Review 101: World War Z

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

(Two reminders: The new blog is up at thelablib.org, which is where everything will be happening soon, and you should go take the listener survey. You'll have good luck for seven years, I swear!)

So where were you when the zombies came? I remember where I was. I remember vividly.

It was the third lesson of the day - still one more to go before lunch - and one of my regular students was due for her weekly lesson. She came in each week like clockwork, and while her English never got a whole lot better, she seemed to enjoy herself. Actually improving her English was secondary to having a nice chat, I think, and we could always count on her to liven things up.

Not this day, though. For one thing, except for me, none of the teachers showed up. Normally that would be a problem, but a lot of students weren't in either. It was just a few of us and one staff member. We had heard of some new sickness going around, but we work for a company that doesn't accept sickness as an excuse for missing work. After all, I'd seen students come in with a cold that would have kept me at home, and Mrs. Kuroda was just that kind of person. Come hell or high water, I knew she'd be there. And she was.

No sooner did she get in the door than she collapsed. Her skin was pale and waxy and she had a bandage on her hand. It had little yellow flowers on it, I'll always remember that. Like she'd made it out of a dress or curtains or something. I don't know why that sticks in my memory, but it does.

The staff, Naoko, called 119 for an ambulance, and one of the other students, Shyunsuke, who was studying medicine at Kyodai, tried to see what was wrong with her. He laid her on her back, felt for a pulse, and got all panicky. "Shinda," he said over and over. She was dead.

Now I don't know if you've ever had anyone die in your workplace, but it's weird. We didn't know what the protocol for this kind of thing was. There were only six of us in the building, and none of us were really experts in dealing with sudden and unexpected death. Aki, a high school girl, started crying. Naoko kept redialing 119, but no one was answering. I was about to suggest moving her into another room when suddenly the most horrible sound came from the body on the floor.

It was somewhere between a moan and a gurgle, like someone drowning in syrup. We all looked at Mrs. Kuroda.

She was moving.

Slowly, jerkily, she was moving, getting her feet back under her and moaning the whole time. Naoko started to go to her, to see if she was okay, and I remember yelling, "Don't!" At the time I didn't really know why I yelled that. I know now. My years on the internet had pretty much prepared me for it, but I wasn't nearly ready for the way the Mrs. Kuroda grabbed Naoko and took a huge bite out of her throat. Blood flew everywhere, and I think everyone was screaming. Mrs. Kuroda dropped Naoko and started making her way towards us, her arms reaching for us and that low, wet growl coming from her throat. I knew what she was then.

I grabbed a chair from a lesson room and started shoving her back, like some kind of lion tamer. I yelled for the other students to get out, but they weren't moving. Aki was crying harder, Shyunsuke was busy vomiting, and the other two had hidden somewhere in the building. "Everybody out!" I yelled again, and gave Mrs. Kuroda a shove away from the front door. Then I swung it at her, aiming for the head, of course. It connected, and she went down. I ran back, grabbed Shyunsuke and Aki by the arms and yelled "Everybody out!" again.

I had barely enough time to shepherd them to the door than Naoko started to twitch. And Mrs. Kuroda was already trying to stand up.

We ran. Didn't even care where we ran to - just away. The streets were quiet, but once I knew what I was looking for, it seemed like the zombies were everywhere. I've never run like that in my life, you know. Always used to joke that I would run when I was chased. So there you go.

We broke into a sports equipment shed at Otani University and each took one of those aluminum baseball bats. Then we headed for the Botanical Gardens. I still don't know why we chose there, especially after what happened to Aki. A large, sprawling garden with lots of twisting paths and forests? Can't imagine what we thought we'd accomplish. I just knew that we couldn't barricade ourselves in a building - that never works, right?

I got the zombie that took Aki, and Shyunsuke was the one who made sure that Aki wouldn't wake up again. Then we headed for the Great Lawn, on the theory that we'd be able to see any zombie coming from a few hundred meters.

Bad move.

It would have been a fine idea if there were more of us and if we were all armed with shotguns and chainsaws. All we had, though, were the two of us and some dinged-up aluminum bats. Against half a hundred zombies that all wanted to take a good look at the tasty humans who had so kindly put themselves on display. Shyunsuke and I were back to back, and I could hear him saying something over and over again in Japanese. I didn't know what he was saying, but I reckoned it was a prayer of some kind. I was doing some praying myself as those things got nearer. I could see the dull shine of their eyes and hear their feet shuffle across the dead grass and wished for the first time in my life that I had a gun.

