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Two zombie anthologies discussed
Oct. 22nd, 2010 10:37 amI've been reading a couple of zombie anthologies recently. For some reason, anothologies of short stories appeal to me much more than a full-scale novel stuffed with zombies and angsting protagonists. Short stories about zombies/survivors get right to the point, they don't dally (if it's written well) and the writer has less of a chance to screw things up.
The Living Dead anthology (1 & 2) are both excellent, AND Joe Johnson Adams the editor, manages to do what so many other anthology editors don't do; he infuses his anthology with tons of stories written by-get this-WOMEN WRITERS. Yes, just about every other story is written by a woman (there are about 20) and believe me, yes, it makes a difference to see that my own gender is represented so well in the pages and in the stories themselves. Even though women are usually educated to read and write about white men, and it can be difficult for women writers to crack out of that box, when they do, it's terrific. It's not going to be only white men surviving disasters (zombie or otherwise). Women are going to be more than sex-fodder, rape-fodder, rescue-fodder, and all the usual crap that women are used as in most literature or genre fiction.
The front of The Living Dead 2 lists Cherie Priest, Kelley Armstrong and Carrie Ryan along with Max Brooks. Inside there's this list of writers: Paula R. Stiles; Karina Sumner-Smith; Molly Brown; Jamie Lackey; Amelia Beamer; Brenna Yovanoff; Mira Grant; Cherie Priest; Kelly Link; Krya Shon; Kelley Armstrong; Carrie Ryan; Kim Paffenroth, R.J. Sevin & Julia Sevin; Catherine MacLeod; Genevieve Valentine; and Sarah Lanagan. No Poppy Z. Brite this time around, but hopefully she'll be in a third anthology. More of the stories in this book are original, although there are some reprints. All in all, most of the stories were involving. That's 18 out of 44 stories. That's 41% of the anthology. Pretty good. And most of the stories are pretty high quality, too, making you think.
The biggest disappointment was The Skull-Faced City by David Barr Kirtley. It's a sequel to a story he wrote for the first anthology, which he explained was written in anger about an ass-faced male friend of his who was abusive to his girlfriend (the friend's girlfriend, not his own). In the sequel, all the women are rescued, are pregnant, or abused, and have very little agency of their own. That's par for the course in a lot of horror stories, so nothing new there.
Last Stand by Kelley Armstrong sticks in my mind the most. She explores the concept of the Other explicitly in this story, and you're left wondering who the zombies are for the first few pages. The zombies aren't traditional mindless things in this, and they have a woman leader of immense steely strength leading them.
The other anthology is The Dead That Walk edited by Stephen Jones. His anthology has many more Big Names in it: Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison (with a story that made no sense at all to me), Joe Hill, Stephen King, Richard Matheson, etc. No women listed on the cover. Who are the writers inside? Let's see: Yvonne Navarro; Nancy Holder; Lisa Morton; Kelly Dunn. That's out of 24 stories. That's 4/24, or 6% of the total number of stories. I don't like distilling an anothology into gender percentages, but it does start to irk when you read story after story after story from a predominately white male point of view--even when the stories like that are written by women writers. Remember when I mentioned that women writers have to break out of that box, making the white male the protag of their stores because that's the default? -- it also doesn't help when an anthology chooses that kind of story to include, when there are other points of view to include.
I was less impressed with The Dead That Walk overall, heavy-hitter writers or not. I did really enjoy a riff off of Of Mice & Men near the end of the book. But that's more or less because my daughter had just been reading through it for school, and I got to review the original book. I just don't "get" Harlan Ellison. Maybe back when I was in high school and could wrap my head around disjointed seeming experimental narratives, but not now. Joe Hill's contribution is one that I've seen before, and doesn't actually include actual zombies (that's okay, but this fell flat for me). For The Good of All by Yvonne Navarro sticks in my head, though. She's writes a Catholic latina point of view in a setting that's not often used--the southwest, and uses a main character who's working class, a woman, who has very strong opinions and a point of view, and the other character is male priest or Slavic stock. What she does, and why, makes you think, and horrifies at the same time. Which is the point of most zombie stories isn't it? It's the only story that I remember, aside from Tell Me Like You Done Before (the Mice&Men riff) by Scott Edelman.
Comparing these two anthologies makes the contrasts pop out. I never really think of who the editors are of anthologies, or what their criteria for choosing stories are, but it's fairly evident here that one anthology is trying to be more inclusive, while the other one is trying to sell books by using Big Names (which always helps sell a book) while mostly ignoring varieties of other viewpoints that are not white male. While I can appreciate novels and short stories that mostly use white male points of view (The Stand, etc) and are sexist and Old World in their attitude about women's strengths and weaknesses, I'm much happier reading stories which don't ignore women, which feature women, don't have women as helpless pregnant help-meets that help patriarchy along. It's refreshing to know that others are represented as well.
Anyway, even if you're not into Zombies, give The Living Dead anthologies a try. The stories are uniformly well-written (if sexist here and there), have a plethora of stories written by women in women's point of view and have some decent stories written by men in a female point of view. Zombies aren't just creatures of fear-they're also creatures of modern statement. Meaning, just like in science fiction, they're relevant to current American culture (buybuybuy to bouey the economy).
