Supernatural Fiction Readers discussion

Does anyone here read zombie books? I want some new ones and I'm trying to convince my school library to buy some because: "Zombies have feelings too!" and we have a stock-pile of vampire books(Twilight Saga).

I read a good zombie book years ago when a publisher - might have been Timescape - first printed "Neuromancer" by Gibson. The zombie book was there too. That was back in the 80's & I don't know what happened to it. Got cut in one of the moves. It was kind of a Frankenstein, SF take on zombies, set in Louisiana to start. That's all I remember though, besides liking it.

The take on zombies in the Anita Blake series was pretty good.

Depends on what you may have read already...popular stuff tends to lean towards the Max Brooks Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z and also the newly released Pride & Prejudice and Zombies (gotta love anything that makes fun of Jane Austen), but I'd really recommend the zombie horror novels by Brian Keene, starting with The Rising, and also the "Monster" series by David Wellington. Very recently check out Jonathan Maberry's Patient Zero...an excellent novel!

I can second WWZ and Dead See (Brian Keene). WWZ, I thought, was especially original. I liked the first of Wellington's books, but then they strayed frther and further from my preferred type of zombie.

I already read wwz. I did convince my library to buy that today

How 'bout The Forest of Hands and Teeth?

Is there a quality writing Zombie book like Vampire SF that was I Am Legend ?

I'm looking for what might become a classic and not some little decent,generic zombie story that might be popular anyway.

What kind of POV is Max Brooks zombie stories ?

I wonder, really looking for a good post apocalyptic zombie story.

I thought World War Z was pretty good, especially for a zombie book.
The POV of this one is a reporter whose doing interviews of all different types people. It takes place ater the zombie war and tells the different peoples' stories of their experiences.

Dean Koontz has a zombie-like book, can't remember the name right now, though.

Amanda wrote: "I thought World War Z was pretty good, especially for a zombie book.
The POV of this one is a reporter whose doing interviews of all different types people. It takes place ater the ..."

World War Z sounds better than ZS Guide then.

i think u'd probably like it Mohammed

I liked WWZ more so than ZSG. Of course, for good zombie reading, Brian Keene's zombie novels are great and especially Maberry's Patient Zero...fantastic novel!

Maberry i have heard of when i saw his comic works. His works sounds interesting from what i saw in wiki.

Can anyone tell me if WWZ is suitable for a teen reader (13)? he would be quite a mature reader, currently reading Day of the Triffids. Loves zombies and i have allowed him to watch the early movies, just looking for a heads up on adult content of the book.

Possibly. It has been a while but other than some language and violence, it should be okay. I'd recommend you picking it up and reading some passages...

Agreed, i would do that too, just looking for a general view:) id probably enjoy it myself too tbh, just got the biggest to read pile to climb through first...

Anyone read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?

My friend is reading that, but I think I'll wait till I read the original this summer and then I'll read it.

I noted these in another group (which is nothing but zombies...er...the theme, not the members!)

AZU-1: Lifehack: nanites (microscopic robots) turn an entire city into zombies. Cheesy writing, but plenty of zombie-killing.

Dying to Live: traditional survival horror, but very good character development

Dead Men (and Women) Walking: anthology of undead. Mostly zombies. Some of the stories are actually very funny.

Blood of the Dead I haven't read this one yet, but my cousin is currently reading and he insists it is awesom.

I enjoyed Brian Keene's zombie stories. They are dark, bleak and violent, though:

The Rising
City Of The Dead
Dead Sea

Here a few other good ones:

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez

Blood Crazy by Simon Clark

Skimming the Gumbo Nuclear by M.F. Korn

I had a hard time getting through Walter Greatshell's Xombies and found it incredibly boring, but people do like it.

I haven't read them yet but David Wellington's 'Monster' series is supposed to be very good.

great new zombie anthology, The New Dead edited by Christopher Golden.

I have a new zombie book coming outt in September. ROT & RUIN (Simon & Schuster). It'll be in hardback and audio. It features fifteen year old Benny Imura, a kid growing up fourteen years after the zombie apocalypse. It's 'technically' a young adult novel, but only in that the protagonist is a teen. I think adults will dig it, though.

I saw the cover for it already and it looks great, Jonathan!

Thanks...that's one of my favorite covers. Simon & Schuster has been doing an awesome job designing that book.

Kind of way late to the party here, but I just wanted to add my two cents worth on World War Z. Zombies are not my favorites, but I loved this book. It was unique and well-written and there were actually 'stories' (in the form of after-the-fact interviews of participants) that brought me to tears. It had a very real feel to it, and some interesting insights into human nature in all its infinite variety in response to a crisis.

Good zombies novels I've read so far:

Pain (Harry Shannon) - Very fast read, plenty of zombie action
Hollowland (Amanda Hocking) - Just started, I like it so far.
Rise & Walk (Gregory Solis) - Very good, liked the four main characters.
AfterLife (Jaron Lee Knuth) - Not a lot of action till mid way through, but the characters are solid.

Working on my own right now. It takes place twenty years in the future after the zombies rise, and features a main character that, for reasons unknown, is "immune" to them, as in they don't want to eat him.

Just started Feed. Liking it so far. Excellent world-building. The title is a double entendre--Zombies and media feeds. Sophisticated take on the aftermath which is more of an ongoing big deal than a complete apocalypse, but with plenty of shamble-action.

Mike Carey's Felix Castor series mentions zombies, but in a normal everyday kind of way. Same goes for Charlie Hustion's Joe Pitt books; though the zombies there are more of the traditional-eat-your-brains zombie.
I got the WWZ on audio, even though I've only listened to the first disc, its pretty good. There are different narrators for almost all of the different characters, which gives it a sense of reality.

