At 26, I am already an old person.
I don’t watch TV. I’m not on Twitter. I went to a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert and thought the music was “too loud.” I worry people aren’t reading enough. I write myself reminders to do things I’m going to forget, and then I forget to look at the reminders. I haven’t told any kids to “get off my lawn” yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
So maybe you, the youthful generation, can explain something to me. Why are people so fascinated with zombies?
Ninjas, I get. They’re silent deadly badass assassins. Pirates, I get. They have cool accents and swords and ships. Robots I get. I even get the obsession with monkeys.
But zombies?
They’re mindless, they’re disgusting, and they want to make you the same way. Don’t we have that enough in real life?
Granted, I haven’t read many zombie books – the only one that comes to mind is Cherie Priest’s Boneshaker, which was more about steampunk than zombies anyway. And granted, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a hilarious concept; but it’s hilarious (to me) in the same way that Android Karenina is hilarious – because of the mashup of old and new, literary and silly, not because of the zombie element in particular. I’ve heard good things about World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide, but was never interested enough to try them.
I guess a lot of the appeal is speculating on how you would kill them, how you’d defend your house, what strategies you’d use in the zombie apocalypse. Which, you know, is all fine. I can see how that would be fun to talk about for, like, a few days. I just don’t understand what’s so appealing about zombies that there seems to be a never-ending stream (irony!) of books about them, an army of authors determined to document every facet of the zombie experience.
Which is fine – people like different things, I’m not saying everyone should agree. I’m just curious, is all. Zombies: what’s the appeal?
Help an old man out.
Brian D. Buckley 
I’m not sure I can answer you well, because I don’t much care for zombies myself. But I will say that I picked up The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan — mostly because I love the title, and it had decent recommendations — and I think she did a great job with a zombie novel. It’s not *about* zombies at all — they’re more like a natural disaster, a backdrop, a set of dire circumstances that cause the survivors to examine their own passions and mortality and morality and all that.
(Note: Wow, that sounds like heaping praise on my part. Look, it’s not going to enter the literary canon, but it’s enjoyable and thoughtful.)
Similarly, I loved the movie I Am Legend. Same reasons.
But I’m never “in the mood” for a zombie movie/book. {shrug}
I also loved I Am Legend. Partly because it was a really good movie, partly because I like Will Smith in almost anything he decides to do, and partly because it introduced me to Redemption Song, which is now one of my all-time favorite songs.
I have to agree with Kristan. Zombies are just a convenient excuse to drop a group of people into a post-apocalyptic survival experience. There’s some interesting psychology at work there, particularly the “small group vs everyone else” mechanisms that let tribes survive harsh environments in the past (and in remote areas of the world today). Also, it makes for a great videogame 😉
So Lord of the Flies is kind of like a zombie book…without the zombies. 🙂
Yup! Except, not nearly as cool. It was an okay read, but not really my thing.
I don’t get the zombie thing either, and if you’re old at 26 then I’m ancient at 35.
Wasn’t it only a few years ago that everything was about ninjas vs pirates? I get that. They’re both cool. (I choose pirates, personally. Ninjas aren’t flamboyant enough.)
But zombies? They’re just… cannon fodder brought to life. So if you figure it out, let me know.
26 has nothing to do with it. I’ve been old since I was a kid. 😉
I’m with you on the ninjas and pirates. And pirates are definitely more fun.
Zombies are the psychological manifestation of “All those other damn idiots”
They are an amped up version of the feeling that we’re surrounded by morons who will overwhelm us be sheer force of numbers.
Which makes the zombie fantasy generally a release where their monstrosity is revealed and you are finally allowed to take a shotgun to them.
So zombies as a kind of stress relief…like squeezing on one of those little hand exercise things. 🙂 Cool.
Ooh! Ooh! I asked my husband why zombies are cool, and he had an answer. It’s more or less what MomentEye said, but I’ll repeat anyway.
Zombies are cool because they’re not people. No one *likes* zombies. No one’s got any moral objection to killing them. They’re the one creature that everyone agrees it’s okay to kill. Not just “okay”, actually. It’s good to kill them. So you can plan interesting ways to kill hordes of zombies, and no one looks at you funny.
If you say, “Let’s get a flamethrower and set a horde of marauding lions on fire,” people are offended and disturbed. But if you say, “The zombies are coming! Let’s her a flamethrower and set them all on fire!” people think it’s a great idea.
If you say, “This vampire came out of the darkness so I fed him into a woodchipper,” people get upset. (And possibly cry “Edward!!!!”) But if you say, “I grabbed a zombie and fed him into a woodchipper,” people think it’s hilarious.
So there ya go. Zombies are cool because you can kill them with impunity and no one casts moral judgement on you.
Now that is interesting. You’re right, there really aren’t many other foes that lack any moral standing at all. Even robots raise ethical concerns proportional to their self-awareness. I hadn’t thought of it like that.
I know you’re old at 26 because you posted this at the ungodly hour of 6am-ish. Only old people are up that early – even the all-nighter crowd has passed out by then.
Eh? What’s that? Speak up, my hearing aid’s on the fritz!!
Late to the party, but I wanted to respond anyway.
I agree that there’s a certain element of “they’re not really people” to it. There’s the psychology of the post-apocalypse survivor trope as well. But I think one of the most terrifying (and fascinating) things about zombies is that they USED to be us. There’s a book I have named “Patient Zero” that I haven’t gotten around to yet, which juxtaposes terrorists and zombies. They look just like us, yet they want to destroy us! (I don’t think terrorists moan for brains though. It’d kind of give them away.)
The “Newsflesh” trilogy by Mira Grant (only 2 books are out currently; book 3 is due in May) does a great take on this concept, where the zombie virus is currently dormant in everyone and everything, and if you die in anyway that doesn’t destroy your brain, the virus goes live and you become a zombie (ditto any animal over 40 lbs., so there’s not a lot of steak-eating going on anymore). It’s set in the post-post-apocalypse setting, where people have largely adapted to this sort of thing, and the books do a great job of analyzing the politics of terror. (Also, the rise of blogging as mainstream journalism is a major part of these books, so they might be of more interest to you.)
Zombies have been used as metaphors for rampant consumerism, blind following of authority, terrorism, overzealous political discourse, etc. They tap into primal fears of cannibalism combined with the fact that you can become one at any time, against your will.
And if you haven’t gotten around to World War Z, I do highly recommend it. It’s told through the stories of various survivors from around the world, and it recounts the political and sociological fallout from a worldwide zombie epidemic. It’s very…human. World War Z and the Newsflesh books (the first one is Feed, the second is Deadline) are the ones I recommend to people looking to dip their toes into zombie fiction.
Interesting. I *have* gotten a lot of recommendations for World War Z. I may check it out one of these days.