. I'm not necessarily up to doing much of that, myself, but one thing I definitely did notice is the way a surprising number of them draw on ideas from some venerable old subgenres -- especially 1950s monster movies and teen dramas, and classic kids' portal fantasies -- to do things that feel meaningful and relevant in the present day. show less

Definitely one of the best installments in this series that I've read so far. (As may be obvious, I'm still a couple of years behind.) There are a number of stories in here that I thought were just terrific, a bunch that were good or solidly decent, and a few that I didn't love but at least thought were doing something interesting. Which is a good hit rate for any anthology, even a "best of" one. Or perhaps especially a "best of" one, as I can never help raising my expectations for them, show more making it far too easy to be disappointed.

As well as the overall quality, this one is notable for how many of the stories in it feature unusual formats. Several of them take the form of academic publications or other fictional documents. There are also example of metafiction, non-linear storytelling, poetic surrealism, and other hard-to-classify stuff. All of which will not be to everybody's taste, I'm sure, but I'm into it.

As usual, these pieces are heavy on the social commentary. I've noticed in previous volumes that there is sometimes a tendency to go so heavy on the social commentary that the story aspect all but vanishes, and I have to say I'm not, in general, a fan of that. Usually I find myself thinking that I'd much rather read the opinion-piece essay that such things seem to want to be, rather than something that's vaguely gesturing at the idea of being fiction but fooling nobody. There are one or two offerings in this one, though, that prove to me that it is in fact possible to do it in a way that I find powerful and effective, which leaves me feeling pleasantly impressed. show less

Both utopian and dystopian futures, and ones in between, are represented here, with stories from N. K. Jemisin, G. Willow Wilson, Charlie Jane Anders, Hugh Howey, Tobias S. Buckell, Tananarive Due, Justina Ireland, Seanan McGuire, Catherynne M. Valente, and others. Omar el Akkad’s story about a former internee returning to the broken-down US and the monument it had made of her internment camp was really good (by contrast, I hated his novel). It was about if-this-goes-on treatment of show more Muslims and people who kind of looked Muslim to white Christians, and it was brutal. The protagonist describes two words of hateful graffiti scrawled on a house: one was “the only truly American word. And the first word was SAND.” Elsewhere: “This country is a man trying to describe a burning building without using the word fire.” Tobias Buckell’s The Blindfold, about the intersection of (1) racialized law enforcement with (2) technological measures designed to eliminate bias with (3) Russian manipulation of the system in order to further destablize the US, was also excellent, delivering exactly the kinds of clever speculation that make sf a productive lens for thinking about the present. Those were my favorites, but there’s more to be found. show less

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: show more 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. show less