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I, Zombie
When the girl from the asylum drowned in the lake that night, she thought it was the end of her life, but she was wrong.
With robots at fifty thousand dollars a unit, it was far more economical to use corpse labor—all it took was a two-thousand dollar animating pack in the brain, and a zombie worker, under the direction of a helmeted controller, could do just about everything but think.
Or so everyone said. But in the zombie dorms at night, with only the walking dead for roommates, things were not as they should have been. The girl from the asylum seemed to have more mental ability, not less, and someone was trying to girl her. Kill a dead girl?
Maybe there was more to heaven than an afterlife of manual labor in the company of a bunch of stiffs!
With robots at fifty thousand dollars a unit, it was far more economical to use corpse labor—all it took was a two-thousand dollar animating pack in the brain, and a zombie worker, under the direction of a helmeted controller, could do just about everything but think.
Or so everyone said. But in the zombie dorms at night, with only the walking dead for roommates, things were not as they should have been. The girl from the asylum seemed to have more mental ability, not less, and someone was trying to girl her. Kill a dead girl?
Maybe there was more to heaven than an afterlife of manual labor in the company of a bunch of stiffs!
158 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published September 2, 1982
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122 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 5, 2010
I discovered this title thanks to a list of available zombie fiction on Amazon and I am pleased I got a used copy through the website.
I, Zombie came well before the more recent spate of Zombie titles out there and I believe it was written just a few years after Dawn of the Dead hit the scene in 1979. Although many might consider anything to do with Zombies these days originating back to Romero, this work certainly is not necessarily a tale of horror or even of the zombies we have all come to know and love.
Our nameless character is a hulking woman who has discovered that she is still alive after "dying" at the bottom of a lake. She is stronger and more intelligent than she was before, thanks to a chip that has been implanted in her head. Unfortunately, the whole reason it was implanted there was because no one paid close enough attention and realized she was still alive.
Thus our character joins a multitude of other "stiffs" who are now the labor force on a backworld colony of Earth's sometime in the future. They are the grunts that do all the heavy lifting. Cheaper than robots and controlled electronically through helmets worn by drivers, they can no longer feel or think. They still breath, eat, and can move about but the chips in their brain is the only reason they remain animated. Except with this single case.
Our heroine goes with the flow, not revealing her identity and actually discovering that she has the ability to also control the other zombies that are around her somewhat. Since she chooses to hide the fact that she is actually alive and is now much more intelligent (whereas before her accident she was at least borderline retarded) she resurrects the vestiges of her dead roommates personalities and interacts with them, although it is quite clear they are truly dead with no ability to think or act independently.
The story is fast paced and interesting with plenty of interesting twists and turns as our main character hides her identity but raises the suspicions of those living humans around her. She, like the other dead workers, is treated like any other machine. As the story unfolds she discovers that some of the living and thinking humans are less humane than her own dead counterparts.
This story is quite entertaining and an easy read. I found myself quite attached to our stoic main character and her strong sense of nobility in the face of tremendous prejudice and outright hatred as she unravels the mysterious murder and keeps her facade intact through the story.
The book demonstrates that even when someone is beaten down and thought of as the less than the lowest form of life they can still demonstrate great strength and perserverance.
I, Zombie came well before the more recent spate of Zombie titles out there and I believe it was written just a few years after Dawn of the Dead hit the scene in 1979. Although many might consider anything to do with Zombies these days originating back to Romero, this work certainly is not necessarily a tale of horror or even of the zombies we have all come to know and love.
Our nameless character is a hulking woman who has discovered that she is still alive after "dying" at the bottom of a lake. She is stronger and more intelligent than she was before, thanks to a chip that has been implanted in her head. Unfortunately, the whole reason it was implanted there was because no one paid close enough attention and realized she was still alive.
Thus our character joins a multitude of other "stiffs" who are now the labor force on a backworld colony of Earth's sometime in the future. They are the grunts that do all the heavy lifting. Cheaper than robots and controlled electronically through helmets worn by drivers, they can no longer feel or think. They still breath, eat, and can move about but the chips in their brain is the only reason they remain animated. Except with this single case.
Our heroine goes with the flow, not revealing her identity and actually discovering that she has the ability to also control the other zombies that are around her somewhat. Since she chooses to hide the fact that she is actually alive and is now much more intelligent (whereas before her accident she was at least borderline retarded) she resurrects the vestiges of her dead roommates personalities and interacts with them, although it is quite clear they are truly dead with no ability to think or act independently.
