M.E. Betts's Blog
June 30, 2016
Why Zombies Are Here to Stay
"If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven, I will knock down the gates of the Netherworld, I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down, and will let the dead go up to eat the living! And the dead will outnumber the living!"
The quote above marks the first known reference to what we, in the modern world, would call "zombies." So our fetish for tales of the undead, it turns out, goes way back. Way, way back. The Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar and her demand for the Bull of Heaven are taken from The Epic of Gilgamesh, humanity's first known piece of literature.
That makes for one close relationship between human fiction and the undead. Although technically more of an on-again, off-again relationship, it's one that's stood the test of time, and shows no indication of ever calling it quits for good. Our interests may wander to other genres from time to time, but it's never long before zombie fiction rises to infect us yet again, a little farther down the zeitgeist timeline than before.
Although the genre's current popularity is quite evident with the smashing success of The Walking Dead, the franchise is hardly alone in zombie territory. And it's not just the usual suspects--undead books, movies, video games, blogs and the like. The culture of all things zombie has branched into other markets, as well. This has given way to the prepper boom and more interest from the public regarding weapons and survival strategies, to name just a few ways the undead have invaded the market. Factor in all the indie media--particularly on Youtube and Twitter--surrounding all of the individual categories mentioned above, and we've got an outbreak of historical proportions, with more being bitten by the zombie bug than not.
In the collective creative consciousness of humankind, we never stray far from the memory of Ishtar and the high price humanity paid for her bruised ego. We were spared, so the story goes, from an early zombie apocalypse because she was placated with unleashing the a beast of famine and brutality onto us, instead. Suppose the next time she petitions her father to give her her the Bull of Heaven, he declines to indulge her?
Why Zombies Are Here to Stay
"If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven, I will knock down the gates of the Netherworld, I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down, and will let the dead go up to eat the living! And the dead will outnumber the living!"
The quote above marks the first known reference to what we, in the modern world, would call "zombies." So our fetish for tales of the undead, it turns out, goes way back. Way, way back. The Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar and her demand for the Bull of Heaven are taken from The Epic of Gilgamesh, humanity's first known piece of literature.
That makes for one close relationship between human fiction and the undead. Although technically more of an on-again, off-again relationship, it's one that's stood the test of time, and shows no indication of ever calling it quits for good. Our interests may wander to other genres from time to time, but it's never long before zombie fiction rises to infect us yet again, a little farther down the zeitgeist timeline than before.
Although the genre's current popularity is quite evident with the smashing success of The Walking Dead, the franchise is hardly alone in zombie territory. And it's not just the usual suspects--undead books, movies, video games, blogs and the like. The culture of all things zombie has branched into other markets, as well. This has given way to the prepper boom and more interest from the public regarding weapons and survival strategies, to name just a few ways the undead have invaded the market. Factor in all the indie media--particularly on Youtube and Twitter--surrounding all of the individual categories mentioned above, and we've got an outbreak of historical proportions, with more being bitten by the zombie bug than not.
In the collective creative consciousness of humankind, we never stray far from the memory of Ishtar and the high price humanity paid for her bruised ego. We were spared, so the story goes, from an early zombie apocalypse because she was placated with unleashing the a beast of famine and brutality onto us, instead. Suppose the next time she petitions her father to give her her the Bull of Heaven, he declines to indulge her?
The quote above marks the first known reference to what we, in the modern world, would call "zombies." So our fetish for tales of the undead, it turns out, goes way back. Way, way back. The Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar and her demand for the Bull of Heaven are taken from The Epic of Gilgamesh, humanity's first known piece of literature.
That makes for one close relationship between human fiction and the undead. Although technically more of an on-again, off-again relationship, it's one that's stood the test of time, and shows no indication of ever calling it quits for good. Our interests may wander to other genres from time to time, but it's never long before zombie fiction rises to infect us yet again, a little farther down the zeitgeist timeline than before.
Although the genre's current popularity is quite evident with the smashing success of The Walking Dead, the franchise is hardly alone in zombie territory. And it's not just the usual suspects--undead books, movies, video games, blogs and the like. The culture of all things zombie has branched into other markets, as well. This has given way to the prepper boom and more interest from the public regarding weapons and survival strategies, to name just a few ways the undead have invaded the market. Factor in all the indie media--particularly on Youtube and Twitter--surrounding all of the individual categories mentioned above, and we've got an outbreak of historical proportions, with more being bitten by the zombie bug than not.
In the collective creative consciousness of humankind, we never stray far from the memory of Ishtar and the high price humanity paid for her bruised ego. We were spared, so the story goes, from an early zombie apocalypse because she was placated with unleashing the a beast of famine and brutality onto us, instead. Suppose the next time she petitions her father to give her her the Bull of Heaven, he declines to indulge her?
