Anti-Zombie Rant

[deborahjross]

Does anyone else find zombies utterly uninteresting, tedious and faintly nauseating? I don't want to read about them and I certainly don't want to watch them. I can hardly wait until they are completely passé.

One writer who did something interesting with the shambling-rotting-flesh routine was Andre Norton (I think in Perilous Dreams) where the virus itself had a sort of intelligence that drove the decomposing victim to see out a new host. She did not, of course, use the word zombie, and she described the disease more from the psychological horror of a half-dead person wanting to infect you with what was killing it than with any description of gore or gunfire. It seriously creeped me out, whereas modern zombies leave me thinking that filling out my tax returns might be an interesting and pleasant way to pass the time.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I absolutely feel this way. And the book about a sentient virus-like thing that I remember liking (but being frightened by) as a kid was called The Power of Stars--it didn't make you a zombie-like thing, though.

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

Sentience that doesn't come packaged in a brain presents so many interesting possibilities. Certainly, sf writers have had a lot of fun with it. Not so much fantasy writers--maybe that's a challenge we should take up.

It's funny what images stay with us as kids. I had nightmares about THEY CAME FROM OUTER SPACE for years (not to mention a whole slew of Disney films.)