World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Max Brooks

Using a series of short interviews (between one paragraph and a few pages) with war veterans worldwide, the narrator presents an overall history of the zombie war. Sometime in the near future, a disease blooms that reanimates the dead. In fact, it only reanimates the dead who are infected when they die, and upon reanimation, the only thing that can kill them is destruction of the brain. They are zombies. And if they bite you, you become infected and will reanimate when you die. This history traces the development of the disease, subsequent global panic, national isolationism and international cooperation to overcome the zombies. While I was not a big fan of the literary technique of so many interviews with so many people (I thought Robopocalypse did it better by choosing a few people and returning to them for a series of interviews), Brooks was able to use the clearly ridiculous zombie backdrop as a mechanism for discussing serious topics such as the political causes and implications of war as well as the psychological effects on both civilians and soldiers. The investigations into PTSD are particularly interesting and relevant as we see modern warfare increasingly dehumanize the enemy. Strange that we might be able to learn a bit about humanity from a zombie, sci-fi novel. Or maybe not strange, but unfortunate that we may not be able to actually hear the truths that might be present in a zombie, sci-fi novel.

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