We Are the Dead

I really have not been attracted to the whole zombie thing. Like the vampire thing, the werewolf thing and all the other reboots of various horror tropes I've passed them due to a lack of time or a lack of interest or a lack of understanding (I cannot get my mind around the romantic vampire, for example...these things want to drain your blood and your life and you lose your soul...)

That being said, this was the year of the zombie for me. I think I became interested when I realized the stories were less about the zombies themselves than those who survive. Toss in a change to the whole post-apocalypse sub-genre and I can relate to them more.

The second thing that got me interested was the AMC mini-series based on the graphic novel The Walking Dead. The first 15 or so minutes of the first episode got me, from the point where the main character wakes up in a hospital to the point where the leaves the hospital and sees what is in the loading area. Fantastic writing, directing and acting.

So, I will explore the sub-genre, to a limited extent. Here are three books that I've enjoyed so far!

Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, Tony Moore and Cliff Rathburn: The Walking Dead, Compendium One (Imagecomics.com; 2010; ISBN 978-1-60706-076-5).

John Joseph Adams (editor): The Living Dead (Night Shade Books; 2008; ISBN 978-1-59780-143-0; cover by David Palumbo).

Made up of: Introduction (John Joseph Adams); Some Zombie Contingency Plans (Kelly Link); Death and Suffrage (Dale Bailey); Blossom (David J. Schow); The Third Dead Body (Nina Kiriki Hoffman); The Dead (Michael Swanwick); The Dead Kid (Darrell Schweitzer); Malthusian's Zombie (Jeffrey Ford); Beautiful Stuff (Susan Palwick); Sex, Death and Starshine (Clive Barker); Stockholm Syndrome (David Tallerman); Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead (Joe Hill); Those Who Seek Forgiveness (Laurell K. Hamilton); In Beauty, Like the Night (Norman Partridge); Prairie (Brian Evenson); Everything Is Better With Zombies (Hannah Wolf Bowen); Home Delivery (Stephen King); Sparks Fly Upward (Lisa Morton); Meathouse Man (George R. R. Martin); Deadman's Road (Joe R. Lansdale); The Skull-Faced Boy (David Barr Kirtley); The Age of Sorrow (Nancy Kirkpatrick); Bitter Grounds (Neil Gaiman); She's Taking Her Tits to the Grave (Catherine Cheek); Dead Like Me (Adam-Troy Castro); Zora and the Zombie (Andy Duncan); Calcutta, Lord of Nerves (Poppy Z. Brite); Followed (Will McIntosh); The Song the Zombie Sang (Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg); Passion Play (Nancy Holder); Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man (Scott Edelman); How the Day Runs Down (John Langan).

Counts as five (5) entries in the 2010 Year in Shorts.

Counts as five (5) entries in the 2011 Year in Shorts.

John Joseph Adams (editor): The Living Dead Two (Night Shade Books; 2010; ISBN 978-1-5978-0190-4; cover by David Palumbo).

Made up of: Introduction (John Joseph Adams); Alone, Together (Robert Kirkman); Danger World (Steven Barnes and Tananarive Due); Zombieville (Paula R. Stiles); The Anteroom (Adam-Troy Castro); When the Zombies Win (Karina Sumner-Smith); Mouja (Matt London); Category Five (Marc Paoletti); Living with the Dead (Molly Brown); Twenty-three Snapshots of San Francisco (Seth Lindberg); The Mexican Bus (Walter Greatshell); The Other Side (Jamie Lackey); Where the Heart Was (David J. Schow); Good People (David Wellington); Lost Canyon of the Dead (Brian Keene); Pirates vs. Zombies (Amelia Beamer); The Crocodiles (Steven Popkes); The Skull-Faced City (David Barr Kirtley); Obedience (Brenna Yovanoff); Steve and Fred (Max Brooks); The Rapeworm (Charles Coleman Finley); Everglades (Mira Grant); We Now Pause for Station Identification (Gary A. Braunbeck); Reluctance (Cherie Priest); Arlene Schabowski of the Undead (Mark McLaughlin and Kyra M. Schon); Zombie Gigolo (S. G. Browne); Rural Dead (Bret Hammond); The Summer Place (Bob Fingerman); The Wrong Grave (Kelly Link); The Human Race Scott Edelman); Who We Used to Be (David Moody); Therapeutic Intervention (Rory Harper); He Said, Laughing (Simon R. Green); Last Stand (Kelly Armstrong); The Thought War (Paul McAuley); Dating in Dead World (Joe McKinney); Flotsam and Jetsam (Carrie Ryan); Thin Them Out (Kim Paffenroth, R. J. Sevin, and Julia Sevin); Zombie Season (Catherine MacLeod); Tameshigiri (Steven Gould); The Days of Flaming Motorcycles (Catherynne M. Valente); Zero Tolerance (Jonathan Mayberry); And the Next, and the Next (Genevieve Valentine); The Price of a Slice (John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow); Are You Trying to Tell Me This is Heaven? (Sarah Langan).

Counts as three (3) entries in the 2010 Year in Shorts.

Counts as three (3) entries in the 2011 Year in Shorts.