The story is fast paced and interesting with plenty of interesting twists and turns as our main character hides her identity but raises the suspicions of those living humans around her. She, like the other dead workers, is treated like any other machine. As the story unfolds she discovers that some of the living and thinking humans are less humane than her own dead counterparts.
This story is quite entertaining and an easy read. I found myself quite attached to our stoic main character and her strong sense of nobility in the face of tremendous prejudice and outright hatred as she unravels the mysterious murder and keeps her facade intact through the story.
The book demonstrates that even when someone is beaten down and thought of as the less than the lowest form of life they can still demonstrate great strength and perserverance.
September 6, 2008
This is one of my favorite books in the world. Written by the underappreciated Doris Piserchia, it had to be published under a pen name because this was one of four books she wrote and published in 1981, and even DAW couldn't deal with that.
The unnamed narrator of the story is a zombie, which is to say a corpse who has been reactivated with the implantation of a "zombie pack" and sent to a earth colony to work in an oil extraction field. Only problem is, she wasn't dead when the pack was put in. Since she's alive, she can convince the other zombies around her to do stuff they normally wouldn't. But. This is a Doris Piserchia novel. The characters' actions are basically motivation-free. They just do stuff, because they feel like it. Or they're bored. Or one button is prettier than another, so they push that one instead. It's rather remarkable.
What makes the book truly great, though, is how closely it walks the edge of being "good." In the hands of a lesser writer than Piserchia, there would have been some serious feminist/anti-colonialist morals in the book. But they're not there at all. Instead, it's just fun. Stuff breaks, the world floods all Noah-style, there's a full on zombie army vs. zombie army war, and no moral. It's just a lovely little romp through the ridiculous. Do check it out - it's fantastic.
The unnamed narrator of the story is a zombie, which is to say a corpse who has been reactivated with the implantation of a "zombie pack" and sent to a earth colony to work in an oil extraction field. Only problem is, she wasn't dead when the pack was put in. Since she's alive, she can convince the other zombies around her to do stuff they normally wouldn't. But. This is a Doris Piserchia novel. The characters' actions are basically motivation-free. They just do stuff, because they feel like it. Or they're bored. Or one button is prettier than another, so they push that one instead. It's rather remarkable.
What makes the book truly great, though, is how closely it walks the edge of being "good." In the hands of a lesser writer than Piserchia, there would have been some serious feminist/anti-colonialist morals in the book. But they're not there at all. Instead, it's just fun. Stuff breaks, the world floods all Noah-style, there's a full on zombie army vs. zombie army war, and no moral. It's just a lovely little romp through the ridiculous. Do check it out - it's fantastic.
December 20, 2017
One of my favorite books of all time. Don't know how many times I have read it. Picked it up back when it was first released in 1982 at an airport to keep from getting bored on a plane. (now available on kindle - yeah! ... because my original paperback is Beat Up.)
Interesting psychological study. Pretty cool worldbuilding with the Frogs and the Zombies (deceased humans with brain packs to work them). Actually excellent worldbuilding, the layers to the Zombies and the world trying to translate that over to the mentally disturbed. Layers upon layers with the brain pack technology and the Frog culture.
Then the action adventure with fights in front of a furnace and problem-solving mysteries with someone murdering the dead and the ice world melting, keeps everything moving at a fast pace.
This book is one of my happy places.
NOTE: Curt Selby is the pen name of Doris Piserchia, so "Curt Shelby" appears on the cover but you will now find the book under Doris Pierchia's real name for the kindle.
Interesting psychological study. Pretty cool worldbuilding with the Frogs and the Zombies (deceased humans with brain packs to work them). Actually excellent worldbuilding, the layers to the Zombies and the world trying to translate that over to the mentally disturbed. Layers upon layers with the brain pack technology and the Frog culture.
Then the action adventure with fights in front of a furnace and problem-solving mysteries with someone murdering the dead and the ice world melting, keeps everything moving at a fast pace.
This book is one of my happy places.
NOTE: Curt Selby is the pen name of Doris Piserchia, so "Curt Shelby" appears on the cover but you will now find the book under Doris Pierchia's real name for the kindle.
March 20, 2021
Major surprise, the kind of find that makes my tedious book-digging worthwhile. This is an obscure science fiction novel written by a forgotten female writer under an even more-forgotten male pen name about the use of human corpses to perform manual labor in Earth's colonized planets. The protagonist is an illiterate, dull-witted, ugly giantess (over 7 feet tall) whose history on Earth was one of cruel mental and physical abuse in the various mental institutions she inhabited before drowning in a lake at the age of 24. This all could be wacky and tasteless, but instead it is original, chilling, and moving, while somehow also being hilarious, ghoulish, even believable. This is one of the few novels containing a happy ending that I will allow in my house. ENJOYABLE.
