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So a friend and I are wanting to pull off some kind of "zombie" story. We could do it, and make it pretty dang awesome if we wanted to...but I want to know if I'm fishing in the wrong end of the pond here. Should I stick to something else? or is this particular type of story getting lame?
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It's the "Lord of the Rings" of the zombie genre. Really a great book, worth reading even if you aren't interested in the zombie sub-genre it spawned. But reading the original will give you a sense of perspective on what's been done.
Posts: 683 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Anything that has been done, or overdone, can be done well. Look at comic book movies. Batman was really cool. Batman and Forever kind of sucked, Batman and Robin was overdone. Batman Begins was awesome. Anything done right and done well can find an audience.
Look at Buffy and Angel. They were incredibly corny sometimes, but really awesome other times.
Then there's the Resident Evil series. Four movies now on zombies. Shawn of the Dead parodies the zombie genre, and if something can be parodied, it must have been popular at some point.
So, if you've got a really good zombie idea, write it. If it doesn't sell, then at least you got the experience from writing it. Anything you write, even if it's popular now, might have a hard time selling when you're done.
But don't go by me---I'm old and jaded, and besides that, I spend a lot of time reworking old ideas myself. (Living corpses pop up in my work a lot.) If it floats your boat, if you think you can give it a new spin, go ahead.
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Richard Matheson wrote I AM LEGEND. And it's not exactly a zombie novel -- it's a vampire novel.
Posts: 130 | Registered: Apr 2007
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Night of the Living Dead and 28 Days Later are knock-offs of I Am Legend. It's kind of like Rambo--Rambo I was released as a drama, but it spawned a whole genre of action films, so now it can be considered an action film. I Am Legend is technically about "vampires," it spawned a whole sub-genre of zombie stuff, so now it can be considered a zombie book.
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I AM LEGEND is a hard-SF vampire book. Period. You don't redefine what a book is because of the stuff it inspired. LEGEND has nothing to do with zombies. When it was published, the only kind of zombie that was written about was rooted in voodoo; think of the old Lugosi movie, WHITE ZOMBIE. Romero was inspired by I AM LEGEND, yes, but Romero created a new kind of zombie. If we can't keep these basic ideas in their proper historical order, how can we expect to write intelligent SF?
Posts: 130 | Registered: Apr 2007
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"If we can't keep these basic ideas in their proper historical order, how can we expect to write intelligent SF?"
Implication being that because I disagree with your interpretation of this history of zombies, I can't write intelligent SF? I don't see how those two propositions are logically connected. A more appropriate question might be, "if we can't distinguish between semantic differences and substantive differences, how can we expect to write intelligent SF?"
The essential question of this thread is "how old/unoriginal is" a zombie idea. We should be answering that question rather than seeing how many angels we can get to dance on the head of a pin over a disagreement on semantics.
So to get back on topic: To get a sense of what's been done in that sub-genre, I Am Legend is the best starting place.
[This message has been edited by J (edited May 18, 2007).]
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...awhile ago, Schwarzeneggar was going to do a new movie version of "I Am Legend," but that fell through and he ran for California governor instead.
There are already two movie versions. They're okay in their own way, but neither captures the mood of the novel---"Night of the Living Dead" comes closer than either of them.
But I can't see "I Am Legend" as Hard SF. It's a situation---what if one normal man lived in a world of vampires?---and any SF trappings are just window dressing. (I read it when I was a kid...but I don't think I "got it" until I reread it about age thirty-five.)
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Back on "zombies done to death"...well, I know of one movie and a well-reviewed book all within the last year. There might be more. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. (I remember the book 'cause the writer was a "son of prominent people," and that tends to push my cheesed-off button. But I've done that to death in other threads.)
Check 'em out. They're easy to find. Anybody who's interested in horror movies should see "Night of the Living Dead." Anybody who's interested in (a) horror novels, or (b) a really good read, should check out "I Am Legend," too.
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