Book: Otto Penzler, ed. 'Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!' (2011)

Dude. There are so many zombies in this book. George Romero would plotz if he saw all the zombies in this book, that's how many there are. Verdict? Awesome!

I'm actually pretty goddamned zombied out; their constant influx in recent years has raised the durned varmints to nearly the same pinnacle of ubiquity as vampires (well, okay, maybe not quiiite that high a level of cultural saturation). What makes this anthology cool and different is that most of the stories are old, and when I say old, I mean even older than your mom (well, okay, maybe not your mom; I hear she was the one who wrapped The Mummy...). The majority of these zombies date from the 1920s through 40s, when they originally graced the pages of delightfully lurid pulp productions like Weird Tales, and the prose surrounding them is satisfyingly over-the-top. H. P. Lovecraft puts in a few token appearances, as do a great many views of Haiti. The shambling brain-eater is almost (though not entirely) a non-presence here; in hisorher place we find the Svengali-drugged sleepwalker; the unearthed corpse controlled by one sick bastard of a shaman; the accident victim returned to something resembling life by the Powah of Troo Luv (sickening but sorta sweet, like rotten candy)... If you're in the mood for delightfully diverting trash, give this landfill of undead 'literature' a go.