Not all zombies are mindless. Not all humans have souls. Which is worse?
The Living Dead anthology (1 & 2) are both excellent, AND Joe Johnson Adams the editor, manages to do what so many other anthology editors don't do; he infuses his anthology with tons of stories written by-get this-WOMEN WRITERS. Yes, just about every other story is written by a woman (there are about 20) and believe me, yes, it makes a difference to see that my own gender is represented so well in the pages and in the stories themselves. Even though women are usually educated to read and write about white men, and it can be difficult for women writers to crack out of that box, when they do, it's terrific. It's not going to be only white men surviving disasters (zombie or otherwise). Women are going to be more than sex-fodder, rape-fodder, rescue-fodder, and all the usual crap that women are used as in most literature or genre fiction.
The front of The Living Dead 2 lists Cherie Priest, Kelley Armstrong and Carrie Ryan along with Max Brooks. Inside there's this list of writers: Paula R. Stiles; Karina Sumner-Smith; Molly Brown; Jamie Lackey; Amelia Beamer; Brenna Yovanoff; Mira Grant; Cherie Priest; Kelly Link; Krya Shon; Kelley Armstrong; Carrie Ryan; Kim Paffenroth, R.J. Sevin & Julia Sevin; Catherine MacLeod; Genevieve Valentine; and Sarah Lanagan. No Poppy Z. Brite this time around, but hopefully she'll be in a third anthology. More of the stories in this book are original, although there are some reprints. All in all, most of the stories were involving. That's 18 out of 44 stories. That's 41% of the anthology. Pretty good. And most of the stories are pretty high quality, too, making you think.
The biggest disappointment was The Skull-Faced City by David Barr Kirtley. It's a sequel to a story he wrote for the first anthology, which he explained was written in anger about an ass-faced male friend of his who was abusive to his girlfriend (the friend's girlfriend, not his own). In the sequel, all the women are rescued, are pregnant, or abused, and have very little agency of their own. That's par for the course in a lot of horror stories, so nothing new there.
Last Stand by Kelley Armstrong sticks in my mind the most. She explores the concept of the Other explicitly in this story, and you're left wondering who the zombies are for the first few pages. The zombies aren't traditional mindless things in this, and they have a woman leader of immense steely strength leading them.
The other anthology is The Dead That Walk edited by Stephen Jones. His anthology has many more Big Names in it: Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison (with a story that made no sense at all to me), Joe Hill, Stephen King, Richard Matheson, etc. No women listed on the cover. Who are the writers inside? Let's see: Yvonne Navarro; Nancy Holder; Lisa Morton; Kelly Dunn. That's out of 24 stories. That's 4/24, or 6% of the total number of stories. I don't like distilling an anothology into gender percentages, but it does start to irk when you read story after story after story from a predominately white male point of view--even when the stories like that are written by women writers. Remember when I mentioned that women writers have to break out of that box, making the white male the protag of their stores because that's the default? -- it also doesn't help when an anthology chooses that kind of story to include, when there are other points of view to include.
I was less impressed with The Dead That Walk overall, heavy-hitter writers or not. I did really enjoy a riff off of Of Mice & Men near the end of the book. But that's more or less because my daughter had just been reading through it for school, and I got to review the original book. I just don't "get" Harlan Ellison. Maybe back when I was in high school and could wrap my head around disjointed seeming experimental narratives, but not now. Joe Hill's contribution is one that I've seen before, and doesn't actually include actual zombies (that's okay, but this fell flat for me). For The Good of All by Yvonne Navarro sticks in my head, though. She's writes a Catholic latina point of view in a setting that's not often used--the southwest, and uses a main character who's working class, a woman, who has very strong opinions and a point of view, and the other character is male priest or Slavic stock. What she does, and why, makes you think, and horrifies at the same time. Which is the point of most zombie stories isn't it? It's the only story that I remember, aside from Tell Me Like You Done Before (the Mice&Men riff) by Scott Edelman.
Comparing these two anthologies makes the contrasts pop out. I never really think of who the editors are of anthologies, or what their criteria for choosing stories are, but it's fairly evident here that one anthology is trying to be more inclusive, while the other one is trying to sell books by using Big Names (which always helps sell a book) while mostly ignoring varieties of other viewpoints that are not white male. While I can appreciate novels and short stories that mostly use white male points of view (The Stand, etc) and are sexist and Old World in their attitude about women's strengths and weaknesses, I'm much happier reading stories which don't ignore women, which feature women, don't have women as helpless pregnant help-meets that help patriarchy along. It's refreshing to know that others are represented as well.
Anyway, even if you're not into Zombies, give The Living Dead anthologies a try. The stories are uniformly well-written (if sexist here and there), have a plethora of stories written by women in women's point of view and have some decent stories written by men in a female point of view. Zombies aren't just creatures of fear-they're also creatures of modern statement. Meaning, just like in science fiction, they're relevant to current American culture (buybuybuy to bouey the economy).
Not all zombies are mindless. Not all humans have souls. Which is worse?