April 28, 2020
This is one of the most creative stories ever. So basically this huge unattractive woman wakes up after drowning as a reanimated corpse on a far away planet. It really cant get anymore science fictiony. In a world where machines are too expensive They reanimate an undead workforce.
January 11, 2025
Pleasantly surprised!
This is a strange little novel, and it’s pretty much unlike anything I’ve read in the genre. I get a real kick out of the fact that Mrs. Piserchia was tackling this kind of story somewhere in a little corner of West Virginia.
Piserchia’s imagination is vivid (loved the frog aliens) with good characterization. She is a bit clunky in how she moves the plot through the environment of her story and it would be fairly easy to pick apart in a literary sense—but we read SF because we’re tasteless neanderthals, no?
This novel is a great example of why we 21st-century lurkers of science fiction occasionally creep into the genre's cellars, dust off the cobwebs, and discover a lost gem like this.
This is a strange little novel, and it’s pretty much unlike anything I’ve read in the genre. I get a real kick out of the fact that Mrs. Piserchia was tackling this kind of story somewhere in a little corner of West Virginia.
Piserchia’s imagination is vivid (loved the frog aliens) with good characterization. She is a bit clunky in how she moves the plot through the environment of her story and it would be fairly easy to pick apart in a literary sense—but we read SF because we’re tasteless neanderthals, no?
This novel is a great example of why we 21st-century lurkers of science fiction occasionally creep into the genre's cellars, dust off the cobwebs, and discover a lost gem like this.
July 7, 2021
Read this when I was in high school and it was a remarkable find. Strong, resourceful heroine, good story, well-planned and satisfying ending. Now that I know the author was Doris Piserchia under a pen name, I'm interested in reading more of her work.
February 2, 2025
I need to write a review of this because there are other reviews on the internet that claim this book isn't political or doesn't have anything to say about gender or society, and lol, what? It reminds me of Martha Wells laughing at people who don't see the serious political themes of the Murderbot Diaries, saying, "But humans have always been really good at ignoring things we don't want to pay attention to."
Curt Selby is the pseudonym of Doris Piserchia, a writer who seems to not neatly fit into any easy category of SFFH writer, in large part because her writing career was short and there's not a lot of biographical info about her. What little we do know of her is hard to parse because we don't have interviews or other sources that can shed light into who Piserchia was and why she wrote the stories she wrote. But that doesn't mean her writing was magically apolitical. (No writing ever is. Deal with it.)
What struck me right from the start, in contrast to the novel's humorous tone, was a vibe that recalled to my mind James Jones' The Thin Red Line, best illustrated by the scene from that novel with a soldier singing "I am an automaton" to the tune of "God Bless America." Jones, a veteran of the WWII Pacific theater, describes in that novel the mind-numbing, individuality-denying routine of military life on a large scale as it was during WWII, where conformity and compliance are the order of the day. Much of this novel establishes a similar theme, with its military-like community, the repetitive refrain "Do this, do that," the ways the protagonist talks about to the degrees she is and isn't actually conforming, and the ways she sees all the other characters around her in the context of the novel's culture of conformity. It should be no surprise that Piserchia was a veteran herself, although she only spent 4 years in service. Why she left--whether she did not wish to make the military her career or she couldn't continue for some reason or another--is a big unknown to us, but if this novel is anything, it suggests she really thought long and hard about the kind of intense culture of conformity she experienced in the military and likely elsewhere. There's a reason why I mentioned Wells and Murderbot above: in some ways, I could liken this as a sort of proto-Murderbot novel in the ways is explores compulsory conformity and the systematic denial of personhood and autonomy.
Moreover, this military-like culture of conformity intersects with Piserchia's presentation of gender in the novel. Gender for the protagonist is brought up in ways that closely align it with her state of not actually being a zombie like the rest of the "carcasses," that is, something that makes her a person. There are a couple of places in the novel where the protagonist points out the ways her femininity is seen as contingent on how desirable she may be to men, or is just altogether ignored, and how her gender is treated dismissively is tied to how others cannot see she's alive. While I won't call this a feminist book on that alone, gender is certainly a big part of the story.
All in all, it's a rather intriguing novel for the time it was written, even if it presents us with more questions than answers as to what ideas motivated Pirerchia to write it. That doesn't mean this novel is void of anything political. Far from it. That is, if you aren't trying to ignore it.
