The Walking Dead Fan Club

Greetings my shambling shuffling friends!

I just finished letting my rotted fingers turn the pages of the best zombie anthology ever.

If I was told to think of one word to sum up all the greatness that is this anthology, that one word would be PERFECTION, and yet, that might not give it justice.

THE LIVING DEAD, Edited by John Joseph Adams, is bursting at it binding with 34 wonderful zombie stories from the best horror authors in the world. Stephen King, Clive Barker, Laurell K. Hamilton, Neil Gaiman, and too many more to mention, so I am gonna touch on a few of my favorites in this anthology.

-This Year's Class Picture, by Dan Simmons, is proof you can teach an old dog, or in this case rotting zombie kids, new tricks, just keep feeding them special nuggets. Very touching.

-Ghost Dance, by Sherman Alexie, great gorey goodness, a cop has his balls and cock fed to a zombie horse, an awesome read.

-Malthusian's Zombie, by Jeffrey Ford, this involves a brain washed zombie, but the intellect behind the story structure and it's outcome was pure genius, I had to think about this story for two days after reading it, before I could move on to the next.

-Beautiful Stuff, by Susan Palwick, will make you forget politics, hate, and revenge, and instead focus on the beautiful things in life, like a butterfly, or a flower, or pretty song bird. This story echoes truth.

-Stockholm Syndrome, by David Tellerman, portrays the depression and loneliness of a man barricaded by himself in his house, watching while the dead across the street find their way into another house of people, and consume them, you can feel the hoplessness of the moment in this story.

-Bobby Conroy Comes Back From The Dead, by Joe Hill, This was my favorite story from THE LIVING DEAD, and did not have any zombies, instead this was a short story about a man trying to rekindle an old romance while playing a zombie extra on the film set at the mall while George Romero was shooting DAWN OF THE DEAD, and I was absolutley jealous that these fictional characters where able to be zombie extras in a land mark film, even though this was pure fiction.

-In Beauty, Like The Night, by Norman Partridge, you have zombies who believe the are still human and living, right up to the moment they have food within striking distance, then they lose the last of there humanity to become hungry cadavers. I enjoyed this because losing your humanity is very important, and is a reoccuring theme in zombie novels usually about the living not losing their humanity, but this time it was about zombies losing their humanity, and not wanting too.

-Everything is better with Zombies, by Hannah Wolf Bowen, these kids have an amazing imagination, and remind me of my kids who tend to play zombie with thier friends, another great zombie story without zombies, and reaffirms that you never have friends or imaginations like those you had before you hit puberty.

-Sparks Fly Upwards, by Lisa Morton, Powerful subject matter dealing with surviving the zombie apocalypse and the topic of abortion. Sparks fly upward is emotional genius.

-Deadman's Road, by Joe R. Lansdale, a western zombie story, with a caustic preacher that I really liked, and I hope to see more zombie stories involving this preacher gunman.

-The Skull Faced Boy, by David Barr Kirtley, some zombies remain intelligent, while others become mindless idiots, so the smart ones begin to organize the dummies to help keep from being killed by humans, and instead return the favor, this story even has betrayal of the ones you love.

-The Age of Sorrow, by Nancy Kilpatrick, a woman, totally alone, who has no one to talk to and no physical contact, faces the grief of loneliness, and finds solace in the cold hands that caress her warm skin through the chain link fence. Makes you appreciate how much we truly need physical human contact.

-Dead Like Me, by Adam-Troy Castro, complete realism as you try to survive and fake being dead for another day of life, a must read.

These were just some of my favorites, but remember this book has 34 stories and I guarantee all zombie fans will find something they like in THE LIVING DEAD.

If you would want to know more about this wonderful anthology then you have got to visit THE LIVING DEAD's web page, where you will find excerpts of stories, interviews with the authors, free fiction and a link to buy this truly epic collection of zombie fiction.

The Living Dead:
http://www.johnjosephadams.com/the-living-dead/

John Joseph Adams did a wonderful job editing this book, and is also involved with two online magazines, Fantasy (www.fantasy-magazine.com) and Lightspeed (www.lightspeedmagazine.com).

Both of these online magazines will have a zombie story in the coming issues. In June, Fantasy is publishing "You Have Been Turned Into a Zombie by a Friend" by Jeremiah Tolbert, and in May, Lightspeed is publishing "The Harrowers" by Eric Gregory.

Go to these magazine sites to learn more about these short stories and make sure to pick up a copy of THE LIVING DEAD right away!

You can not be a true zombie fan without this collection on your bookshelf!

Thanks for reading, and until my next post, I will be shuffling along with the lost.

Jimmy Blue Eyes
jbe.zombieblog@yahoo.com