I really like the Felix Castor series, but usually I don't like zombie books all that much. I just can't get into them. I like zombies, and I really like zombie movies, but I generally don't think that zombies make for very interesting literary characters.

Not a zombie book, but Cracked.com's look into 5 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Apocalypse Could Actually Happen. The article is written by David Wong, author of John Dies at the End

http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_...

I just finished a pretty decent zombie book called "The Ravening" by Stewart Sternberg. I've got a couple more on my shelves but haven't started to read them yet

Actually, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was quite good. The zombies were more atmospheric than characteristic though.

I guess I kind of have a bias against Pride and Predudice and Zombies up front. Admittedly I've never looked at the book, but it just seems so gimmicky to me.

Charles wrote: "I guess I kind of have a bias against Pride and Predudice and Zombies up front. Admittedly I've never looked at the book, but it just seems so gimmicky to me."

I thought that too when I first heard of it. But it surprised me. I'm not saying it's Shakespeare or anything but I really enjoyed it. It didn't feel cheesy or gimmicky when I was reading it, and I believe much of the writing is still Jane Austen's.

Well maybe I'll give it a look/see

"Allison Hewitt is trapped: A Zombie Novel" by Madeleine Roux sounds good but I haven't read it yet.

Pseudopod - this week's episode:

Yet another dispatch from the cultural metaphor that is the zombie apocalypse, this time with some notes from the opposition...

It's "Association" by Eddie Borey

Please listen if you feel so inclined. Please donate if you liked it.

Pseudopod - this week's episode:

A trenchant dispatch from the ever-ongoing zombie apocalypse

It's "Man Eat Man" by Mike Irwin

Please listen if you feel so inclined. Please donate if you liked it.

Hungry For You Was a pretty nifty collection of Zombie romance short stories. Her take on zombies was unique. (Well, from my POV anyway, they don't just feed on human flesh, but also on sexual desire.) And the stories are filled with beautiful imagery. They aren't, for the most part, traditional survive the zombie apocalypse tales, but I did enjoy reading them.

I recommend The Becoming by Jessica Meigs as a very effective zombie apocalypse novel with an interesting twist on the deadheads therein.

I haven't read any zombie-themed books myself, but from reading reviews and other discussions of them, it's interesting (to me, at least! :-) ) that virtually all modern zombie literature treats them as an apocalyptic horde of brain-eating, decaying animate corpses transmitting their condition by biting; and if the origin of the plague is explained it often has a science-fictional premise. Some comments above speak of this view as "traditional," but it seems to derive entirely from the 1968 movie Night of the Living Dead; that was the first incarnation anywhere of this exact view of zombies, though the film itself never uses that word.

The concept of zombies originally comes from Haiti and other parts of the African diaspora, where some native lore views the magical re-animation of corpses into mindless servants of whoever is wielding the magic as a part of the practice of voodoo. (Alternatively, it can also involve reducing the living to a similar state of mindless servitude.) But this view (which probably has better claim to be called "traditional") doesn't have the apocalyptic features, or the idea of brain-eating or contagion by biting --at least, not as far as I've been able to document. Before 1968, there was a certain amount of literary use of this zombie lore in pulp supernatural fiction, but I haven't read any of it (Robert G. Anderson's 1966 story "The Hills Beyond Furcy" draws on Haitian magic, but it doesn't have an actual zombie theme, strictly defined).

I have to agree with Miranda's comment in message 34. To me, a mindless, shuffling automaton who has no personality and no volition beyond appetite isn't very interesting as a literary character per se, either. :-)

They're fun props in movies, though.
;-)

I haven't seen any of those movies, but I imagine they could be! :-) Like traditional (pre-Anne Rice) vampires, they're the kind of menace that you build a story around, and the character development in the fiction or drama centers around the characters who are fighting against them.

You've never seen "Night of the Living Dead"?!!! Werner, that's a must-see classic! Seriously. You can skip the rest, although "Shaun of the Dead" is funny, but Romero pretty much set the common conception, as you noted. Forty years later, the 'Resident Evil' zombies are the same.

Werner wrote: "I haven't read any zombie-themed books myself, but from reading reviews and other discussions of them, it's interesting (to me, at least! :-) ) that virtually all modern zombie literature treats th..."

Well, the zombie genre is changing. I've recently seen books where the zombies were created as a terrorist threat. The terrorists were able to amp up the zombie plague, leaving the zombie's memories intact and their physical strengths and fighting abilities the same as they were before the infection.
I've also recently read a book where a injection was perfected by a prison doctor to make the recipient look dead and appear dead, but still remain fully himself in his head, but unable to stop himself from doing the usual zombie things. This was done out of revenge. The inmate being put to death had killed the doctor's family and the doc wanted him to suffer an endless life, conscious, in his coffin.
There are also novels written from the zombie's point of view now, but I haven't read any of them yet.
Not to mention movies like 28 Days where the zombies are incredibly fast.

Jim, I'll think about that recommendation; but from what I've read about it, I'm not sure I'd want to watch it just for its undeniable historical importance (I tend to personally prefer movies that are more upbeat --even in the supernatural genre!). I'm pretty sure I could rent it at Food City if I decide to watch it, though. (Shaun of the Dead actually might be more up my alley. :-) ).

Charlene, thanks for the update on new developments with the zombie theme! It's good to hear that there are beginning to be variations that depart from the same-old same-old.

I think you'd like it, Werner. It's got some great messages in it.

Well, Jim, I'll take that recommendation seriously, and look into the availability of it sometime! I'll have to watch it by myself, though; it's one that Barb would never watch with me. For a tough chick who's not a bit afraid to hunt in bear-infested woods and has a diploma in self-defense class from a karate school, she can be a little bit of a wuss regarding any movie that's perceived as "scary." :-) (Of course, I'm a bit of a wuss myself where some movies are concerned!)