Excerpt of Appendix Z
I remember seeing the classic War of the Worlds when I was a kid. I held my breath when the spaceman descended from the flying saucer and nearly peed myself when he was shot by the overzealous American military. After that moment, I was pretty much hooked on anything science fiction related. Since then, there've been many variations of space invader stories, ranging from pod people to lizard being...s wearing human skin, but the vast majority of them have always had one thing in common, a physical menace that needed to be defended against.
The same could be said for the horror genre as well. When I saw the original night of the living dead, I couldn't sleep through the night for months after. Since then, an avalanche of zombie movies has taken over the box offices on an almost apocalyptic scale. Whether it's the Romeroian classic type of living dead or the running, scratching, jumping, biting cadavers of the newer generation, they've pretty much stuck with the same formula. Zombie bites person, person becomes zombie, new-zombie person kills or bites another person, continue... Some zombie stories have shied away from the old formula, and unknowingly created another formula that's just as bland and repetitious. Chemical or biological agent creates zombies, people become afflicted and create more zombies by biting others, or normal people become exposed to the agent or virus themselves, and turn.
Some of these stories are a bit more realistic than others. For example, the aliens attacking in independence day seemed to me to be more believable than the symbiotic life forms that hung onto the back of peoples' necks in The Puppet Masters, but they all had one flaw in common, they were nothing compared to the actual thing, and I know this from recent experience. The real thing was far more covert, even more covert than the conspiratorial pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Bringing up these familiar patterns of successful alien invasion and zombie apocalypse scenarios is by no means a complaint. I'd seen all of the movies, read all the books, and felt that I was more than ready to recognize any and all signs of pending doom if the impossible should ever occur. I was so wrong. Get your copy at:http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DV60B6I
The same could be said for the horror genre as well. When I saw the original night of the living dead, I couldn't sleep through the night for months after. Since then, an avalanche of zombie movies has taken over the box offices on an almost apocalyptic scale. Whether it's the Romeroian classic type of living dead or the running, scratching, jumping, biting cadavers of the newer generation, they've pretty much stuck with the same formula. Zombie bites person, person becomes zombie, new-zombie person kills or bites another person, continue... Some zombie stories have shied away from the old formula, and unknowingly created another formula that's just as bland and repetitious. Chemical or biological agent creates zombies, people become afflicted and create more zombies by biting others, or normal people become exposed to the agent or virus themselves, and turn.
Some of these stories are a bit more realistic than others. For example, the aliens attacking in independence day seemed to me to be more believable than the symbiotic life forms that hung onto the back of peoples' necks in The Puppet Masters, but they all had one flaw in common, they were nothing compared to the actual thing, and I know this from recent experience. The real thing was far more covert, even more covert than the conspiratorial pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Bringing up these familiar patterns of successful alien invasion and zombie apocalypse scenarios is by no means a complaint. I'd seen all of the movies, read all the books, and felt that I was more than ready to recognize any and all signs of pending doom if the impossible should ever occur. I was so wrong. Get your copy at:http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DV60B6I
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