The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology

I really liked John Joseph Adams' Living Dead anthologies, which I would describe, by and large, as being on the classier end of the zombie fiction spectrum. I was a little trepidatious about starting this one, though; somehow, I was expecting it to be rather more on the cheesy side. But I was very pleasantly surprised. This anthology is at least as good as either of Adams', and I'm giving it an extra point (or an extra half-star) for being more consistently good. I liked some of these stories better than others, of course, but there's not a real dud in the bunch. Even the ones that weren't quite to my taste, or that had an identifiable flaw or two were really interesting, and left me feeling genuine appreciation for what the author was show more doing.

I suppose there's arguably one exception to that: Joe R. Lansdale's "Shooting Pool." Which was actually a perfectly decent story, but which contained, as far as I can tell, no zombie-related content whatsoever, as if it had accidentally wandered in from an entirely different anthology. I suspect the author's intent on that one was to write a sort of anti-zombie story, as it features someone who dies and stays very dead. But if that's the idea, well, it's trying to be entirely too clever for its own good.

The standout stories, though, are really good. Joe Hill's "Twittering from the Circus of the Dead" may be the best fictional use of Twitter as a storytelling medium the world will ever see, and David Liss' "What Maisie Knew" is probably the most unrelentingly, memorably horrific thing I've read in ages.

On thing I find interesting about this anthology is that it simultaneously takes a very narrow and a very broad view of the zombie concept. On the narrow side -- that one bafflingly out-of-place entry aside -- these are all very much stories about animate corpses. No 28 Days Later-style rage zombies. Nothing that kinda-sorta metaphorically resembles a zombie if you squint. It's all walking corpses, all the time. (Well, Aimee Bender's bizarre little piece "Among Us" may be a partial exception, as its whole point seems to be that practically everything metaphorically resembles a zombie if you squint. But even that does have a walking corpse in it.)

The scope is also broad, though, in the sense that it includes a lot of different ideas about zombies and does a lot of very different things with them. We've got everything here from mindless monsters to dead bodies with perfectly functional human minds still inside them, including a whole lot of disturbing gray areas in between. We've got plague zombies, science zombies, voodoo zombies, and zombies whose origins nobody knows. There are lots of different settings, lots of surprisingly original details, and lots of different tones and themes. Although there are a couple of themes that do keep cropping up again and again. One is the venerable notion that living humans have the potential to be far worse than any flesh-eating monsters. Another is the seldom-addressed question of how we can feel so keen about the idea of killing zombies when we are so disgusted by the idea of desecrating a corpse.

And, you know, it's interesting. A common (and entirely understandable) opinion about zombies in pop culture right now is that it's just time for them to be over. They're overused to the point of cliche, to the point of meaninglessness. They're not scary anymore, and there's nothing much left to say with them. So why do stories like the ones here not seem at all tired or meaningless or unoriginal to me? It occurs to me that maybe it's only once a subgenre reaches this point of pop cultural oversaturation that writers become completely free to play around with its tropes, to subvert and re-examine them secure in the knowledge that the audience will be able to follow wherever they may go. (Stories that use fairy tale elements are, I think, another good example of this.) And maybe it's not surprising that once you reach that point, the zombie subgenre in particular lends itself well to that kind of attention, if you stop for a moment to think about exactly what a zombie is. Because we're talking about a dead human being, brought back to life with some fundamental component of life or humanity missing. And that, surely, is an idea that has the potential to tap into all kinds of questions that are both philosophically deep and viscerally affecting, questions about life and death, about the human mind and (if it exists) the soul.

Or maybe I'm overthinking things. Maybe, y'know, I just like zombies. And, hey, if you like zombies, too, this may be a book for you. If you're looking for B-movie gore-fests or lots of survival horror, you'll probably be disappointed, but if you want some well-written, thoughtful, thought-provoking stories that continue to do interesting things with an idea that still won't die, no matter how many people say it should, you may find it's exactly what you're looking for. show less

One of the stories ("What Maisie Knew" by John Connolly) especially blew me away. It would make a great movie (if done tastefully since there are some parts in it that could go horribly wrong on film if not handled right by the director!)

