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"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth!" From White Zombie to Dawn of the Dead, Resident Evil to World War Z, zombies have invaded popular culture, becoming the monsters that best express the fears and anxieties of the modern west. Gathering together the best zombie literature of the last three decades from many of today's most renowned authors of fantasy, speculative fiction, and horror, including Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, George R. R. show more Martin, Clive Barker, Poppy Z. Brite, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Joe R. Lansdale, The Living Dead covers the broad spectrum of zombie fiction. show lessTags
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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 show more 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
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 show more 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
This collection really has it all. Zombies as monsters, as objects of pity, as commodities, as political collateral, and even as the natural evolution of the human species. There is even a story without a zombie. I won't go story by story but I can tell you that they are all well done. No one will be moved or even like every story in here, but the sheer scope of viewpoints, as well as the quality of the writing, make this collection a treasure. Mr. Adams has impeccable taste.
My personal favorites are those that generate sympathy or really get into the human condition as it faces the inevitability of death or isolation. As such, my favorites were "This Year's Class Picture," "The Dead Kid," "Stockholm Syndrome," "Dead Man's Road," "The show more Age of Sorrow," "Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man," and "How the Day Runs Down." These were stories that left me stunned by their beauty and their humanity. You will probably have a different list.
One thing is certain. This collection is a masterpiece of dark literature. show less
My personal favorites are those that generate sympathy or really get into the human condition as it faces the inevitability of death or isolation. As such, my favorites were "This Year's Class Picture," "The Dead Kid," "Stockholm Syndrome," "Dead Man's Road," "The show more Age of Sorrow," "Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man," and "How the Day Runs Down." These were stories that left me stunned by their beauty and their humanity. You will probably have a different list.
One thing is certain. This collection is a masterpiece of dark literature. show less
I thoroughly enjoyed (and by thoroughly I mean every single selected story) Wastelands, a similar collection by the same editor, wherein the theme was more broadly apocalyptic. The Living Dead was not quite that strong a grouping, but there were some real gems. Zombies, as much as any other end-of-the-world scenario, provide plenty of material for the philosophical, for levels of human interest, and for terrifying situations. Right up front I was interested to read the Poppy Z. Brite story, because I’ve always wanted to see if she’s as good a writer of chilling material as her fan base proclaims. Her contribution Calcutta, Lord of Nerves was exceptionally rich and lurid, and I now have a strong basis for picking up one of her show more novels.
I had read both the Stephen King story [Home Delivery] and the Joe Hill story [Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead] in their own short story collections, the former being an example of one of King’s less memorable stories (and thus only of a slightly higher calibre than everything else in the book) and the Joe Hill story, while only about zombies in a cultural sort of way, is readable (there are far better examples of his storytelling in his collection 20th Century Ghosts, too).
Two of my favourite stories were, in my opinion, also the sweetest stories. Followed by Will McIntosh in which people are acquiring unshakeable zombie corpses in seemingly direct relation to moral degeneration in their lives, and the narrator is shocked and righteously indignant to find himself followed by a child’s corpse… the other, This Year’s Class Picture is by Dan Simmons. Having read The Terror by that author, I was expecting something much more brutal than a class teacher’s refusal to give up on the children in her care, even after their deaths. I was also quite chilled by Stockholm Syndrome by David Tallerman.
And yet the story I found the most frightening was one that has been decried by other reviewers as not really being about zombies at all… except that the principal character wants to discuss Some Zombie Contingency Plans with a girl whose house-party he crashes. The ending of that one was so unexpected it literally gave me goose bumps, despite (or perhaps because) the bulk of the story was rather repetitive and fell (quite cleverly, I suspect) only a little short of boring. There were plenty of others I enjoyed; 34 stories are a lot for me to remember individually, and I only shrugged my way through a couple.
