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40th out of 801 books
—
2,539 voters
The Living Dead (The Living Dead #1)
by
John Joseph Adams (Goodreads Author) ,
Joe Hill, George R.R. Martin, Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman (Goodreads Author), Laurell K. Hamilton, Joe R. Lansdale, Poppy Z. Brite
,
more…
"When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth!" From White Zombie to Dawn of the Dead, Resident Evil to World War Z, zombies have invaded popular culture, becoming the monsters that best express the fears and anxieties of the modern west. Gathering together the best zombie literature of the last three decades from many of today's most renowned authors of...more
Paperback, 487 pages
Published
September 1st 2008
by Night Shade Books
(first published 2008)
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Apr 26, 2013
Skyla
is currently reading it
This Year’s Class Picture by Dan Simmonds
This is kind of a cute story about a dedicated teacher who still tries to teach the students she could not protect from getting bitten. For the past few years she has been teaching their walking corpses. She teaches them the same way she did when they were alive except now she gives them people nuggest instead of stickers as treats for their hard work.
Today is picture day and it is the day the teacher almost gives up on her kids until she sees something u...more
This is kind of a cute story about a dedicated teacher who still tries to teach the students she could not protect from getting bitten. For the past few years she has been teaching their walking corpses. She teaches them the same way she did when they were alive except now she gives them people nuggest instead of stickers as treats for their hard work.
Today is picture day and it is the day the teacher almost gives up on her kids until she sees something u...more
Feb 24, 2012
Tim Ward
is currently reading it
Dan Simmons's This Year's Class Picture
As the intro story to The Living Dead, I came into this read with high expectations. Dan places the reader into the life of a remarkably interesting woman, on a particularly important day. An elderly school teacher, and potentially the last teacher on Earth, impressed me with her resolve to survive. They say you have to keep your mind working or you'll lose it. Well, she does so by maintaining her teaching routine with a full class of children zombies. The...more
As the intro story to The Living Dead, I came into this read with high expectations. Dan places the reader into the life of a remarkably interesting woman, on a particularly important day. An elderly school teacher, and potentially the last teacher on Earth, impressed me with her resolve to survive. They say you have to keep your mind working or you'll lose it. Well, she does so by maintaining her teaching routine with a full class of children zombies. The...more
It turns out that you can read peering through the fingers of one hand. I'm totally terrified of zombies, so reading a collection of zombie stories is fun for me. Hey man, we all have our things.
Anyway, the collection is pretty good. I didn't read all of them; I mean, who does in a collection of this nature? I was interested to see the stories by Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and George R R Martin. They were all slightly disappointing, although the GRRM one was a really well done snarling screed of...more
Anyway, the collection is pretty good. I didn't read all of them; I mean, who does in a collection of this nature? I was interested to see the stories by Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and George R R Martin. They were all slightly disappointing, although the GRRM one was a really well done snarling screed of...more
3 likes · like · see review
A sad cautionary tale about how even the best roster (basically, everybody who's anybody in sf/f) does not guarantee that the anthology won't fail: and this one fails SO HARD. The stories are either way too predictable (say, Stephen King's short story reads like a grocery list of all his recurring motifs, and almost veers off into the realms of unconscious self-parody), while others are naive political ramblings about the current geopolitical doings. They are clearly about their times and of the...more
Every one of the thirty-four tales in this anthology is about zombies in some way. Most are gruesome while a couple are sweet...yeah, who knew you could call a zombie tale sweet…
Those in which I haven't written anything, I simply didn't read as I was too fed up with reading so many incomplete, unfinished, confusing stories. Attempting to be fair, it's possible that I simply haven't read enough zombie/horror stories. Perhaps these examples are typical of that sub-genre.
Series: Those Who Seek Forg...more
Those in which I haven't written anything, I simply didn't read as I was too fed up with reading so many incomplete, unfinished, confusing stories. Attempting to be fair, it's possible that I simply haven't read enough zombie/horror stories. Perhaps these examples are typical of that sub-genre.
