World War Z
Judging by the title you'd think World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is just some low-brow living-dead trash fiction with the usual survivalist genre themes. (Long-time readers will know I’m a fan of most things zombie (but not Rob Zombie).)
But, in fact, WWZ is a cleverly conceived and written book. Its gimmick is that it’s a series of interviews with politicians, soldiers, film-makers and other survivors of a world-wide zombie infestation. Unlike most Zack movies, which ratchet up the tension by increasingly isolating the protagonists, WWZ gives you a global perspective on the outbreak.
And this is what makes it compelling. The socioeconomic consequences of a living dead epidemic are just as scary as any zombie attack in the shopping mall. Most governments, for example, choose to save a cadre of valuable citizens while using the rest, literally, as bait. Conventional military strategy collapses against an undead opponent, and armies have to be rebuilt for a new kind of war.
Max Brooks handles these kinds of details with a convincing realism (but also with an ironic panache—he pokes fun at the media’s obsession with starlet celebrities and people’s obsession with miracle cures).
It looks like World War Z will be a movie sometime soon. This book doesn’t feel like a movie in any way, but I’m sure J. Micheal Straczynski can help it make the transition. I’ll just note, though, that reading WWZ was enjoyable partly because I didn’t have to submit myself to the gratuitous and hyper-realistic violence that is so common in films these days. (I’m sure I’ll go see WWZ the movie, and also sure I’ll wonder why I did afterwards.)