Not for them.

We were saved, improbably enough, by an SDF helicopter. It was doing flybys around the city and saw the zombies moving towards us. Some of the soldiers started taking head shots while others lifted us up into the copter to safety. Shyunsuke pretty much broke down as soon as we were safe, and I'm not ashamed to say that I did too.

That was the last I saw of the zombies. The rest of the story you already know - Japan was evacuated until the zombie threat was cleared. I wasn't allowed to go back to Osaka, so I could only pray that The Boyfriend made it out alive while I waited in the refugee camp in Pusan. When I did make it back, after the war, I found that everything on this side of the river had burned to the ground. At that point, I prayed that he'd died in the fire. Anything other than becoming one of them.

It's been a long while since "victory" was declared over the zombies, inasmuch as they care. People in Japan don't like to talk about it, though. You get the feeling that we all did things and saw things that we'd rather forget, and if any nation is good at selective amnesia, it's the Japanese. So I was really glad when this book came out. It made me feel... less alone.

Brooks went around the world, interviewing people who had experienced the Zombie War - including a couple of guys up in Kyoto, even. He listened to their stories, kind of like Studs Terkel, and wrote down what they had seen and done. He talked to everyone - soldiers, sailors, housewives, government officials - everyone who would talk to him. What he made of it is maybe not a comprehensive account of the war, but a broad look at all the things that people went through during those horrible years.

A soldier who went through the Decimation in the Russian army; another who witnessed the Iran-Pakistan "war"; that asshole who made "Phalanx," which so many people thought would save their lives, Brooks talked to them all. He showed how the Great Panic killed so many people, and how the Redeker Plan and all its emulators saved so many more, as heartless and cruel as it was. He looked at the army and how they had to figure out how to fight an enemy that doesn't need to eat or sleep, and which recruits new members as it kills them.

We still don't know where the zombies came from or why they rose up. And I don't think it really matters. As this book shows, there was so much death and pain, with so much heroism and glory, that the question of where the zombies came from is really immaterial.

It opened my eyes, I'll say that much. From the refugee camp, we got very little news at all about the world. Just that the war was continuing. We heard about the civil war in China, and whatever it was that happened to North Korea - everyone heard about that. But the rest, I didn't know. Not until now.

Brooks' book is exactly what it claims to be. It's an oral history, the collected stories of dozens of people who survived the war, and it's something that our descendants will need to read carefully. For those of us who survived the war, the pain may still be close. So if you're not sure if you're ready for this kind of book, give it time. But do read it.

We must never forget what happened to the world when the Zombies came. In many ways, the living dead showed us just how important it was to be alive.

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"Don't worry. Everything's going to be all right."
- Dr. Kuei, World War Z
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World War Z on Wikipedia
Max Brooks on Wikipedia
World War Z on Amazon.com
World War Z website
Max Brooks' website

Review 99: Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

History is like an exquisite jewel. It has many facets, and it will glitter differently depending on the point of view of the person looking at it. We see it change as we shift, as we shine the light differently upon it, but for the most part, we confine ourselves to a few simple views of history and convince ourselves that what we see is the truth of what the gem is.

But what happens when we remove the jewel from its setting and look at the faces we have never before seen? In that case, a whole new history may emerge, one that we find difficult to understand or even believe.

Take Abraham Lincoln, for example. We all think we know who he was: a hard-working, honest young man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, became President, saved the Union, and was assassinated for his troubles. Perhaps no other President in American history has been as carefully scrutinized and examined as Lincoln. You would think we had nothing left to learn about him.

You would be wrong.

You don't know about the vampires.

From the early days of the United States, the vampires have been there. They were there when the first ships pulled into Virginia, when the nation won its independence from Britain, and when the nation went west. They had their hands in the growth of the nation from day one, playing a long-term game to build a vampire paradise far from Europe, where the people there were wise to their evil and knew how to destroy them. Vampires were something that had always been talked about in the early days of American settlement. Strange tales of people dying mysteriously, sometimes their faces locked in a grim visage of fear. But no one really believed them of course. I mean really - vampires? Please.

The truth was, however, that they were out there. They were lurking in the shadows, waiting and planning and laying the groundwork for the land they would eventually come to rule.And from his youth, Abraham Lincoln was pulled into their nefarious scheme.

