The Living Dead

by John Joseph Adams (Editor)

Overview

"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth!" From White Zombie to Dawn of the Dead, Resident Evil to World War Z, zombies have invaded popular culture, becoming the monsters that best express the fears and anxieties of the modern west. Gathering together the best zombie literature of the last three decades from many of today's most renowned authors of fantasy, speculative fiction, and horror, including Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, George R. R. Martin, Clive Barker, Poppy Z. Brite, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Joe R. Lansdale, The Living Dead covers the broad spectrum of zombie fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597802406
Publisher:	Start Publishing Llc
Publication date:	09/01/2008
Series:	Living Dead Series , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	487
Sales rank:	832,814
File size:	666 KB

About the Author

John Joseph Adams is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Wastelands, The Living Dead (a World Fantasy Award finalist), and many others. Barnes&Noble.com named him “the reigning king of the anthology world,” and his books have been named to numerous best of the year lists. John is also the fiction editor of the online science fiction magazine Lightspeed. Prior to taking on that role, he worked for nearly nine years in the editorial department at The Magazine of Fantasy&Science Fiction. He is currently the co-host of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast on io9.com, and has published hundreds of interviews and other pieces of non-fiction.

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

Recently prolific anthologist Adams (Seeds of Change) delivers a superb reprint anthology that runs the gamut of zombie stories. There's plenty of gore, highlighted by Stephen King's "Home Delivery" and David Schow's classic "Blossom." Less traditional but equally satisfying are Lisa Morton's "Sparks Fly Upward," which analyzes abortion politics in a zombified world, and Douglas Winter's literary pastiche "Less than Zombie." Also outstanding, Kelly Link's "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" and Hannah Wolf Bowen's "Everything Is Better with Zombies" take similar themes in wildly different directions. Neil Gaiman's impeccably crafted "Bitter Grounds" offers a change of pace with traditional Caribbean zombies. The sole original contribution, John Langan's "How the Day Runs Down," is a darkly amusing twist on Thornton Wilder's Our Town. There's some great storytelling for zombie fans as well as newcomers. (Nov.)

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Publishers Weekly

The shambling animated corpses of George Romero's films have lurched into the bookstores in droves in recent months, headlined by high-profile titles like World War Z and Monster Island. In this anthology, editor Adams (Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse) does a remarkable job of collecting a sampling of variations on this theme. These stories range from the truly disgusting (Poppy Z. Brite's "Calcutta: Lord of Nerves") to the nearly wistful ("Followed" by Will McIntosh) and even one with no supernatural elements at all (Joe Hill's "Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead"). Included are pieces by big names in horror like Stephen King and Clive Barker but also contributions by less obvious suspects like Harlan Ellison, Sherman Alexie, and George R.R. Martin. The final treat is John Langan's "How the Day Runs Down," a nasty little play best described as Our Town with zombies. Highly recommended for all horror fiction collections. [For more zombie fiction, see Neal Wyatt's The Reader's Shelf column, p. 106.-Ed.]
—Karl G. Siewert

Library Journal