My favourite story from the collection, though, was Sparks Fly Upward by Lisa Morton who used the zombie scenario to explore the incredibly cruel actions of people who besiege abortion clinics and harass the women who enter, while still telling a good zombie story. When I finished this story I had the strongest urge to applaud. show less
I had read both the Stephen King story [Home Delivery] and the Joe Hill story [Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead] in their own short story collections, the former being an example of one of King’s less memorable stories (and thus only of a slightly higher calibre than everything else in the book) and the Joe Hill story, while only about zombies in a cultural sort of way, is readable (there are far better examples of his storytelling in his collection 20th Century Ghosts, too).
Two of my favourite stories were, in my opinion, also the sweetest stories. Followed by Will McIntosh in which people are acquiring unshakeable zombie corpses in seemingly direct relation to moral degeneration in their lives, and the narrator is shocked and righteously indignant to find himself followed by a child’s corpse… the other, This Year’s Class Picture is by Dan Simmons. Having read The Terror by that author, I was expecting something much more brutal than a class teacher’s refusal to give up on the children in her care, even after their deaths. I was also quite chilled by Stockholm Syndrome by David Tallerman.
And yet the story I found the most frightening was one that has been decried by other reviewers as not really being about zombies at all… except that the principal character wants to discuss Some Zombie Contingency Plans with a girl whose house-party he crashes. The ending of that one was so unexpected it literally gave me goose bumps, despite (or perhaps because) the bulk of the story was rather repetitive and fell (quite cleverly, I suspect) only a little short of boring. There were plenty of others I enjoyed; 34 stories are a lot for me to remember individually, and I only shrugged my way through a couple.
My favourite story from the collection, though, was Sparks Fly Upward by Lisa Morton who used the zombie scenario to explore the incredibly cruel actions of people who besiege abortion clinics and harass the women who enter, while still telling a good zombie story. When I finished this story I had the strongest urge to applaud. show less
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.
Read the rest of the review here.
Ordinarily, this book would have gotten only two stars because of the ratio of stories that made me glad I'd bought the book to stories I hated or stories which I won't remember in a week.
The first story in the book, Dan Simmons's This Year's Class Picture set the bar high. It's got your basic McGuyver-like adaptations to a broken society, high-tension moments and of course a zombie battle, but it's also got pathos and a bittersweet, heartstring-tugging ending.
In Death and Suffrage, Dale Bailey gives us one look at politics and the dead, and in Beautiful Stuff, Susan Palwick has a different take on the same subject. Both stories are evocative and moving.
Lisa Morton's Sparks Fly Upward has a heroine in a heart-rending situation who show more nevertheless gets a measure of revenge that a lot of readers might have wanted.
Catherine Cheek's She's Taking Her Tits to the Grave is an artful combination of gore, black humor and pathos.
And it should come as no surprise that The Last Song the Zombie Sang is brilliant in language, character and development, considering that it was written by Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny. show less
The first story in the book, Dan Simmons's This Year's Class Picture set the bar high. It's got your basic McGuyver-like adaptations to a broken society, high-tension moments and of course a zombie battle, but it's also got pathos and a bittersweet, heartstring-tugging ending.
In Death and Suffrage, Dale Bailey gives us one look at politics and the dead, and in Beautiful Stuff, Susan Palwick has a different take on the same subject. Both stories are evocative and moving.
Lisa Morton's Sparks Fly Upward has a heroine in a heart-rending situation who show more nevertheless gets a measure of revenge that a lot of readers might have wanted.
Catherine Cheek's She's Taking Her Tits to the Grave is an artful combination of gore, black humor and pathos.
And it should come as no surprise that The Last Song the Zombie Sang is brilliant in language, character and development, considering that it was written by Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny. show less
Really enjoyable anthology that delivered on zombies of all zombie-walks. As with all anthologies, there were a few misses but overall this was a great anthology and I came out of this with a few favourites:
"This Year's Class Picture" - the first story of the anthology is a great set-up. A teacher continues her life's work even after the world goes to Hell.
"The Dead Kid" - A heart-breaking little story about a child zombie that stuck with me for a week.
"Prairie" - Short, believable, and gruesome.
"Home Delivery" - Stephen King's story combines my penchant for his Little Tall Island as a setting and also a female protagonist.
