The Living Dead

by John Joseph Adams (Goodreads author) (Editor), Joe Hill George R.R. Martin Clive Barker Neil Gaiman (Goodreads author) Laurell K. Hamilton Joe R. Lansdale Poppy Z. Brite more...

book data

199 ratings, 3.72 average rating, 48 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		23%
4		34%
3		33%
2		7%
1		1%

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published

September 29th 2008 by Night Shade Books

binding

Paperback, 486 pages

url

http://www.johnjosephadams.com/the-livin...

isbn

1597801437 (isbn13: 9781597801430)

description

"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, zomb...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 541)

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02/08/09

Ceridwen rated it:

bookshelves: fiction, short-shories, zombies

Read in February, 2009

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 snarli...more

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12/17/08

Marcus rated it:

Read in January, 2009

*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 C...more

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02/09/09

Michael rated it:

A pretty solid anthology, though there were quite a few misses within. I was really hoping for more that had been commissioned for the work, because the works by many of the big names (King, Barker, Gaiman, Partridge, Hill, Hamilton) were ones I'd read before.

That said, there were some stories I really liked. Joe R. Lansdale's was really good, as most of his work is. I'd like to see more stories or a novel based on Jebidiah. And Dan Simmons' "This Year's Class Picture" was ...more

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04/04/09

Thee_ron_clark rated it:

bookshelves: zombies

Read in March, 2009

This is a great book of short stories featuring my favorite subject, the living dead. This is an interesting group of stories in the fact that very few feature the typical Hollywood flesh-eaters that many of us have come to know and love. In fact, some of the stories do not feature actual zombies at all. A few of the stories only include zombies or the living dead as a background piece to the story. Regardless, it's an interesting batch of stories with only a couple pieces that did not interest ...more

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01/26/09

Jenny rated it:

Read in December, 2008

A really good compilation of zombie-related short stories. Many of them are very clever, and not your typical undead plotline.

I especially enjoyed the following stories:

- This Year's Class Picture by Dan Simmons
- Death and Suffrage by Dale Bailey
- The Third Dead Body by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
- The Dead Kid by Darrell Schweitzer
- Malthusian's Zombie by Jeffrey Ford
- Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead by Joe Hill
- Home Delivery by Stephen...more

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04/24/09

k added it

bookshelves: 2-read-collections, collection, dcl, partial, zombies

1. "This Year's Class Picture" by Dan Simmons ****
2. "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" by Kelly Link ?
3. "Death and Suffrage" by Dale Bailey
4. "Ghost Dance" by Sherman Alexie
5. "Blossom" by David J. Schow
The Third Dead Body by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
The Dead by Michael Swanwick
The Dead Kid by Darrell Schweitzer
Malthusian's Zombie by Jeffrey Ford
Beautiful Stuff by Susan Palwick
Sex, Death and St...more

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03/19/09

John rated it:

Read in June, 2009

When I first picked up this book, I expected to encounter a rash of stories about heroic survivors of a zombie apocalypse bravely blowing the heads off of everything they see (which, admittedly, is fun in its own way). I was pleasantly surprised to find that this is true of none of these stories. They are far more complex and creative than the video-game horror stories found elsewhere (World War Z) and many stand alone as great stories(even outside the zombie genre, whatever that entails).
...more

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03/14/09

Kelly rated it:

bookshelves: the-end-is-nigh

Read in June, 2009

While I enjoyed Wastelands (an anthology of post-apocalyptic stories also edited by Adams) more, there are several stories in The Living Dead that are well worth navigating the 487 pages of this book to discover. My favorites are as follows:

1. "This Year's Class Picture" by Dan Simmons
Simmons knows what makes a teacher tick--even when it manifests itself in a twisted, desperate sort of way . . .

2. "Ghost Dance" by Sherman Alex...more

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03/12/09

Dennis D. rated it:

Read in May, 2009

I historically have not been a big short-story buff, but after reading Stephen King’s Just After Sunset earlier this year, I realized that I enjoyed having a collection sitting around to break things up when I’m in the middle of a longish book, or after I’ve finished one novel and have yet to start another. So when I stumbled across (or, perhaps I should say “shambled across”?) this collection of zombie stories, I scooped it up like freshly-exposed brains. :)

There are d...more

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11/19/08

Brendan rated it:

bookshelves: 2009, fiction

Read in January, 2009

Rather than write about all 34 stories in this collection, I’ll write about my top five, in no particular order.

