The Berlin Wall separates the free from the zombie in this well developed tale of alternate history. –Nicholas Royle’s “Saxophone” depicts self-aware zombies living the chronically hampered and deprived life of those behind the iron curtain. The journal mostly explores the variety of reactions found in the other survivors he meets along his journey. –Glen Vasey’s Choices follows a young man’s journal of the first months of a zombie apocalypse under the looming cloud of knowing that the journal is “found evidence” not accompanied by the writer. Two of the sixteen short stories and novellas rose above the rest for me, meriting 4 stars: All zombie detectives fall into this category. There are of course exceptions in a zombie sub-genre where the zombie retains thoughts and memories and must deal with their “condition” as if it were akin to chronic disease. Zombies, by cultural definition, are humans deprived of free will and acting the animal or the manipulations of another. And often times the zombies don’t move and act in a consistent way which takes seriously the defining situational characteristics they’ve been assigned. These tales stem from an era when zombies had not broken out of B horror films. At the very least, it makes obvious the more complex view of zombie lit as a genre. This zombie-themed anthology came out in the 1980s and shows it.
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