- Brooks, Max.
World War Z.
New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006.
ISBN 978-0-307-34661-2.
-
Few would have believed in the early years of the twenty-first
century, as people busied themselves with their various concerns
and little affairs, while their “leaders” occupied
themselves with “crises” such as shortages of petroleum,
mountains of bad debt, and
ManBearPig,
that in rural China a virus had mutated, replicating and
spreading among the human population like creatures that swarm
and multiply in a drop of water, slowly at first, with early
outbreaks covered up to avoid bad publicity before the Chicom
Olympics, soon thereafter to explode into a global contagion
that would remake the world, rewrite human history, and sweep
away all of the prewar concerns of mankind as trivialities
while eliminating forever the infinite complacency humans had
of their empire over matter and dominion over nature.
This book is an oral history of the Zombie War, told in the words of
those who survived, fought, and ultimately won it. Written just ten
years after victory was declared in China, with hotspots around the
globe remaining to be cleared, it is a story of how cultures around
the globe came to terms with a genuine existential threat, and how
people and societies rise to a challenge inconceivable to a prewar
mentality. Reading much like
Studs Terkel's The Good War,
the individual voices, including civilians, soldiers,
researchers, and military and political leaders trace how
unthinkable circumstances require unthinkable responses, and
how ordinary people react under extraordinary stress. The
emergence of the Holy Russian Empire, the evacuation and
eventual reconquest of Japan, the rise of Cuba to a global
financial power, the climactic end of the Second Chinese
Revolution, and the enigma of the fate of North Korea are told
in the words of eyewitnesses and participants.
Now, folks, this a zombie book, so if you're someone inclined
to ask, “How, precisely, does this work?”, or to
question the biological feasibility of the dead surviving in
the depths of the ocean or freezing in the arctic winter and
reanimating come spring, you're going to have trouble with
this story. Suspending your disbelief and accepting the basic
premise is the price of admission, but if you're willing to
pay it, this is an enjoyable, unsettling, and ultimately
rewarding read—even inspiring in its own strange way.
It is a narrative of an apocalyptic epoch which works,
and is about ten times better than Stephen King's
The Stand. The author
is a recognised global authority on the
zombie peril.
(Yes, the first paragraph of these remarks is paraphrased from
this; I thought
it appropriate.)
May 2008 