Zombies: World War Z
Since I’m on a panel on “Return of the Living Dead” at PhilCon this coming weekend, I decided I’d better finish listening to the audio CDs of World War Z by Max Brooks. I’m really impressed. The actors playing the parts are really good — they have the accents and verbal mannerisms down so that you actually belief what you are listening to — and it’s done in such a straight-forward manner that you sometimes can forget that this isn’t real. Basically, it’s survivors of the world wide zombie infestation talking about what it was like just before, during, and a bit after the war. It’s various personal stories told to a reporter making up a report on the outbreak and aftermath.
This is an abridgment of the book but each story we hear is supposed to be complete. Like his earlier work , The Zombie Survival Guide it takes the subject and treats it seriously. World War Z has stories from people who survived. Some of them are not nice people, some of them are, and some of them you’d wish had been left behind with the zombies because they sold people out. All in all, it’s well done and a good way to spend time if you have something else to do — I’m working on a sweater I’m knitting, so my ears are free to listen.