World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Read World War Z on PDF Reader on my Android.
I’m not a fan of zombies, not by a long shot. I enjoyed Dawn (and especially Shaun) of the Dead, Zombieland, 28 Days Later, I have dabbled with The Walking Dead and Left4Dead, but all of this has been collateral from friends bringing me along for the ride each time. As far as I can recall, I had never picked up a zombie story on my own before reading World War Z, and this I did because the “oral history” of the title caught my attention. I was also aware that the movie adaptation of the book was completely different and apparently mostly shite compared to the source material, so I got intrigued.
World War Z is written like the first chronicle compiled after the Zombie War’s been “won” (that’s not a spoiler, the existence of the book itself is proof of the survival of the human race). It’s supposedly the transcription of the writer’s sound recordings from his interviews with survivors from around the world and their stories of making it through, which as a narrative tool alone is quite brilliant. Most were military and soldier types, but there were others that presented a different side to the story: a blind hibakusha gardener, a Canadian teen, a French firefighter (I think it was) stuck in the Paris catacombs together with hundreds of thousands of people, the Chinese doctor who witnessed Patient Zero… even the stories of the soldiers were varied and told of how tactics everywhere in the world had to be completely re-imagined in order to repel an enemy that needs no supplies, never rests, grows in numbers while human forces dwindle, counts no injuries etc.
One of my favourite accounts was of a Chinese nuclear submarine that went rogue to increase chances of escaping contamination and discovered a makeshift marine utopia somewhere in the Pacific comprised of seafaring survivors from all over the world. Another one was of a Hollywood director that created films together with the US Military and had huge zombie-destroying lasers in them, weapons which in actual combat were very inefficient but the zombie-annihilating spectacle they delivered was perfect for boosting the morale of the surviving West Coast. These films went to significantly decrease the number of people dying of Asymptomatic Demise Syndrome (had to Google that), i.e. people dying in their sleep because of apparent lack of will to wake up again the next morning. Propaganda in the name of… life?
Another account still described how some people had never been bit, had never contracted the virus, nothing was medically wrong with them, but they would still turn into zombies—at least they acted as zombies—all due to pure psychological breakdown. Survivors would tell the difference between live and dead zombies from looking at their eyes: “reanimated” corpses who had succumbed to “African Rabies” never blinked again, permanently exposing their eyes to the elements, which would slowly turn them dull and murky.
World War Z is full of such little well-thought details that I appreciate in sci-fi/alt-history stories that make it an engaging and believable read. My disbelief was suspended, even for as an absurd thing as zombies. I mean, how could such a thing as an organism that is dead, yet isn’t, doesn’t decay in water, needs no food, has no circulation, makes no apparent use of its five senses to “hunt” yet only dies when its brain is destr… ah, what a pedant, that’s precisely where the horror’s at!
…I suppose.