Born the son of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, Abraham suffered from his share of the vicissitudes of 19th-century life. Rural poverty was rampant, and his father was not the most skilled of laborers or diligent of workers. But he loved his children, as did his wife. That made it all the harder when those children started dying of a strange wasting disease. When his wife followed suit, it was tragedy upon tragedy. For Abraham, it was the beginning of a need for vengeance that would drive his entire life.

As he grew up and discovered the existence of vampires, he became a skilled and terrifying vampire hunter. He was so good at his vocation that a dissident group of vampires, led by a man named Henry Sturges, chose him as their instrument against their own kind. With Henry's guidance, Lincoln began to cut a swathe through the vampires in the United States.

But being the chosen one, as Buffy would attest, is not all it is cracked up to be. Plagued with doubts and depression, Lincoln tried many times to cast off the mantle that had been thrust upon him. He married, went into business, and did his best to live the normal life he thought he deserved. But destiny had other plans. The vampires were preparing their endgame - the establishment of a nation built on the backs of slaves, where humans would be cattle to the vampires. In time, they would take the United States and use it as a staging ground to spread their sickness around the world. They had to be stopped, and Henry and his fifth column knew only one man who could stop them.

Abraham Lincoln, the greatest vampire hunter the nation had ever known.

Written by the same author who did Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, this book was far more entertaining. Probably because I like Lincoln a whole lot more than I like Jane Austen, but probably because he did a much better job at integrating the Lincoln we know with the Lincoln he had created. He invents a vampire-system that would explain how they could manage to maintain influence over humans, and presents a reasonably plausible explanation for how vampires could be at the root of the Civil War.

More importantly, he keeps his Lincoln true to the character of the real Lincoln - a complex, driven man, beset by tragedy, lifted by hope, and motivated by a duty to a greater good. Perhaps a bit romanticized, of course, but we all romanticize Lincoln. It's hard not to. What's important is that we see a character who tries to fight his destiny, but in the end realizes that there are bigger things at stake than his own happiness. He has a nation to save and evil to defeat, and even if it should cost him his life, he will see that evil eradicated.

The only thing that bothered me was a bit of unfinished business in the book. The conceit of it was that Seth Grahame-Smith had been given the complete set of Lincoln Diaries - the real ones, mind you - by Sturges, so that he could tell the true tale. According to the introduction, this was a project that cost him his job, his marriage, and nearly his life, and after a fairly dramatic and mysterious introduction, we never hear anything from Smith as the author again. I would have liked for him to have explained some of the things he merely alluded to in the introduction - especially the eleven "individuals" he was instructed to talk to over the course of writing the book, but he didn't. It's a little detail, but one I wish he had taken care of.

It's a fun read, good for any vampire/Lincoln lover, or aficionado of alternate history.

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"I can see a man's purpose, Abraham. It is my gift. I can see it as clearly as I see you standing before me now. Your purpose is to fight tyranny... and mine is to see that you win."
- Henry Sturges

Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter at Wikipedia
Seth Grahame-Smith at Wikipedia
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter on Amazon.com

The Trailer:

Review 41: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Full disclosure: I have never read Pride and Prejudice. It's one of those novels that you're really supposed to read, and maybe I did read it back in high school English class, but if I did, my brain has scabbed it over. It's a book that, for reasons which I don't understand, is adored around the world.

The original book (according to Wikipedia and what I gleaned from reading this) is a tale of the Troubles of Rich People. It's a novel of manners, in which the conflict centers entirely around the personalities of the people involved. The protagonist, Elizabeth Bennet, is one of five daughters born to a house of moderate means. Since they're growing up in a patriarchal society, the only way for them to be at all successful in their lives is to get married - especially so that they might have some chance of inheriting part of their father's estate someday. Their father seems to resent that they were all born girls, and really wants nothing to do with the family at all. Their mother has but one wish, and that's to see her daughters all get married.

So when a handsome young man - Charles Bingley - moves into the neighborhood, the Bennet household is all a-flutter over the hopes that he might pick one of their girls to make into an honest woman. Unfortunately he brings his friend with him, Fitzwilliam Darcy, who is immediately unlikable, especially to headstrong and opinionated young Elizabeth.

I don't know if it was Austen who gave birth to this trope in fiction, but we all know what's going to happen when two characters are introduced that hate each other from the start.

The story goes on, propelled forward by the ever-evolving relationship between Darcy, whose brusque and unmannered exterior hides a deep and compassionate soul, and Elizabeth, whose independent and free-thinking nature is reined in by the discovery that what she assumes to be true very seldom is. It's a book about relationships and about passions, about manners and status and about 300 pages too long for me to deal with.