Series: Those Who Seek Forg...more
Jun 04, 2012
trishtrash
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Shelves:
short-stories,
horror-supernatural-paranormal
I thoroughly enjoyed (and by thoroughly I mean every single selected story) Wastelands, a similar collection by the same editor, wherein the theme was more broadly apocalyptic. The Living Dead was not quite that strong a grouping, but there were some real gems. Zombies, as much as any other end-of-the-world scenario, provide plenty of material for the philosophical, for levels of human interest, and for terrifying situations. Right up front I was interested to read the Poppy Z. Brite story, beca...more
1 like · like · see review
A collection of zombie stories that truly does deliver more than what you'd expect. Zombie fans MUST check this book out, but what sets it apart is that there's enough here for other people as well.
"This Year's Class Picture" sets things up nicely, catching the reader off guard with it's ending and setting the stage for several different looks at the "life" of the undead. This is far more than stories of blood and gore, but many hinge on lost humanity (and even regained humanity in some cases) e...more
"This Year's Class Picture" sets things up nicely, catching the reader off guard with it's ending and setting the stage for several different looks at the "life" of the undead. This is far more than stories of blood and gore, but many hinge on lost humanity (and even regained humanity in some cases) e...more
A splendid, intriguing, and diverse collection of fiction about the walking, shambling, running, and just plain undead dead, this one only lost a star because so many of the previous stories had been published elsewhere (John Langan's contribution, "How the Way Runs Down," is an exception). Nearly every story in the book (sorry, Laurell K. Hamilton) was a hell of a read; editor John Joseph Adams--assistant editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction--made some excellent and gripping...more
Many excellent stories, and a wonderfully wide variety of perspectives on zombies. I particularly liked the stories by
Dan Simmons,
George R.R. Martin,
Stephen King,
Catherine Cheek,
Dale Bailey,
Nina Kiriki Hoffman,
Michael Swanwick,
Susan Palwick,
Joe Lansdale,
Nancy Kilpatrick,
Neil Gaiman, and
Will McIntosh
Dan Simmons,
George R.R. Martin,
Stephen King,
Catherine Cheek,
Dale Bailey,
Nina Kiriki Hoffman,
Michael Swanwick,
Susan Palwick,
Joe Lansdale,
Nancy Kilpatrick,
Neil Gaiman, and
Will McIntosh
1 like · like · see review
The common theme in most reviews I've read is that this isn't the straight line Romero zombie fiction one might assume it to be. The title, really, says it all. This is about the "living dead" in whatever form they might take. With any collection of short fiction, there are some highs and lows along the way. On the whole, I felt many of the stories to be on the high end. The collection is book-ended by two of my favorites: "This Year's Class Picture" and "How the Day Runs Down." I had really hig...more
Some of these stories were awesome, like This Year's Class Picture (the eerie opening story, which contains a reference to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (nostalgia FTW!)), Stockholm Syndrome, Dead Like Me, Home Delivery, and a couple others of which I cannot remember the titles. If this anthology contained more stories of that caliber, I would have probably given 4/5 stars.
My #1 problem with this anthology? Some of the stories don't even contain zombies! Now, I am really open-minded when it...more
My #1 problem with this anthology? Some of the stories don't even contain zombies! Now, I am really open-minded when it...more
Aug 04, 2011
Neil Sinclair
added it
I liked this. The series had a lot of variation and a wide range of interpretations of the subject.
strangely one of my less-liked was the Stephen King story.
So what in this anthology really grabbed me?
What I *DID* like were "This Years Class picture"as I could really visualize it. "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" as it was quite far afield from the usual. "Everything is Better with Zombies" because of the Ray Bradbury feel. "Less than Zombie" if only for the title, "Meathouse Man" is a story o...more
strangely one of my less-liked was the Stephen King story.
So what in this anthology really grabbed me?
