Sunday, October 03, 2010

Zombies!

I love the sub-genre of horror that we commonly call "zombie fiction". It's based on the darkest of paranoid fantasies and is a pretty rich ground for post-apocalyptic yarns. And despite the fact that a lot of the people who follow this type of work are--quite frankly--a bunch of gun-happy, racist right wing freaks, I still like the stuff.

One reason I wrote THE LIVING END was to create something within the genre that was not either overtly or sub-textually racist. The book is still hunting for a publisher...maybe there's just no room for apocalyptic fiction that's not a few words shy of The Turner Diaries.


At any rate, I'm very much looking forward to the new AMC series THE WALKING DEAD based on the comic book of the same name which is, further, based on the concepts first put to celluloid by John Russo and George A. Romero (and based on an idea they got from reading Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND).

As far as horror goes, you don't get more horrific than zombies, and the premise lends itself to just about every fear one can think of: infection, death, paranoia, claustrophobia, dispossession, alienation, xenophobia...well, you get the idea.

I'll be watching TV the night this series hits the airwaves. AMC is the only network that can make me act this way anymore.





2 comments:

dogboy443 said...

We need a home for The Living End. I still want to see my cover wrapping your words. It's a great marriage of two styles.

James Robert Smith said...

Been trying like heck. Between flake publishers who make offers then vanish to established companies who aren't reading, it's tough.