Tag archives for Zombie
Last Words by Jackson Lear [Book Review]
Last Words by Jackson Lear My rating: 5 of 5 stars I really enjoyed this. It starts off as a holiday diary of a 23 year old British back-packer making his way around Europe. The tension builds gradually from inconvenience and annoyance into the full blown horror of a zombie apocalypse. It felt much more real and plausible to me than most of the zombie books I've read, with one exception. Last Words Mark spends most of his time running away and trying vainly to get home. He travels with a small group of friends, who gradually get split up for one reason or another. He travels through Spain, over to Morocco, into a civil war torn Algeria and then to Tunisia. Through this he relies on others to speak or translate or help. Mark is just a normal guy…
Attacked by a Zombie Baby (Story)
English: A participant of a Zombie walk, Asbury Park NJ, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) This week I have been attacked by a story about a zombie baby. After spending too much time thinking about what was wrong with some contemporary zombie stories I ended up writing a bit of one to get it out of my head. Zombie Baby Patient zero in my story is a zombie baby. I had an interesting Twitter conversation with some doctors about how an Accident and Emergency might approach it. On the face of it we have a baby that is alive, it reacts to sight and sound and tries to grab people and bite them. So it's alive. However, no discernible pulse or respiration. Here are just some of the tweets I've been writing my zombie baby story in the wattpad app because…
Zombie Stories Breaking my Suspension of Disbelief
I've been reading zombie stories recently and enjoying them, Max Brooks World War Z for a second time and Frank Tayell's Surviving the Evacuation series (1-3 so far). However, there are a number of things though that I find it hard to keep my disbelief suspended in. Zombie Stories So I completely understand that zombie stories aren't about the hard science, or even about zombies. They're underlying tales of the human struggle with death. We also like the post apocalyptic survival thing. Who doesn't think they could break the rules and survive when society breaks down? It's a cool escapist fantasy, and there are hordes of zombie movies and books out there that pander to it. Zombie Pandemic English: The Spanish Influenza. Chart showing mortality from the 1918 influenza pandemic in the US and Europe. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Pandemics happen.…
Book Review – Firefall by Peter Watts
Firefall by Peter Watts My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is an epic science fiction first contact piece that left me wondering about sentience, consciousness and whether I could trust anything I saw, heard or felt. It is certainly the best book that I have read so far in 2015. Peter Watt's acceptance speech at the Hugo Awards ceremony in 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The book is an expansion of a previous novella, which is about half of the story. It's set in an advanced human spaceship travelling out to make contact with some suspicious anomalies in the outer solar system a few years after a massive extraterrestial probing of Earth, the firefall of the title. The mission is lead by a vampire (Peter Watts has a novel take on vampires, and they're not the traditional blood drinking horrors,…
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Urban Nightmare – the megagame pt.2
Shortly after lunchtime (when I ate my lunch, megagames don't have breaks, they run continuously until the end) I changed role. The trigger for this was that the Emergency Services didn't really need two players (and Geoff had clearly got the hang of megagames even though it was his first time). Also Federal assistance was invoked, and there wasn't a player team at Federal level (because it was always uncertain if it would be required and carried too much risk of boredom to be staffed before it was required). Combat Service Identification Badge of the 101st Airborne Division (Photo credit: Wikipedia) So I ended up as a Major General in charge of the 101st Airborne Division and in command of the Federalised State National Guard forces. I also had a special forces team attached. The direct Federal team was lead by…