Blake and Erin return to Las Vegas this week, and take a little time away to chat about all the geektastic stuff that’s happened on their trip, including a review of the film Battle: Los Angeles, Erin’s feelings on Morning Glories, thoughts on airplane reads, including the hefty Superman: Our Worlds at War collected edition, and adventures across the real Sin City! Contact us with comments, suggestions, or anything else at Showcase@CXPulp.com!
Music provided by Music Alley from Mevio.
Blake is running solo this week, and he uses the time to pay tribute to the memory of Dwayne McDuffie, including talking about some of his favorite McDuffie work and reviewing the new All Star Superman animated film. On a lighter note, this week Blake and Erin are jetting off to Las Vegas, so he discusses comics and books they’ll be reading on the plane. In the picks, it’s Darkwing Duck Annual #1! Contact us with comments, suggestions, or anything else at Showcase@CXPulp.com!
Music provided by Music Alley from Mevio.
Episode 212: Hats Off to Mr. McDuffie
Some people are burned out on zombies. Movies, comic books, novels, and now even Golden Globe-nominated TV shows have tackled this subgenre of horror from virtually every conceivable angle, leaving us with little you can do that doesn’t rely on changing the tropes entirely. But you see, friends, I believe it is possible to change up the tropes a little without throwing out everything that makes zombies cool. And in last year’s novel Feed, Mira Grant proved that she’s the woman to do it.
In Feed, Grant takes us to a world where two experimental cures for existing diseases somehow combined to create a plague that transforms the recently dead into flesh-eating monsters. So far, it’s pretty standard stuff. But in this world, while the government and medical establishment are busy covering things up and pretending nothing is wrong (go figure), the bloggers of the world step up and tell people how to survive.
Fast-forward to 2040, when the world has changed considerably. Hazard zones are established and ranked and the blogosphere has blown up into a source for news far different from the old print media, but even more relevant than ever before. Georgia Mason and her brother, Shaun, are two such bloggers who have been trying to climb the ranks when they get the ultimate call — to travel in the entourage of presidential candidate Peter Ryman as the official press corps of the campaign. It’s the sort of thing that can make their careers — if they can survive the assassination attempts that start to crop up.
Grant has done something incredible, blending in a bit of science fiction, a healthy dose of George Romero-style zombie horror, and a lot of political intrigue to make an excellent story. The characters and plot are both wonderfully strong, but even stronger is the way she’s build this world. That, I think, is what I love about this novel more than anything else. Most zombie stories either start at the very beginning of the outbreak or take us into a world that has completely devolved into chaos, where society has fallen and it’s every man for himself. This book doesn’t do either of those things. In Grant’s world, civilization has survived the Rising of the undead, but it has forced itself to evolve. She goes into great detail to show just how the changes of the zombie rising have effected day-to-day life (installing car doors with blood tests to make sure you haven’t converted, for example, or having cigarettes become a boom industry again because one of the cures that accidentally created the zombie virus also succeeded in its original goal of eradicating cancer).
The way the media establishment has changed in this book is particularly interesting to me. Grant isn’t making this stuff up out of whole cloth, she’s observing real societal changes that are happening right now, combining them with the world of “the Rising,” and extrapolating a new status quo that really makes a lot of sense. I could genuinely imagine a media structure similar to this one evolving in the next decade, as print media becomes less and less relevant and online reporting continues to lose its early stigma.
This is a really smart book, well-written, and highly entertaining. The second book in the “Newsflesh Trilogy,” Deadline, is scheduled for May of this year, and I’ll certainly be waiting to read it.
I’ve got less time to post tonight than I did yesterday. Darted to Best Buy after school, got my hands on DCU Online, the massive install is happening now. Woot.
Going to Thibodaux tonight to work the door for our newest production, Crimes of the Heart, starring several friends of mine and directed by the inimitable Daniel Ruiz. Go to ThibodauxPlayhouse.org for more info.
I’ll do a full review soon, but if you want a different kind of zombie novel, look for Feed by Mira Grant. Friggin’ great.
Mark Twain’s real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. I think we should bring back the name Langhorne. Do you know how many kids I’ve taught named Dylan, Cody, Mason, or some alternative spelling thereof? I have never taught a Langhorne.
I’m just sayin’.
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