I like to think that I'm a cultured, intelligent person, but there's only so much I can take of this kind of thing. I find it really hard to care about people I have so little in common with - I have no property to protect, I don't really care about social class or about artificially inflated systems of manner. I don't come from a family that is concerned with marriage or status, and so I don't identify with the characters. In works of this nature the world is alien to me. I can't relate to the story and, more importantly, I don't want to relate to the story. I hope that I have better things to do with my life than worry about who has fallen in love with whom and who is hiding dark secrets from their past.

And so, the addition of zombies to the tale is just fine with me.

According to the co-author, Seth Grahame-Smith:

“You have this fiercely independent heroine, you have this dashing heroic gentleman, you have a militia camped out for seemingly no reason whatsoever nearby, and people are always walking here and there and taking carriage rides here and there. It was just ripe for gore and senseless violence. From my perspective anyway."

Smith saw a great opportunity, which I'm sure many other people will follow. Since Pride and Prejudice is a book in the public domain, anyone can do whatever they want to it without having to worry about copyright laws. If you want to make a movie or a play or a comic book or a porno movie out of it, you're free to do so. Smith saw a chance to create, for lack of a better term, a literary mash-up, bringing two types of story together into something completely new.

Now, the Bennet daughters are five of the fiercest fighters in England, devoted to holding back the zombie menace that has gripped the country for five and fifty years. Trained by the greatest Chinese masters in all the killing arts, the Bennet Sisters are famous for their merciless dealings with the unmentionables that roam the countryside, looking for fresh brains to sate their unnatural hunger. Elizabeth Bennet not only has an independent and free-thinking nature, but she's also not above killing ninjas, ripping out their hearts and eating them.

The combination of the two styles - the regency romance and the ultra-violent zombie mayhem - works rather well. Smith has done a fine job in not just shoehorning the zombies into Austen's tale, but making sure that the new version of the story is internally consistent. The zombies are a real and present force in this story, waylaying people on the road, occasionally delaying messages and causing very dramatic misunderstandings. And in this new and deadly environment, the dance of misunderstandings between Darcy and Elizabeth goes on, eventually - of course - ending up in the union of two of the greatest zombie hunters in England.

The best part, by the way, is the Readers' Discussion Guide in the back. In case you want to read this with your book club, the authors have included some ideas for discussion, such as "Does Mrs. Bennet have a single redeeming quality?" and "Some scholars believe that the zombies were a last-minute addition to the novel, requested by the publisher in a shameless attempt to boost sales. Others argue that the hordes of living dead are integral to Jane Austen's plot and social commentary. What do you think? Can you imagine what this novel might be like without the violent zombie mayhem?" It's a very nice touch, I have to admit.

With some fantastically period illustrations of zombies, brain-eating and ninja-baiting (as well as a rather odd one of the Bennet sisters' favorite game, "Kiss Me Deer"), the book is kind of surreal, and I reckon it is one that will entertain a good number of readers, though certainly not all of them. For me, I found that the altered parts of the text - the zombies and the occasional ninja - were the most fun part. The characterization of the Bennet sisters as hardened warriors occasionally given over to fripperies was strange, but entertaining, especially since Graham-Smith made sure to keep the characters consistent. Elizabeth's thoughts and actions are primarily dictated by her Shaolin training, and many of her decisions are rooted in a deep sense of a warrior's honor, rather than a society girl's manners.

Furthermore, this strange new England was well made. It's a place where the zombies were a threat, but after fifty-five years, they've been downgraded to more of a dangerous annoyance. Kind of like FOX News. The zombies are a seasonal menace, less prevalent in the winter when the ground is hard, but like cicadas they burrow out of the ground in the spring to menace travelers and (unlike most cicadas) eat their brains.

The problem for me wasn't so much the zombies part of the book as it was the Pride and Prejudice part. As I said above, I don't really identify with what the characters care about, and once they got off the topic of the zombie menace, my eyes started to glaze over a little. Fortunately I knew that there would be another bit of mayhem on the way to perk me back up.

It made me think, though - there must be something that I'm missing. Not only has the book been around and popular for two centuries, but it's beloved enough that even a drastic modification of it would draw in readers. P&P&Z was a bestseller on the New York Times list and the mere announcement of its existence sent the blog world into an utter fangasm. The addition of zombies to an otherwise beloved tale was met with open arms, a sign that Pride and Prejudice held an honored place in the literary heart of the world. So if I don't get it, then there must be something wrong with me.... Ah, well. As I said of War and Peace, I'm not in this game to score points. So don't expect me to try and slog through the original just to see if it holds up to the zombified version.

