(no subject)
Someone on Slacktavist's latest Left Behind post comment thread mentioned that the people who didn't live through the cold war seem to be using a zombie apocalypse to plan for the end of the world. That's an interesting idea. I was always one of the 'oh thank god I live on a ground zero so I won't survive' types, but I think most people used to think of what they'd do. I think my seminal and most effecting book I read about post-nuclear war was Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien. I think I read it when I was about 11 and it's still haunting. As an aside, the Silver Crown also by him is wonderful too. He's the guy who wrote the Rats of Nimh.
I like zombie books so far, haven't read a huge amount. Max Brooks is just great, thought through everything, it seems and so very human. Feed was what I voted for for the Hugo last year, but the second one disappointed me, third is better, but not Feed. Those are post-apocalypse where they can't kill off all the zombies, at least not yet, so slightly different thought process.
And I loved Shaun of the Dead. I had several people who I thought would love the movie refuse to watch it because it's zombies, and they don't like zombies, one is old enough for the cold war, but the other three aren't so doesn't work there. All four were women, but so am I. I tend to see zombies as fun, funny, and an intellectual exercise. You know the rules, or you find them out, then you plan how to get out or protect yourself and whoever you find around. But zombies are slow, and totally brainless, so not like most other horror monsters. Hmm, in a way maybe they're our reaction to the Tea Party/Fox News crowd.
Not that anyone keeps any rules I can see these days for vampires, weres, and ghosts. Playing with them is fine, and you can even find a folklore that has different kinds of all of them, (Terry Pratchett has a rundown of a bunch in Carpe Jugulum including a vampire watermelon) but somehow just making them up out of whole cloth and calling them 'vampires' and of course I'm mostly talking about Twilight, is very annoying. I never liked the Anne Rice stuff either though, I wasn't fascinated by them and getting past the first book the BDSM stuff becomes more and more obvious and annoying to me. Just not my thing. But the romanticizing of vampires is what really annoyed me. And now the total 'My boyfriend the supernatural monster' fad just flabbergasts me. I know there are probably a lot of really good books in there, but come on! It tends to feel like 'Oh, I can make him better! If I just love him enough he'll change' and we know how that does not work. I haven't finished The Vampyre by Polidori but you know who the vampire is, and you can't get more actually Romantic than that. And almost every other vampire since first movie Dracula (not Nosferatu!) is a Byronic hero without anyone seeming to know what that means.
This is all stream of consciousness and late at night and I should go to bed but I think I'll post it just so I post something :)
I like zombie books so far, haven't read a huge amount. Max Brooks is just great, thought through everything, it seems and so very human. Feed was what I voted for for the Hugo last year, but the second one disappointed me, third is better, but not Feed. Those are post-apocalypse where they can't kill off all the zombies, at least not yet, so slightly different thought process.
And I loved Shaun of the Dead. I had several people who I thought would love the movie refuse to watch it because it's zombies, and they don't like zombies, one is old enough for the cold war, but the other three aren't so doesn't work there. All four were women, but so am I. I tend to see zombies as fun, funny, and an intellectual exercise. You know the rules, or you find them out, then you plan how to get out or protect yourself and whoever you find around. But zombies are slow, and totally brainless, so not like most other horror monsters. Hmm, in a way maybe they're our reaction to the Tea Party/Fox News crowd.
Not that anyone keeps any rules I can see these days for vampires, weres, and ghosts. Playing with them is fine, and you can even find a folklore that has different kinds of all of them, (Terry Pratchett has a rundown of a bunch in Carpe Jugulum including a vampire watermelon) but somehow just making them up out of whole cloth and calling them 'vampires' and of course I'm mostly talking about Twilight, is very annoying. I never liked the Anne Rice stuff either though, I wasn't fascinated by them and getting past the first book the BDSM stuff becomes more and more obvious and annoying to me. Just not my thing. But the romanticizing of vampires is what really annoyed me. And now the total 'My boyfriend the supernatural monster' fad just flabbergasts me. I know there are probably a lot of really good books in there, but come on! It tends to feel like 'Oh, I can make him better! If I just love him enough he'll change' and we know how that does not work. I haven't finished The Vampyre by Polidori but you know who the vampire is, and you can't get more actually Romantic than that. And almost every other vampire since first movie Dracula (not Nosferatu!) is a Byronic hero without anyone seeming to know what that means.
This is all stream of consciousness and late at night and I should go to bed but I think I'll post it just so I post something :)