World War Z
Jun. 1st, 2009 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gategrrlI finished World War Z a few days ago, and went through some of the chapters again.
I can understand why it's been optioned for a film; but I have no idea at this point where along the process it is, aside from a director having been hired. But this is Hollywood, and you never know what's going to happen.
I have to admit that the stories in the book which hit the hardest, or were the most memorable, were the ones narrated by the women. One woman tells about the ends that the people who tried to escape into Canada went to survive (let's just say, not everyone survived the dreaded Canadian winter...with their flesh intact). And then there was the pilot, now a Colonel, who swears she heard another woman over her handset radio guide her to safety...but even though the evidence says otherwise, that other woman never existed.
I thought...it was curious how Brooks had the zombie plague originate in China. There's never any guess as to *what* causes the zombies at all. That issue is never addressed. But HOW zombies spread--that's the interesting part. He inserts a doctor who talks about the illegal trade in organs, ripped from still-living Chinese prisoners, and how those transplants were part of the reason for the wide-spread appearance of zombies everywhere. Then Brooks takes his narrator to Tibet, where the largest city in the world still exists, and the human smuggler there details how the zombies spread to Africa (a popular destination for Chinese trying to escape the zombie plague).
From there, until it's admitted what the zombies are, it's called the "African rabies"!
Even though the Swine flu (remember that recent scare?) originated in Mexico, there was some furor about it being called the "Mexican Flu"--which was quickly taken back by the people who coined that term.
Other than the politics, which World War Z if rife with, the actual story of the spread, the fights, the techniques for getting rid of zombies, and how people dealt with it, and twenty years after the near-extinction of the human race how they *still* deal with it--all feels remarkably spot on for psychology. Little nation-states emerge, and are then stamped out by the army. Last Men On Earth abound. So do people who believe they ARE zombies (really, they're walking in comas).
I was disappointed by the limited number of female viewpoints in WWZ, but to be honest, that he included any at all was surprising. And that one of the women was in the military was even more surprising.
If I didn't have so many other books waiting in my TBR pile, I'd reread it more thoroughly.
I can understand why it's been optioned for a film; but I have no idea at this point where along the process it is, aside from a director having been hired. But this is Hollywood, and you never know what's going to happen.
I have to admit that the stories in the book which hit the hardest, or were the most memorable, were the ones narrated by the women. One woman tells about the ends that the people who tried to escape into Canada went to survive (let's just say, not everyone survived the dreaded Canadian winter...with their flesh intact). And then there was the pilot, now a Colonel, who swears she heard another woman over her handset radio guide her to safety...but even though the evidence says otherwise, that other woman never existed.
I thought...it was curious how Brooks had the zombie plague originate in China. There's never any guess as to *what* causes the zombies at all. That issue is never addressed. But HOW zombies spread--that's the interesting part. He inserts a doctor who talks about the illegal trade in organs, ripped from still-living Chinese prisoners, and how those transplants were part of the reason for the wide-spread appearance of zombies everywhere. Then Brooks takes his narrator to Tibet, where the largest city in the world still exists, and the human smuggler there details how the zombies spread to Africa (a popular destination for Chinese trying to escape the zombie plague).
From there, until it's admitted what the zombies are, it's called the "African rabies"!
Even though the Swine flu (remember that recent scare?) originated in Mexico, there was some furor about it being called the "Mexican Flu"--which was quickly taken back by the people who coined that term.
Other than the politics, which World War Z if rife with, the actual story of the spread, the fights, the techniques for getting rid of zombies, and how people dealt with it, and twenty years after the near-extinction of the human race how they *still* deal with it--all feels remarkably spot on for psychology. Little nation-states emerge, and are then stamped out by the army. Last Men On Earth abound. So do people who believe they ARE zombies (really, they're walking in comas).
I was disappointed by the limited number of female viewpoints in WWZ, but to be honest, that he included any at all was surprising. And that one of the women was in the military was even more surprising.
If I didn't have so many other books waiting in my TBR pile, I'd reread it more thoroughly.