The big question, of course, is What's Next? There are so many pieces of classic literature out there, all in the public domain and all just ripe for this kind of treatment. Tom Sawyer and the Wizards of the Mississippi? The Shape-Shifting Alien of Monte Cristo? Anne of Green Gables and the Robot Hordes from the Future? Mark my words, this book is only the beginning....

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"No ninjas! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without any ninjas! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your safety."
- Lady Catherine, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at Wikipedia
Seth Grahame-Smith at Wikipedia
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies at Amazon.com

Review 17: The Stand

The Stand by Stephen King

It's hard to know where to begin when writing about this book, probably because I work under the assumption that everyone has read it. I mean,. I've probably owned at least four different copies over the years, and it occupies a permanent place on my bookshelf. I can't imagine anyone not having read it. But I guess that's what everyone thinks about their favorite books, so I'll fill in those of you who haven't.

It's the end of the world. Not in the horrible confluence of blindness and carnivorous plants, or in the fiery desolation of nuclear war. The world dies in a more unpleasant way than that, and it all begins in Project Blue - a US military lab in the southwest. There they've built the greatest plague mankind has ever known, a shapeshifting flu virus that is 99.4% communicable and 100% lethal. Its intended use was probably against the Soviets or some other enemy state, but... Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, as Yeats said. And on June 13th, 1990, the superflu got out.

It was carried by Charles Campion and his family, spread throughout the southwest until Campion died in a gas station in Arnette, Texas. From there it hopped into the men gathered at the station, who passed it on to nearly everyone they met.

By June 27th, most of America was dead. And thanks to the final command of the man in charge of Project Blue, the virus was spread around the world as well. By Independence Day, the population of the world - that which by some strange genetic luck was immune - was reduced to less than the pre-plague population of California.

Of course, not everyone who was immune escaped unscathed. There were accidents, mishaps and murders that probably brought the number down, but not by much. Scattered survivors struggled to understand why they lived when so many had died, and started to seek out others like them.

And then came the dreams. An ancient woman, living in a cornfield. She radiates goodness and compassion (and still makes her own biscuits). Mother Abagail is the beacon of hope for those who see her in their dreams. And then there's the other, the Dark Man, the Walkin' Dude, whose shadow brings madness and whose gaze brings death. He is Randall Flagg, a man whose time has come 'round at last. Just as Mother Abagail attracts the good and strong, so does Flagg attract the weak and frightened. Around these two do the remains of America come together. And neither one can let the other exist without a fight....

What keeps bringing me back to this book? Well, a lot of things. For one, the writing. King has said that he's a little disturbed about The Stand being the fans' favorite - it means he did his best work thirty years ago. Not entirely true, I think, although I am hard pressed to say which of his other books exceeds it. King's sense of scale as a writer is outstanding. We get into our characters dreams, in their innermost secret thoughts, and then a few pages later are presented with an overview of what's happening around the nation. It's like being able to go, in Google Maps, from someone's bedroom all the way out into space. He dances between characters smoothly, so just when you get to the point where you're thinking, 'Yeah, but what's Flagg doing?" he brings you there.

And speaking of the characters, they're people who will stay with you long after you finish the book. The quiet confidence of Stu Redman, the single-minded madness of the Trashcan Man, Larry Underwood's late maturity, Lloyd Henreid's devotion, Fran Goldsmith's determination.... Each character rings true. Even the ones who really shouldn't have ended up the way they did - and I'm thinking of Harold and Nadine here - you can't help but find bits of them to love. Had they been strong enough, Harold and Nadine never would have gone as bad as they did, and I think even King kind of had a hard time making them do what he wanted.

Underlying all this, of course, is a kind of Old Testament religiosity. The God of Mother Abigail is not the kind and friendly God of the New Testament, He is the angry one of the Old. He is the God who will gladly wipe out nearly all of mankind to prove a point, and will make a 108 year-old woman walk into the desert by herself because she's getting a little too uppity. In this world, at least, God is most definitely real, even though His purpose is hard to understand.

I could go on. Thesis papers could probably be written about this book, and I reckon they already have been. But that's not why I do these reviews. I do them because I want y'all to know what's worth reading.

This book is worth reading.

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"Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home."
- Glen Bateman, The Stand
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The Stand at Wikipedia
Stephen King at Wikipedia
The Stand at Amazon.com