From the Bookshelf of Apocalypse Whenever…

Zombie Apocalypse! (Zombie Apocalypse, #1)

Stephen Jones (Editor),

Pat Cadigan

Why we're reading this: Controversial plans to build on the site of an old church in South London releases a centuries-old plague…more
[close] Controversial plans to build on the site of an old church in South London releases a centuries-old plague that turns its victims into flesh-hungry ghouls whose bite or scratch passes the contagion on to others. Even worse, the virus may also have a supernatural origin with the power to revive the dead.

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Oct 25, 2016 Colleen rated it really liked it

Shelves: horror, zombies, humor

This should get some award for having the most unimaginative title ever. For such a creative book--and I was actually suprised, judging this entirely on cover and title--I was pleasantly shocked. I also thought this was just a standard gory short story collection, but nope. Totally wrong there too. There are multiple authors, since this is a book in multiple formats--no straight up narrative--handwritten diary entries, video clips, newspaper stories, voicemails, emails, emails, instant messages, ...more

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May 31, 2011 Schnaucl rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, anthology, library, horror, may, post-apocalyptic, zombies, read_2011

3.5 stars.

This is an anthology only in the strictest sense (it has many authors). I assumed it would be like other mammoth anthologies in that it would be a collection of short stories. Instead, it's a collection of documents generated during a zombie apocalypse.

I was actually struck not by the zombie apocalypse stuff but by the sense of a country on the decline in the first few sections of the book. I'm used to thinking of America as being an empire in decline, I hadn't really thought of Britai 3.5 stars.

This is an anthology only in the strictest sense (it has many authors). I assumed it would be like other mammoth anthologies in that it would be a collection of short stories. Instead, it's a collection of documents generated during a zombie apocalypse.

I was actually struck not by the zombie apocalypse stuff but by the sense of a country on the decline in the first few sections of the book. I'm used to thinking of America as being an empire in decline, I hadn't really thought of Britain being in decline (though I just read a story that said their economic recovery may be the slowest since 1830). It really made me want to read more fiction with that as the focus, the decline of countries since the 2008 financial crisis. But that was not this story. Although what started it was actually a bread and circuses type diversion from the decline of the country.

Some of the documents were interesting, some of the hand written ones were slightly difficult to read, and some of the documents were dry and boring. I did, however, love the government plan for what to do in case of a zombie attack.

Something about the book didn't quite work for me though. I don't know if it's that it was all documents or something else. I think that kind of thing tends to work best when it's incorporated as part of a larger narrative. As it is you're left wondering who this collection was made for. Somebody bothered to put it all together and even separate entries chronologically so even if someone wrote something covering a month you might get two weeks, a bunch of other documents and then the remaining two weeks. Is this supposed to be something for the military to see? The government? The average person? It needs at least a little more context.

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May 28, 2015 Jak rated it really liked it

I picked this up on a whim not really expecting much and was very pleasantly surprised. I’m not one who usually enjoys the writing style of collated dispatches, interviews, transcripts etc but I didn’t mind it here. Some are obviously more interesting than others and some are quite silly but on the whole I though the continued narrative throughout the ‘pieces’ helped hold the story together for a fun romp through the zombie uprising.

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