Max Brooks (Mel Brooks' son) last wrote the funny "Zombie Survival Guide", which takes the subject UTTLERLY seriously, to hilarious effect.
His new book is suprisingly compelling fiction, he takes the personna of an interviewer who is collecting the survivors stories. WWZ differs from other zombie tales in that humans win in the end, after being driven into protected refugee zones, they eventually reclaim lands lost to the dead.
There is a great story about a family that 'bugs out' with guns and canned foods and extra gas. They keep going north. The situation they end up in with the other survivalists is just about as bad as the situation they left. Perhaps interesting for some folks here.
Another story about all the yuppies whose skill sets are obsolete once TSHTF, and their reaction as they end up end up being retrained by immigrant and working poor instructors, who know how to survive on little, make things last, and fix stuff.
The book is set globally, stories from all over the place.
I wasn't sure whether to post this here or not, but since everyone is always using the 'zombie horde' metaphor for starving urbanites and suburbanites I thought it would fit here just fine.
PS the audio book has really good voice actors. Alan Alda tells one of the stories, I heard it at my friends house before I bought the book. The have a full cast so all the international accents are spot on.
Again this is suprising good writing for a first time fiction write. I suppose the "oral history' aspect makes it easier to write than trying your hand at prose. Anyway, its good fun stuff that manages to do something new with the zombie myth.
