Zombies in my sci-fi!
Dec. 11th, 2009 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasitheaOkay sci-fi writers... Look... I think it's time we had a little discussion.
I'm bored with zombies. I'm sick and tired of zombies in every freaking story I listen to.
I've been a zombie in a flash mob. Recently I was wearing a ghoulish set of face paint with eyes and horns and green skin and I lurched along the street at twilight alone and I saw that indeed zombies do work, even the classic ones. I could get right up within grabbing people before they even noticed a large percentage of the time.
But this doesn't change the fact that I'm just plain bored of zombie stories. You set up cool sci-fi. Man finds an alien artifact, ends up far from everything they know, discovers alien cultures and ... OMGZ ZOMBIES! And then all the cool world building and stuff you've done gets thrown out and it's just a zombie story.
Zombies don't scare me, okay. I'm surrounded by zombies. If you like zombies, Sean of the Dead should have explained this to you. We're in a world full of real zombies. Mindless stupid animals that want to infect you and drag you down into their version of reality.
If you want to write about zombies, fine with me. You're the writer. What you do is your thing, but could you just tell me up front that it's going to be yet another zombie story so I don't waste my time getting interested in the story for the first five chapters?
Oh, and another thing. As prevalent as zombies are in pop culture, why is it that characters in space zombie stories, when faced with ACTUAL staggering undead just assume that if they get bit by a zombie, things will work out different? For that matter, why do techno zombies even need to bite people. If you hit them with a machine gun at close range, aren't you probably going to inhale some of the spray of their blood that's contaminated with the engineered virus, nanites, or whatever plot hook you're using to tell another boring zombie story? How about that huh? Why wouldn't the military team instantly quarantine everyone who was anywhere near the zombies? But oooh noooo. They have to get BIT and then NO ONE CONSIDERS THE POSSIBILITY THEY'LL BECOME INFECTED.
You see what I mean about living in a world run by zombies? I'm surrounded. Come on. They're fantasy characters. They're supposedly highly trained soldiers and scientists. Give your zombies some freaking brains before they get bit by the other zombies.
*sigh*
I'm bored with zombies. I'm sick and tired of zombies in every freaking story I listen to.
I've been a zombie in a flash mob. Recently I was wearing a ghoulish set of face paint with eyes and horns and green skin and I lurched along the street at twilight alone and I saw that indeed zombies do work, even the classic ones. I could get right up within grabbing people before they even noticed a large percentage of the time.
But this doesn't change the fact that I'm just plain bored of zombie stories. You set up cool sci-fi. Man finds an alien artifact, ends up far from everything they know, discovers alien cultures and ... OMGZ ZOMBIES! And then all the cool world building and stuff you've done gets thrown out and it's just a zombie story.
Zombies don't scare me, okay. I'm surrounded by zombies. If you like zombies, Sean of the Dead should have explained this to you. We're in a world full of real zombies. Mindless stupid animals that want to infect you and drag you down into their version of reality.
If you want to write about zombies, fine with me. You're the writer. What you do is your thing, but could you just tell me up front that it's going to be yet another zombie story so I don't waste my time getting interested in the story for the first five chapters?
Oh, and another thing. As prevalent as zombies are in pop culture, why is it that characters in space zombie stories, when faced with ACTUAL staggering undead just assume that if they get bit by a zombie, things will work out different? For that matter, why do techno zombies even need to bite people. If you hit them with a machine gun at close range, aren't you probably going to inhale some of the spray of their blood that's contaminated with the engineered virus, nanites, or whatever plot hook you're using to tell another boring zombie story? How about that huh? Why wouldn't the military team instantly quarantine everyone who was anywhere near the zombies? But oooh noooo. They have to get BIT and then NO ONE CONSIDERS THE POSSIBILITY THEY'LL BECOME INFECTED.
You see what I mean about living in a world run by zombies? I'm surrounded. Come on. They're fantasy characters. They're supposedly highly trained soldiers and scientists. Give your zombies some freaking brains before they get bit by the other zombies.
*sigh*
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-11 07:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-11 07:38 pm (UTC)Yeah. Zombies are a bit moldy, and falling apart. No brains left.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-11 08:51 pm (UTC)The weird thing is; I think about stuff like Cthulhu or steampunk and I find I still like the original material and kinda bristle at the dumbed down pop culture version once everyone and their second cousins think it's the coolest thing in the world. Maybe with zombies, there was never anything with more depth out there, like what you get with say Lovecraft or Verne or Wells or Mieville or whatever.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-12 12:42 am (UTC)I still like some of the original stuff for steampunk, but sadly I've only seen derivative stuff of Lovecraft and not gone to the source yet. Might be hard to read after playing Arkham Horror, but maybe not.
Depth in zombie related things tends more towards the existential horrors of being 'the last man on earth' or some such. Rarely any depth on the part of the actual zombies, other than 'they run fast or shamble slow, but kill you or turn you one way or another'.