Robamapocalypse Now!
In Kevin Strange's bizarro novella "Robamapocalypse," we finally learn the answer to the age old question of: Can professional wrestling moves save the world from tyranny and the zombie apocalypse?
As any regular contributor to short story anthologies will tell you, sometimes a writer just gets swept up in a story and the damn thing takes on a life of its own - and before you know it, the story has surpassed the publisher's allowable maximum word count and, in some cases, expanded beyond the main scope of the anthology.
I believe that is what happened to Kevin Strange as he was creating "Robamapocalypse," at least that's what he implies in his Author's Note at the beginning of the book. When Kevin and his business partner D.F. Noble, who operate StrangeHouse Books, discussed the concept of the anthology that would later become "Zombie! Zombie! Brain Bang!", Kevin will admit that he wasn't overly thrilled with the idea. "I'm not particularly a fan of the zombie fiction genre," he writes in the Author's Note. "In fact, I loathe it."
Kevin believes the zombie genre is "played out, trite, boring, and in most cases, downright bad." So, I ask you, what better person can you think of to write a science-fiction/horror/bizarro zombie story than someone who loathes the cliché-ridden formulaic genre? Kevin's giant zombie robot story concept soon towered over the shorter stories of the anthology and warranted itself as a stand-alone publication (although a sneak preview of "Robamapocalypse" was featured in the back of "Zombie! Zombie! Brain Bang!").
Kevin's story is about a future society, contained within an impenetrable dome, and ruled by an evil cyborg. The dictator controls the people of Steel City by mercilessly killing anyone who questions his authority and by supplying the citizenry with morphology-controlling drugs. The tale focuses on an annual event, reminiscent of the gladiator battles of Ancient Rome, called the Zombie Fighting Championships. The gamer-inspired event typically features a select number of zombie-robot creators who simultaneously battle a zombie hoard, and one another, in order to win a lifetime supply of the expensive Zombo drug. But the final battle, as described in the book, is infiltrated by current anarchists and time-traveling insurgents from the future, who are out to kill the fearless leader.
What Kevin does so brilliantly in the book, is that the entire story is told almost exclusively through the complex battle sequence, which encompasses the majority of the twisted tale. Multiple multi-tasking minions, simultaneously performing multiple actions, are intricately interwoven through the use of short segmented scenes, like movie clips, which keep the plot unfurling at a break-neck (literally) and exciting pace.
Kevin claims that "Robamapocalypse" is intended to be apolitical, so we'll take his word for it that the megalomaniacal actions of the curiously-named tyrannical leader is not based on the policies of any current leader, that the mandatory governmental Zombo drug program has nothing to do with current socialized medicine programs, and that the government's omnipotent control of all high-powered weaponry has nothing to do with current controversies surrounding constitutional gun rights.
Basically, literature-loving fans of zombies, robots, science-fiction, mixed martial arts or martial law, will all find Kevin Strange's satirical masterpiece "Robamapocalypse" a refreshing change from the mainstream fiction that permeates their bookshelves.
In conclusion, if you're curious about where this country could be going if there were no presidential term limits, then read "Robamapocalypse" now!