World War Z
by Max Brooks
Crown (RandomHouse), 2006
352 Pages
Young Adult
Max Brooks delivers a unique approach to the zombie genre in his first two books, The Zombie Survival Guide, a serious home-defense manual that could be applied as equally successful to being under siege by street gangs or George Junior’s martial law stormtroopers as to a zombie horde, and World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, a detailed, first-hand history tracing the outbreak, resistance, and defeat of the zombie apocalypse, both presented as raw non-fiction.
The movie version of World War Z is set to be released this month (June 2013), starring Brad Pitt. I am curious to see it because Brooks’ journalistic form doesn’t really lend itself to a narrative structure, the book consisting of international interviews with people who were immersed in the age of the zombie. It does, however, have a definite story arc as the outbreak is first contained and covered up, then becomes all out global warfare, and finally ends as the earth, with a diminished population, is once again made habitable. It’s our first cinematic look at the Zombie apocalypse from a political viewpoint rather than a localized occurrence.
Reading the book, I was at first put off by his dry approach, lacking any character building or suspense; although it was a great topic, I really didn’t want to slog through 500 pages of military jargon and politics. Then I started reading, and was pleasantly surprised to be pulled into an overarching storyline composed of short slice-of-life snippets that exemplify how people all over the world shared a common experience, reacting just how we’d expect them to, the good, (like ship captains ferrying survivors out of India,) the bad, (bogus government-backed vaccination programs,) and the ugly (enough gore and violence to put Peckinpah to shame.)
Kokura was engulfed in Hell. The fires, the wreckage… the siafu were everywhere. I watched them crash through doors, invade apartments, devour people cowering in corners or on balconies. I watched people leap to their deaths or break their legs and spines. They lay on the pavement, unable to move, wailing in agony as the dead closed in around them.
Interviews of people from across the globe the wave of horror that all human life becomes embroiled in; stories of those trying to stay alive, those fighting against the undead masses that were once their loved ones, and those who were infected and must now face an abomination of mortality.
The interesting bit comes in when Brooks examines different government’s approaches to the outbreak. China suppressed any related news to cover up the plague. Russia put down any resistance with brutality. America plunged in to create a media debacle demonstrating to the world the futility of trying to kill what is already dead.
Brooks looks at the zombie pandemic (at first called “The Rabies Scare”) through the lens of a military strategist by laying out scenarios and defense strategies, and projecting the most likely outcome as if it were a global version of The Zombie Survival Guide. For instance, the rich will barricade themselves in like in Poe’s Masque of Red Death, only here they are finally overrun not by the infection, but by hordes of the middle-class seeking a safe haven.
They were to be “human bait,” distracting the undead from following the retreating army to their safe zone. Redeker argued that these isolated, uninfected refugees must be kept alive, well defended and even resupplied, if possible, so as to keep the undead hordes firmly rooted to the spot.You see the genius, the sickness?
The fun Brooks had writing this account is infectious. He asks what if… and makes us actually start to think in depth, in all seriousness, what would happen if there was no longer any room in Hell? When and where would we have a chance to contain the infection? How would it spread? Max looks at how this might happen in a truly ethnographic format, akin to Wade Davis and his real-life ethno-botanical research that inspired The Serpent and the Rainbow, (a movie depicting the Haitian zombie phenomena that was traced back to the puffer-fish toxin.) Davis had a real-life houngan to train him, and like Carlos Castaneda had Don Juan, Max has Romero and a host of foundational movie classics to draw upon.
Brooks also wrote a comic companion to his first book, called The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks. Now, to follow up that foray into the realm of graphic novels, his short story Extinction Parade, a zombie/vampire cross-over, has been adapted to a comic book series to be released this summer.
As a fan of Old Time Radio, I’ve heard excellent things about the audiobook version of World War Z. What the format of the book makes difficult on screen lends itself naturally to sound recording. The original version had been cut short, but the latest edition goes back to splice in the missing interviews for an unabridged experience. (Here are just some of the stars providing voices: Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Carl & Rob Reiner, Henry Rollins, Martin Scorsese, and Jeri Ryan.) There is nothing so relaxing as zombie moans in the night.
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