World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (4 stars)

I'm a zombie fan, so it was about time I got around to reading this.  I have to admit being largely put-off by the fairly average movie inspired by the book, but I was assured that the book was much better.  It definitely is.  In fact, they could have stuck closer to the book and made a much more interesting movie.

Brooks has put a considerable amount of thought into many aspects of the world's military and political reaction to a zombie apocalypse.  I was fascinated by the catastrophic failure of traditional military weapons and tactics in the face of an enemy completely without fear at the battle of Yonkers.

But what if the enemy can't be shocked and awed? Not just won't, but biologically can't?

Troops with high-tech "Land Warrior" network centric communications and satellite imagery, a key strategic advantage in normal warfare, were quickly demoralized and running in fear after getting detailed images of the horde and seeing their friends eaten on live video uplinks.  Tanks, artillery, air-craft, navy, the jewels of a modern military were all very expensive and very inefficient ways to kill Zombies.  Eventually all of this is supplanted by far more efficient simple rifles and simple hand-to-hand weapons.

My 2c on zombie eradication.  At the point where they were rounding up zombies to send them towards highly efficient sniper emplacements I thought they should have been using a mobile slaughterhouse corral and pneumatic bolts to destroy the brain.  A lot more automated, cheap, and less prone to mistakes than snipers.  Similarly for the underwater zombies problem, nets and a floating slaughterhouse would work the same way.

I liked that the interviews spanned a large time period, so we got a birds eye view of the whole history of the war.  Particularly interesting was the period after the humans carve out some viable territory and need to re-organise all of society for war and reconstruction.

The first labor survey stated clearly that over 65 percent of the present civilian workforce were classified F-6, possessing no valued vocation.

This is totally me, useless after the zombie apocalypse.  Well, perhaps not completely useless if computer communications are still a thing, but certainly no civil engineer or carpenter.  You can imagine this doesn't exactly sit well with everyone:

The more work you do, the more money you make, the more peons you hire to free you up to make more money. That's the way the world works. But one day it doesn't. No one needs a contract reviewed or a deal brokered. What it does need is toilets fixed. And suddenly that peon is your teacher, maybe even your boss. For some, this was scarier than the living dead.

The idea of Quislings, living people who act like zombies out of some Stockholm-Syndrome-like impulse, was fantastically imagined.

This novel is really quite a strange format.  It's basically a series of short stories, so you don't spend much time with any of the characters.  It's part academic paper, part military after action report, and part touching personal news reporting, all about a very fictional subject.  At times it is powerful and almost inspirational:

There's a word for that kind of lie. Hope. 

This novel probably appeals most to people who have spent considerable amounts of time pondering what the best zombie survival strategies are, what weapons are most effective and durable, and generally how you would survive this invented apocalypse.

4 stars.

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft (3.5 stars)

Cthulhu has been calling me for some time, and I finally succumbed to the lure of the octopus-headed dragon thingy from the deep. For me the call came from numerous pop culture and game references, but Lovecraft's short stories have generally been hugely influential in the world of sci-fi/horror/fastasy, and a source of inspiration for many creative works. Just take a look at the lengthy Cthulhu Mythos page.

After reading this collection I had a great respect for Lovecraft's imagination, and his ability to build a chilling and creepy atmosphere. The chronological order of stories allows the reader to experience Lovecraft's growth in abilities as an author. During the first story Dagon, I wondered why I was reading this at all. The story seemed to be a prop to drop as many names as possible to show off the literary education of the author:

...would have excited the envy of a Doré...beyond the imagination of a Poe or Bulwer...Vast, Polyphemus-like...

But things get better. The Picture in the House managed to build a lot of creeping fear for a very short story and The Outsider was a really nice idea that I think could have been built into an entire novel as the main character explores the foreign world up above and we learn about his world below.

Herbert West - Reanimator drove me nuts with the constant re-caps. I guess this was originally published as a serial, requiring some level of introduction for new readers, but it was maddening to read a number of background-filling sentences like "It was in those college days that he had begun his terrible experiments..." every few pages. I did like the talking head though, that was cute.

The Hound brought us back to name-dropping, *sigh* although overall the story was pretty clever.

While Lovecraft's imagination is fantastic, and his ability to chill the room is impressive, these talents vastly exceed his actual writing ability. He uses a couple of very lazy tropes, namely "and then I woke up" and "too horrible to describe".

In He, a miraculous escape is made. How convenient the protagonist just woke up outside safe and sound with no explanation required?

The man who found me said I must have crawled a long way despite my broken bones, for a trail of blood stretched off as far as he dared look...report could state no more than that I had appeared from a place unknown...

For "too horrible to describe" we have, in Cool Air:

What was, or had been, on the couch I cannot and dare not say here.

and in The Hound:

I cannot reveal the details of our shocking expeditions, or catalogue even partly the worst of the trophies adorning the nameless museum we prepared in the great stone house...

and in Herbert West - Reanimator:

The scene I cannot describe - I should faint if I tried it...

If there is a word that Lovecraft enjoys above no other it is "Cyclopean". Look it up, you'll read it in every story.

The last few stories are brilliant (by the way The Rats in the Walls was my favourite of the earlier ones). Still plenty of weaknesses in the writing, but the powerful imagination and creepiness makes up for everything. I loved The Colour Out of Space, The Whisperer in Darkness, and The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

Particularly in The Whisperer in Darkness I had to suspend my disbelief that Akeley would have shootouts with aliens every night and his only response was to write a few letters to a stranger and buy new police dogs every other day from some local inexhaustible pool that didn't ask any questions. And that Wilmarth was gullible enough to fall into a comically obvious trap. Still, I equate the latter with the urge to yell "look behind you" in a horror movie.

Overall my favourite moment from all the stories was the narrator's flight from Innsmouth in The Shadow Over Innsmouth while being pursued by a legion of underwater horrors. Brilliant, creepy stuff.

It's hard to rate a collection of short stories, some of which are weak, others amazing. The collection is definitely worth a read, even just so you understand all the random Cthulhu pop culture references.

3.5 stars.