"Deadman's Road" - This old west story was just plain chilling. Compact cast of characters, backstory that evokes show more disgust for the zombie even before we meet him. I'm sorry that the author's "Dead In The West" isn't more widely available.
"Followed" - Original. I don't particularly enjoy stories in which the monster is implicitly a symbol for some human flaw, but the zombie taking the place of our conscience is effective. show less
"This Year's Class Picture" - the first story of the anthology is a great set-up. A teacher continues her life's work even after the world goes to Hell.
"The Dead Kid" - A heart-breaking little story about a child zombie that stuck with me for a week.
"Prairie" - Short, believable, and gruesome.
"Home Delivery" - Stephen King's story combines my penchant for his Little Tall Island as a setting and also a female protagonist.
"Deadman's Road" - This old west story was just plain chilling. Compact cast of characters, backstory that evokes show more disgust for the zombie even before we meet him. I'm sorry that the author's "Dead In The West" isn't more widely available.
"Followed" - Original. I don't particularly enjoy stories in which the monster is implicitly a symbol for some human flaw, but the zombie taking the place of our conscience is effective. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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 show more 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. show less
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The shambling animated corpses of George Romero's films have lurched into the bookstores in droves in recent months, headlined by high-profile titles like World War Z and Monster Island. In this anthology, editor Adams (Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse) does a remarkable job of collecting a sampling of variations on this theme. These stories range from the truly disgusting (Poppy Z. show more Brite's 'Calcutta: Lord of Nerves') to the nearly wistful ('Followed' by Will McIntosh) and even one with no supernatural elements at all (Joe Hill's 'Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead'). Included are pieces by big names in horror like Stephen King and Clive Barker but also contributions by less obvious suspects like Harlan Ellison, Sherman Alexie, and George R.R. Martin. The final treat is John Langan's 'How the Day Runs Down' a nasty little play best described as Our Town with zombies. Highly recommended for all horror fiction collections. show less
added by cmwilson101
Recently prolific anthologist Adams (Seeds of Change) delivers a superb reprint anthology that runs the gamut of zombie stories. There's plenty of gore, highlighted by Stephen King's Home Delivery and David Schow's classic Blossom. Less traditional but equally satisfying are Lisa Morton's Sparks Fly Upward, which analyzes abortion politics in a zombified world, and Douglas Winter's literary show more pastiche Less than Zombie. Also outstanding, Kelly Link's Some Zombie Contingency Plans and Hannah Wolf Bowen's Everything Is Better with Zombies take similar themes in wildly different directions. Neil Gaiman's impeccably crafted Bitter Grounds offers a change of pace with traditional Caribbean zombies. The sole original contribution, John Langan's How the Day Runs Down, is a darkly amusing twist on Thornton Wilder's Our Town. There's some great storytelling for zombie fans as well as newcomers. show less
added by cmwilson101
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Living Dead
- Alternate titles
- The Living Dead
- Original publication date
- 2008-09-29
- Epigraph
- "You know Macumba? Voodoo. My granddad was a priest in Trinidad. He used to tell us, 'When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.'"
-- Ken Foree as "Peter" in George A. Romero's Dawn of the D... (show all)ead - First words
- (Introduction): When I first started assembling this anthology, I thought to myself: This is not going to be the sort of book that begins with an origin of the word zombie.
Ms. Geiss watched her new student coming across the first-graders' playground from her vantage point on the balcony of the old school's belfry. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Men, women, old, young, most wearing their causes of their several demises, they encompas the audience, and do not move.
- Blurbers
- Dante, Joe; Kirkman, Robert
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Horror, Science Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 813.0873808 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English By type Genre fiction Adventure fiction Horror fiction; Ghost fiction Horror fiction Anthologies Collections
- LCC
- PS648 .Z64 .L58 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Collections of American literature Prose (General)
- BISAC
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- 996
- Popularity
- 26,203
- Reviews
- 22
- Rating
- (3.75)
- Languages
- English, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 6