"What Maisie Knew" is also the name of a Henry James novel so I was even more intrigued by this story (though the two aren't related at all I would love to know if the author is a James fan.) The thing those new to this genre may be surprised to discover about zombie short fiction is just how good it often is, how well-written and full of emotion (or more times than not a despair that lifts off the page and into your heart and mind.)

Connolly's tale reminds me a little of a modern day truly twisted O. show more Henry piece, only I seriously doubt O. Henry could ever have conceived of something so dark. Without giving too much away, I will say that "What Maisie Knew" gives new meaning to He Had It Coming and will make you look at ethics and "reanimates" (okay, zombies) together in a way you wouldn't have thought possible. show less

Got only through the first two stories, so there may be treasures later on! The first was a retelling of Lazarus, from his point of view. Come to find out he didn't WANT Jesus to turn him into a zombie! The other was about a society where the dead are reanimated and turned into robots that do mind-numbing work, or are used for domestic help--or, as it happens, sex slaves! The scene in the strip joint where the reanimates were dancing, and serving the patrons "needs", was just a little too much for me! It was written in an appealing manner--the protagonist kept denying responsibility for his actions, in the author's very tongue-in-cheek style. So it made me laugh a few times--but still!

If I had to choose a favorite, however, it would be Johnathan Maberry's "Family Business," dealing with half brothers Benny and Tom Imura, who both witnessed their parents' death - well their mother's anyway - on First Night - the marking point of the zombie outbreak. Benny, continuing to blame older brother Tom for their parents' death, refuses to join the "family business" of going out into the Rot and Ruin - the wasteland outside the gates of their town - to hunt down zombies for pay. In this twisted version of the brutal near future, everyone living within the town limits must hold a job, otherwise they only get half of their rations. Unlike other zombie hunters, Tom Imura doesn't kill for the sport or because he's a twisted son of show more a bitch. When Benny is forced to suck up his pride and works with Tom, he learns the true nature of this brother's job, and the hero he never knew. In order to seal the deal that Benny will take the job and become a man like his older brother, the two of them venture into a gated community that is all too familiar. show less

This was a pretty good collection of stories, but of course, with any anthology there were some that were stronger than others. My favorites were "Family Business" by Jonathan Maberry, "Life Sentence" by Kelley Armstrong, "The Storm Door" by Tad Williams, and "Second Wind" by Mike Carey. "Closure, Limited" by Max Brooks was also good and made me want to reread World War Z. A few of these stories were really messed up. Like, I'm side-eyeing some of these writers. David Liss, I'm looking at you. That was a messed up story. I also love a good Joe Hill story, and his didn't disappoint.

This was very much a hit or miss collection. The stories at the start were a little lackluster and then there was one that didn't have zombies at all...really nothing to do with them - a dead person that was just a corpse...

Fortunately, there were a few stories that saved the collection. Jonathan Maberry's story "Family Business" is a 4 1/2 star story on its own and was the best of the lot. Thankfully, it was one of the longest stories, clocking in at 55 pages.

A couple of the later stories were almost good, but too gimmicky and not timeless - Joe Hill's story told in twitter feeds comes to mind.

In the big three of popular supernatural creatures at the moment, of vampires, werewolves and zombies, zombies are the weirdest. Just what is so fascinating about the walking (and rotting) dead coming to eat the brains of us living humans? For me it is mostly the apocalyptic world they cause for the living humans, and my curiosity about how humans will survive.
In this collection many writers give their take on a zombie tale, and there are some pretty strong ones. There is a story by John Connolly about Lazarus, resurrected by Jesus, but now in a living-dead state that isn't that happy. There is a story (by Tim Lebbon) about the last three survivors in a quarantined city. In 'Life Sentence' by Kelley Armstrong a rich guy is trying to show more create a zombie virus so he can live forever. And the best story was by Joe Hill, which was nothing more than the twitter-feed of a girl on a boring road-trip, with a stopover that the world should know about.
All in all a pretty decent zombie collection (although not all tales contain zombies). Four out of five stars. show less