What I *DID* like were "This Years Class picture"as I could really visualize it. "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" as it was quite far afield from the usual. "Everything is Better with Zombies" because of the Ray Bradbury feel. "Less than Zombie" if only for the title, "Meathouse Man" is a story o...more
Hirntod durch Langeweile
Ich finde Kurzgeschichten-Anthologien toll, vor allem, wenn sie ein Thema in vielen Varianten ausarbeiten. Night Shade Books bringt immer wieder solche Anthologien heraus, und nach dem mir ausgesprochen gut gefallenden Piratenmischmasch in Fast Ships, Black Sails wagte ich mich nun an die nächste Zusammenstellung, diesmal mit dem Thema "Zombies".
Hm. Nach den ersten paar Geschichten landete das Buch auf meinem Nachttischstapel mit Büchern, und rutschte über die Zeit immer...more
Ich finde Kurzgeschichten-Anthologien toll, vor allem, wenn sie ein Thema in vielen Varianten ausarbeiten. Night Shade Books bringt immer wieder solche Anthologien heraus, und nach dem mir ausgesprochen gut gefallenden Piratenmischmasch in Fast Ships, Black Sails wagte ich mich nun an die nächste Zusammenstellung, diesmal mit dem Thema "Zombies".
Hm. Nach den ersten paar Geschichten landete das Buch auf meinem Nachttischstapel mit Büchern, und rutschte über die Zeit immer...more
My favorites in this collection include:
Dan Simmons' story "This Year's Class Picture" was a take on what the living would do with just the dead to teach. Nina Kiriki Hoffman's story "The Third Dead Body" was a short little who-dunit with a zombie twist that was quite interesting. Michael Swanwick's story "The Dead" as a commodity. Interesting. Jeffrey Ford's story "Malthusian's Zombie" was sad, but a little uplifting at the same time. Susan Palwick's story "Beautiful Stuff" made me laugh and wo...more
Dan Simmons' story "This Year's Class Picture" was a take on what the living would do with just the dead to teach. Nina Kiriki Hoffman's story "The Third Dead Body" was a short little who-dunit with a zombie twist that was quite interesting. Michael Swanwick's story "The Dead" as a commodity. Interesting. Jeffrey Ford's story "Malthusian's Zombie" was sad, but a little uplifting at the same time. Susan Palwick's story "Beautiful Stuff" made me laugh and wo...more
Ohhhhh, I do love a short story. The only thing I could possibly love more is a short story about zombies. This is THE ticket.
Not all of the stories deliver, and some of them I'd read before, but still, this is the collection for you zombie lovers out there.
"Death and Suffrage" had the greatest premise for a short story in the book. It took a bizarre left turn in the middle and got sorely off track, but since reading it I have been turning over the idea of the living dead coming back to vote i...more
Not all of the stories deliver, and some of them I'd read before, but still, this is the collection for you zombie lovers out there.
"Death and Suffrage" had the greatest premise for a short story in the book. It took a bizarre left turn in the middle and got sorely off track, but since reading it I have been turning over the idea of the living dead coming back to vote i...more
Thirty-four short zombie stories: some are great, some are average, and some just boring. I prefered the tales that held a bit of the fantastic in them, rather than the rote zombie-end-of-the-world story. Excellent stories were Dan Simmons' "This Year's Class Picture", Joe Hill's "Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead", Laurell K. Hamiloton's "Those Who Seek Forgiveness", "Sex, Death, and Starshine" by Clive Barker, "Followed" by Will McIntosh, and "The Song the Zombie Sang" by Harlan Ellison an...more
Ordinarily, this book would have gotten only two stars because of the ratio of stories that made me glad I'd bought the book to stories I hated or stories which I won't remember in a week.
The first story in the book, Dan Simmons's This Year's Class Picture set the bar high. It's got your basic McGuyver-like adaptations to a broken society, high-tension moments and of course a zombie battle, but it's also got pathos and a bittersweet, heartstring-tugging ending.
In Death and Suffrage, Dale Bailey...more
The first story in the book, Dan Simmons's This Year's Class Picture set the bar high. It's got your basic McGuyver-like adaptations to a broken society, high-tension moments and of course a zombie battle, but it's also got pathos and a bittersweet, heartstring-tugging ending.