Curt Selby is the pseudonym of Doris Piserchia, a writer who seems to not neatly fit into any easy category of SFFH writer, in large part because her writing career was short and there's not a lot of biographical info about her. What little we do know of her is hard to parse because we don't have interviews or other sources that can shed light into who Piserchia was and why she wrote the stories she wrote. But that doesn't mean her writing was magically apolitical. (No writing ever is. Deal with it.)
What struck me right from the start, in contrast to the novel's humorous tone, was a vibe that recalled to my mind James Jones' The Thin Red Line, best illustrated by the scene from that novel with a soldier singing "I am an automaton" to the tune of "God Bless America." Jones, a veteran of the WWII Pacific theater, describes in that novel the mind-numbing, individuality-denying routine of military life on a large scale as it was during WWII, where conformity and compliance are the order of the day. Much of this novel establishes a similar theme, with its military-like community, the repetitive refrain "Do this, do that," the ways the protagonist talks about to the degrees she is and isn't actually conforming, and the ways she sees all the other characters around her in the context of the novel's culture of conformity. It should be no surprise that Piserchia was a veteran herself, although she only spent 4 years in service. Why she left--whether she did not wish to make the military her career or she couldn't continue for some reason or another--is a big unknown to us, but if this novel is anything, it suggests she really thought long and hard about the kind of intense culture of conformity she experienced in the military and likely elsewhere. There's a reason why I mentioned Wells and Murderbot above: in some ways, I could liken this as a sort of proto-Murderbot novel in the ways is explores compulsory conformity and the systematic denial of personhood and autonomy.
Moreover, this military-like culture of conformity intersects with Piserchia's presentation of gender in the novel. Gender for the protagonist is brought up in ways that closely align it with her state of not actually being a zombie like the rest of the "carcasses," that is, something that makes her a person. There are a couple of places in the novel where the protagonist points out the ways her femininity is seen as contingent on how desirable she may be to men, or is just altogether ignored, and how her gender is treated dismissively is tied to how others cannot see she's alive. While I won't call this a feminist book on that alone, gender is certainly a big part of the story.
All in all, it's a rather intriguing novel for the time it was written, even if it presents us with more questions than answers as to what ideas motivated Pirerchia to write it. That doesn't mean this novel is void of anything political. Far from it. That is, if you aren't trying to ignore it.
April 16, 2025
Got this after enjoying a short story by Piserchia in the excellent collection "The Future is Female Vol 2." The themes of I, Zombie are timeless: exploitation of workers, colonialism, prejudice. The execution was a bit clunky and repetitive, but I soldiered through and was rewarded with a pretty good twist ending. I actually think this would make a pretty good movie.
wish-list
April 13, 2024[Doris Piserchia, writing as...]
July 19, 2024
This is, of course, Doris Piserchia, and demonstrates all the accumulated virtues of that undersung Mountaineer. Great.
January 6, 2026
Inventive, enough to give 4 stars. Nothing to do with the tv show of the same name!
December 20, 2017
One of my favorite books of all time. Don't know how many times I have read it. Picked it up back when it was first released in 1982 at an airport to keep from getting bored on a plane. (now available on kindle - yeah! ... because my original paperback is Beat Up.)
Interesting psychological study. Pretty cool worldbuilding with the Frogs and the Zombies (deceased humans with brain packs to work them). Actually excellent worldbuilding, the layers to the Zombies and the world trying to translate that over to the mentally disturbed. Layers upon layers with the brain pack technology and the Frog culture.
Then the action adventure with fights in front of a furnace and problem-solving mysteries with someone murdering the dead and the ice world melting, keeps everything moving at a fast pace.
This book is one of my happy places.
NOTE: Curt Selby is the pen name of Doris Piserchia, so "Curt Shelby" appears on the cover but you will now find the book under Doris Pierchia's real name for the kindle.
Interesting psychological study. Pretty cool worldbuilding with the Frogs and the Zombies (deceased humans with brain packs to work them). Actually excellent worldbuilding, the layers to the Zombies and the world trying to translate that over to the mentally disturbed. Layers upon layers with the brain pack technology and the Frog culture.
Then the action adventure with fights in front of a furnace and problem-solving mysteries with someone murdering the dead and the ice world melting, keeps everything moving at a fast pace.
This book is one of my happy places.
NOTE: Curt Selby is the pen name of Doris Piserchia, so "Curt Shelby" appears on the cover but you will now find the book under Doris Pierchia's real name for the kindle.
March 29, 2008
It's like nothing I've ever read before. Like a story being told ass backwards.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews