516VUMu5cQL. SL160 The Living Dead edited by John Joseph Adams ReviewThe Living Dead edited by John Joseph Adams

What is surprising is how the contributing authors each spin their zombie stories and wind up with such a wide range of flavors. Pass along a single idea to 20 authors and you will get close to 20 non-overlapping takes on the theme. Not all of the stories here are the Dawn of the Dead-type stories that you might expect, though I’m very glad that some of them are. In some stories, the undead are hunted and killed, in others they are accepted as part of normal society. Some stories have undead mobs, some have a lone zombie. In most stories, the zombies were physical creatures, in others they were symbolic. (Some stories lacked any zombies whatsoever beside a mention of them, to varying degrees of success.) Some stories are written as pure horror, some as semi-comedy, some as social statements, some as Literature. Some stories even manage to make the zombies sympathetic, if you can believe that. It’s this wide range of styles and approaches that makes an anthology like this worth reading.

SF Signal: REVIEW: The Living Dead edited by John Joseph Adams.