In Death and Suffrage, Dale Bailey...more
The Living Dead is a mammoth collection of zombie short stories. It's hard to judge any group of shorts as a whole, but this one can be summed up fairly accurately in a word: gratuitous. Although this book is entertaining at times, and a few of the stories are really very good, there is a theme throughout of gratuitously violent sex. Meandering, overblown, and off-putting, it frequently seems as if the authors are going for shock value in lieu of actual good storytelling. The group of troubled t...more
Like most anthologies, this volume contains hits and misses. However, the ones that are great hit you like a zombie that you didn't notice was there until it's too late and its snapping jaws are inches from your neck and your pushing it away, while at the same time trying to pull up your weapon to get a head-shot and the entire time you're thinking: "This is why I love zombies!"
Stories in this collection that you should definitely read: "Malthusian's Zombie", "Meathouse Man" by George R. R. Mart...more
Stories in this collection that you should definitely read: "Malthusian's Zombie", "Meathouse Man" by George R. R. Mart...more
After reading the back cover of this book I was intrigued - a collection of the best zombie stories from the last three decades sounded like a winner to me. Unfortunately, the stories seem to have been chosen because of how 'orignal' the take on the zombie genre was. I realize that staying within the lines when colouring is seen as stifling the creative process, but I really don't like it when the basic ideas of a genre are tossed out for no other better reason that to be different. A few of the...more
*Spolier warning* The subject matter of this collection of short stories is, of course, zombies. Zombies of all flavors. From Romero-style "hungry dead," to the classic Haitian voodoo , to metaphorical zombies (such as couch-potatoes and mindless consumers). As far as anthologies go, I was pleasantly surprised. Some of the writing was bad, most was good, and some was very, very good.
In particular, "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" by Kelly Link, "Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead" by Joe Hill...more
In particular, "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" by Kelly Link, "Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead" by Joe Hill...more
Mar 19, 2013
Joel Kleehammer
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
zombie-apocalypse
I consider myself somewhat of a zombie aficionado, and I thought this book was great. If you’re looking for a collection of short stories that are all about bloodthirsty zombies chasing folks until they die, this is not the book for you. John Joseph Adams did a great job of collecting various stories that cover multiple types of zombies and stories that touch tangentially on zombies. Sure, there are Romero-inspired zombies that are trying to eat you, but there are also techno-zombies, voodoo zom...more
There's a couple of great stories in "The Living Dead." As an anthology it features many different styles, a wide variety of approaches and an incredibly versatile array of backdrops in which these stories play, including zombies in the Wild West among many others.
By nature, anthologies have stronger and weaker entries, but it is important that their beauty lies in the eye the beholder. While I thought "Blossom" was one of the greatest stories in the book, another reader may entirely disagree. I...more
By nature, anthologies have stronger and weaker entries, but it is important that their beauty lies in the eye the beholder. While I thought "Blossom" was one of the greatest stories in the book, another reader may entirely disagree. I...more
I rated this three stars due to the stories I did read. I honestly couldn't finish it but wanted to give props to some of the stories that were quite good. Most were just so-so and after a while I couldn't bring myself to read any more so-so short stories.
Two of my hands-down favorites were This Year’s Class Picture by Dan Simmons and The Third Dead Body by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. The Dead Kid by Darrell Schweitzer and Malthusian’s Zombie by Jeffrey Ford were also well written and entertaining.
May...more
Two of my hands-down favorites were This Year’s Class Picture by Dan Simmons and The Third Dead Body by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. The Dead Kid by Darrell Schweitzer and Malthusian’s Zombie by Jeffrey Ford were also well written and entertaining.
May...more
Summary: A collections of short stories from a long list of contemporary authors such as Steven King, Clive Barker, Laura K. Hamilton, and many, many others. The depictions of Zombies in these tales range from the "standard" night of the living dead style of flesh eating monsters, to a host of variations, some of which the zombies are intelligent and even cunning spinning tales of their own and moving the plot through cunning and shadow games.