* “Followed” by Will McIntosh is the best story in the collection. It supposes a world in which the dead rise and instead of attacking the living, they follow them. But the dead seek out and follow people who “deserve it” according to some sort of cosmic justice. The more exorbitant your lifestyle, the more zombies choose to follow you.
* “How the D...more Rather than write about all 34 stories in this collection, I’ll write about my top five, in no particular order.

* “Followed” by Will McIntosh is the best story in the collection. It supposes a world in which the dead rise and instead of attacking the living, they follow them. But the dead seek out and follow people who “deserve it” according to some sort of cosmic justice. The more exorbitant your lifestyle, the more zombies choose to follow you.
* “How the Day Runs Down” by John Langan. A zombie version of Our Town that tells, among other vignettes, the most harrowing tale in the book, of a suburban mom who isn’t able to save her kids from the zombies. Horrifying. It reminds me a lot of the wealthy suburbanite section from World War Z, except that her story ended well.
* “Death and Suffrage” by Dale Bailey. A nice little political allegory along the lines of the Masters of Horror episode, “Homecoming,” in which veterans rise from the grave to vote out the incumbent government. Closely related is “Beautiful Stuff” by Susan Palwick, but something about Bailey’s story worked a bit better for me.
* “Dead Like Me” by Adam-Troy Castro tells a terrifying tale of pretending to be a zombie.
* “The Song the Zombie Sang” by Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg weaves a futuristic tale in which a virtuoso musician is revived nightly in order to play his music for adoring fans. A close second to this story, for me, is “Malthusian’s Zombie” by Jeffrey Ford.

Overall the collection is interesting, but an odd mix of a variety of different kinds of zombie stories. There are several of the conventional Romero-style tales. There are several stories in the vein of Tales from the Crypt, where the zombies represent revenge or other limited actions. Then there are a few that approach the issue of zombies from a philosophical or other angle. A couple are zombie stories in the same way that “Heat Death of the Universe” is a science-fiction story–namely, tangentially.(less)

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11/18/08

Schnaucl rated it:

bookshelves: anthology, december, fiction, horror, later_purchased, library, read_2008, zombies

Read in December, 2008

This was a mostly enjoyable anthology. There were some memorable stories but there were also many, many stories that were bland or otherwise forgettable. None of them held a candle to World War Z. There were a few stories about zombies and politics and a few that dealt with "Dawn of the Dead." One of the more memorable stories was a retelling of "Our Town." With Zombies.

Not all the stories in the anthology had raving, mindless zombies. They were rarely sma...more

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09/24/08

Alex rated it:

bookshelves: books-read-in-2008

Read in October, 2008

THE LIVING DEAD EDITED BY JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS: After the success of John Joseph Adams’ last anthology Wastelands: Stores of the Apocalypse, he returns with a new fantastic collection, The Living Dead, with stories from the greatest horror fiction writers in publication: Stephen King, Clive Barker, Laurel K. Hamilton, Neil Gaiman, Dan Simmons, and many others. It is a fascinating collection for is proves to the reader that no zombie story is the same, and what amazing settings and situations aut...more THE LIVING DEAD EDITED BY JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS: After the success of John Joseph Adams’ last anthology Wastelands: Stores of the Apocalypse, he returns with a new fantastic collection, The Living Dead, with stories from the greatest horror fiction writers in publication: Stephen King, Clive Barker, Laurel K. Hamilton, Neil Gaiman, Dan Simmons, and many others. It is a fascinating collection for is proves to the reader that no zombie story is the same, and what amazing settings and situations authors can come up that involve zombies.

In the first story, from Dan Simmons, “This Year’s Class Picture,” Ms. Geiss, a former high school teacher, has barricaded herself in her old high school. A barbed wire fence and wall surround the school, along with a moat filled with gasoline. Geiss spends her days with her class, a class of zombie children. After hitting them with a tranquilizer, she chained them to their chairs and each day shows them pictures of humanity, the beauty of the world, and the greatness of the human race, trying to make a connection, trying to get a reaction. But each day she is greeted by the dead stares in their faces, with their eyes hungry for human flesh.

