Horror novelist John Hornor Jacobs spent some time deep in the throes of darkness while writing his zombie novel This Dark Earth (due out in July 2012). While he was down there, he began to wonder what he would need to do to really survive a zombie uprising.
His thoughts are posted over at Suvudu:
Everybody wants to reinvent the wheel. Americans inhabit a media-saturated culture that causes the speed in which we grow tired of an idea – be it in literature, film, music – to increase. This Instant Age makes us ravenous for new takes on traditional things, because we grow bored so easy. We’ve entered the age of the mash-up just to cure our societal boredom.
In light of this, it’s interesting to consider the zombie. For my money, you can’t really improve on the Romero zombie, unless you go back even further to the voodoo stripe. They’re a testament to the tenacity and permanence of the shambling, mindless American consumer. Novelists and movie-makers might try to reinvent the zombie – infuse them with demons, or make them benign, or give them the ability to reason – but in the end, it’s a good ole Romero zombie that always prevails.
The Romero zombie is a cultural shibboleth that just keeps on coming, indomitable. Undead. UNDOMITABLE.
Read the entire essay over at Suvudu: Guest Essay: John Hornor Jacobs: ‘Rationalizing the Zombie’
Read an excerpt of his zombie novel, This Dark Earth and see the book trailer for it on his website: Excerpt: This Dark Earth
