World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

Incurable plague. Zombies. Worldwide collapse. Pretty serious stuff. Therefore, it must have come from the only son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, right?

Not that the world should be expecting Young Frankenstein Junior from Brooks Junior, but I definitely did a double take after reading the author blurb on the dust jacket of World War Z, a fictionalized look at what might happen during and after a devastating plague. Anyway, Brooks's previous book, The Zombie Survival Guide, was definitely tongue-in-cheek; this one is not. It's presented as a series of interviews conducted by a vague narrator (who also happened to write a civilian zombie survival guide--go figure), about ten years after the world managed to contain the zombie virus. There's no real parody--some cheeky references to the "brushfire war" that depleted U.S. war resources/good will, and a rather clever twist on Cuban-American immigration issues do surface--but they're not dominant in the tone. The book works pretty well as a sober sociopolitical allegory.

It's also effective as a zombie story. I don't care much for horror or sci fi, but I was hooked almost immediately. The scariest part is how thoroughly Brooks has considered the many ways in which we'd be screwed. If an unforseen and unconventional crisis snuck up on humanity, the dependence on outdated methods and international distrust would kill us all. And it's not so futuristic: the timeline puts the start of the undead plague a few years from now, but clearly not far. Brooks paints the details of the plague, and its spread, so matter-of-factly that it doesn't even seem improbable. Why not a strange virus that reanimates the dead? Who knows what lurks in Chinese rivers? Anybody checked lately?

If there's a weak part, it's the fact that this is obviously a first novel. The interview structure gets a little tedious about halfway through, when it's clear that the voice is largely the same whether it's a Russian soldier, a South American diplomat, an American grunt, or a blind Japanese sensei talking. And some of the anecdotes could be cut pretty easily without hurting the story (a random bit of grandstanding at the end, about how all the whales died in the war, comes to mind). It's definitely apparent that Brooks had this cool idea, but didn't know how to sustain it, without breaking it up into narrative chunks. Also, I found more typos in the book than in any other I've read lately. Typos happen, even with the best publishers, but there's very little excuse for leaving "materiel" in the text four different times. Way to go, copyeditors.

Overall, though, I would absolutely recommend the book for fun reading. I was always excited to pick it back up again, and found myself walking to and from T stops with my nose in it (other pedestrians and sidewalk hazards be damned!). Plus, now I have a self-entertaining habit of evaluating everyone else in my office/subway car/line at Dunkin Donuts, and figuring out what I'd do if one of them suddenly reanimated. (Here's a tip: always go for the brain.)

Parts I liked especially:

From a prewar CIA director:
"We couldn't defend ourselves without violating national security. We had to just sit there and take it. And what was the result? Brain drain. Why stick around and be the victim of a political witch hunt when you could escape to the private sector: a fatter paycheck, decent hours, and maybe, just maybe, a little respect and appreciation by the people you work for. We lost a lot of good men and women, a lot of experience, initiative, and priceless analytical reasoning. All we were left with were the dregs, a bunch of brownnosing, myopic eunuchs."

From a wartime White House Chief of Staff, on alternative media coverage of the virus:
"Oh, sure, and you know who listens to them? Pansy, overeducated know-it-alls, and you know who listens to them? Nobody! Who's going to care about some PBS-NPR fringe minority that's out of touch with the mainstream? The more those elitist eggheads shouted, 'The dead are walking,' the more real Americans tuned them out."