In Neil Gaiman’s “Bitter Grounds,” the narrator has had enough with his life and just up and leaves one day. Meeting an anthropology professor presenting a paper on zombies in New Orleans, he steals the man’s identity, and never expecting to go through with it, finds himself in New Orleans being the professor. At night in the streets of the old city, he meets some people that later he considers may not be human. He presents the paper as the professor, semi-believing in its intention, especially after his experiences of the night before.

In “The Dead Kid” from Darrell Schweitzer, David is a young boy who wants to hang out with the big kids who are always bullying him; he wants to be like them so they’ll stop bullying him. So one day they show him “the dead kid”: a very young child that is being kept trapped in a box in a cave in the forest. It is very pale, twin empty sockets where its eyes should be, and spends its days slowly writhing, trying to get free of its prison.

The Living Dead is a sobering read in that it primarily reveals to the readers the horrors zombies are capable of, but also presents the dark and evil side of humanity and what it is capable of when pitted against these walking corpses. The idea of the zombie forces one to face the reality of death and how in this way it may be cheated, but when the cost is a term that has become synonymous with something that is dead but alive, incredibly stupid, and hungers for flesh; it makes one yearn all the more for an undisturbed grave.

Find more reviews, as well as a selection of my writing, and a link to the book review podcast BookBanter at alexctelander.com.(less)

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10/06/08

Cameron rated it:

bookshelves: zombies

Read in March, 2009

I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point a very large portion of the horror fiction writer community decided that to write a good zombie story, some person in the story needs to have sex with a zombie. Or a zombie has to have sex with a person. Or the zombies need to have sex with each other.

About 1/3 of the way through this book I was starting to roll my eyes and say to myself, "Oh god, not ANOTHER person getting it on with a walking corpse..."

This ph...more

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06/07/09

Adam Watson rated it:

Great collection of short stories, from some very well-known authors (such as Stephen King). There's a few clunkers, but the overall quality is very good, and some are incredible. A personal favorite (as a teacher, this should be no surprise): "This Year's Class Picture." If you never thought a zombie tale could make you teary-eyed, read this one.

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11/29/08

Rhonda rated it:

bookshelves: horror, zombies

Read in December, 2008

For the most part, I like most of the stories. Some of them are really creepy (which are the ones I like the most) but some are just kind of strange and others are just plain odd and leave you going huh at the end of them.

I really like the more traditional zombie type stories dealing with the icky gross dead that just want to devour the living and how the characters deal with surviving. But some of the different takes on the idea are good too. The last story, a take on Our Town wi...more

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04/21/09

Padraigh Mchale rated it:

bookshelves: favorites, horror-dark-fantasy

A book of short stories collected with one unifying theme:that they somehow involve zombies. Not nearly as stereotyped as I suspected they'd be, some of these stories are downright fantastic. Keep an eye out for George R.R. Martin's piece in it, that story still pulls on emotions thinking about it 6 months later.

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03/31/09

Rich Cresswell rated it:

Read in February, 2009

It's a giant collection of short stories, some of which were miraculous, and others frankly bad... So it gets a 3. If you like zombies and want to see to see the anxiety apparently provoked in us by the idea of dead people walking around displayed through a variety of genres, this is the book for you.

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04/13/09

Shawn rated it:

Read in April, 2009

Fantastic collection of zombie short stories. There are some that aren't so hot (the same Stephen King story has been used in about 20,000 compilations by now), but most of them are fantastic. And there are some really unique takes on zombies from old and trusted authors to new and very talented authors!

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01/30/09

Vincent rated it:

I really enjoyed this anthology of stories on the living dead. There were several stories I just could not get into, but overall still a great collection. One of my favorite stories is the last one, because it took place where I use to live in NY. Thought that was really cool! :)

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01/19/09

Kemper rated it:

bookshelves: apocalypse-now, horror, short-stories

Read in January, 2009

Lots of good zombie stories, but not all fall into the traditional George Romero type stories. For example, Joe Hill's story is about two high school sweethearts who reunite while playing extras in Romero's filming of Dawn of The Dead. A lot of great material, but someone just looking for different takes on the Romero style zombies may be disappointed.

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