This is an awesome read, and to a middle-schooler wh...more
This is an awesome read, and to a middle-schooler wh...more
On StaticMultimedia.com I gave this 31/2 stars and thoroughly enjoyed this massive collection of zombie stories. Below are some highlights from that review. To read my full review go to: http://www.staticmultimedia.com/print...
In The Living Dead, Adams has pulled together so much supernatural horror and mayhem that even the Winchester brothers would turn tail and run. This mix of stories contains enough blood and gore to generate nightmares for readers for many evenings to come; however all the...more
In The Living Dead, Adams has pulled together so much supernatural horror and mayhem that even the Winchester brothers would turn tail and run. This mix of stories contains enough blood and gore to generate nightmares for readers for many evenings to come; however all the...more
I usually don't read short fiction, but I can't resist zombie stories! The first story in this anthology, by the redoubtable Dan Simmons, features an elementary school teacher who faces down the zombie apocalypse as only an elementary school teacher can. Simmons' story, plus the extremely creepy- and quasi-historical- "Prairie" by Brian Evanson are standouts. Andy Duncan's "Zora and the Zombie" is absolutely fascinating- it's Zora Neale Hurston! In a Zombie story! Poppy Z. Brite's "Calcutta: Lor...more
I've started this and have read several stories. I wasn't impressed enough to sit down and read it all the way through but maybe I'll read it all story by story over time.
This has a very wide variety of living dead stories (I think the term 'zombie' is a little too specific for some), which is fine by me, but there were far too many stories I just didn't enjoy.
I'm going to give them some ratings for the sake of completeness, but since I'm only doing this after the fact, they are only rough estimates of my actual enjoyment (I'm not even sure if I'm grading them on a scale of 4 stars or 5, to be honest).
[Spoilered for size only, no plot details within](view spoiler...more
I'm going to give them some ratings for the sake of completeness, but since I'm only doing this after the fact, they are only rough estimates of my actual enjoyment (I'm not even sure if I'm grading them on a scale of 4 stars or 5, to be honest).
[Spoilered for size only, no plot details within](view spoiler...more
Aug 21, 2010
{eri}
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
any horror fan!
Recommended to {eri} by:
Tyler
Shelves:
own
What a journey it has been with this novel! Taking approximately a month to read this ensured that I read and formed a distinct opinion about each story in the collection. Starting off with a bang with "This Year's Class Picture", a fantastic story perhaps the best in the book, each story presents different views and genres of zombie stories...some of which I would hesitate to call zombies even in the loosest sense of the word. Stories such as "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" and "Everything is B...more
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| What's The Name o...: Prostitute comes back from the dead [s] | 5 | 146 | May 05, 2013 01:30am | |
| Bookworm Buddies: Zombie reading pack for November-DONE | 14 | 40 | Nov 16, 2012 11:18am | |
| Some Zombie Contingency Plans (spoiler) | 1 | 11 | Nov 20, 2011 08:07pm |
John Joseph Adams—called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble.com—is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as UNDER THE MOONS OF MARS: NEW ADVENTURES ON BARSOOM, ARMORED, LIGHTSPEED: YEAR ONE, BRAVE NEW WORLDS, WASTELANDS, THE LIVING DEAD, THE LIVING DEAD 2, BY BLOOD WE LIVE, FEDERATIONS, THE IMPROBABLE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and THE WAY OF THE WIZARD...more
More about John Joseph Adams...
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“There was something about clowns that was worse than zombies. (Or maybe something that was the same. When you see a zombie, you want to laugh at first. When you see a clown, most people get a little nervous. There's the pallor and the cakey mortician-style makeup, the shuffling and the untidy hair. But clowns were probably malicious, and they moved fast on those little bicycles and in those little crammed cars. Zombies weren't much of anything. They didn't carry musical instruments and they didn't care whether or not you laughed at them. You always knew what zombies wanted.)”
—
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Dec 01, 2010 09:43pm