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

Incessant swarms of the undead -- called "Zack," or "Zed Head," or at times simply "Z" by the heroes and heroines who combat them in World War Z -- keep coming back for more in this new take on an old theme by the author of 2003's Zombie Survival Guide.

World War Z is a novel about our world nearly destroyed in a Zombie apocalypse. Author Max Brooks, son of comedic genius Mel Brooks, is fast emerging a new master of the Zombie genre. Despite his pedigree and despite his stint as a writer for "Saturday Night Live," World War Z is no comedy. Readers (or viewers when the movie comes out) should expect no Shaun of the Dead, the popular 2004 Zombie spoof horror movie. Rather, Max Brooks takes an ambitious, deadly serious approach to World War Z, creating what I imagine would happen if George A. Romero and Studs Turkel had a baby. The novel is written in the aftermath of the Great Zombie War, and in the first-person voices of its survivors.

The world was in a pandemic blight. Ghouls walked the earth. Cities fell. Entire populations became infected -- or simply disappeared. Humanity, suspending too long its own disbelief, waiting too long and reacting too slowly, suffered as much from ignorance and superstition as from the damage done by the advancing zombie hordes. (A zombie here, a zombie there ... all of a sudden, its flesh-eating zombies everywhere!) Alas, communities bond, safe zones are formed, governments actually cooperate, and in the human spirit there is found a glimmer of hope just when the world as we know it seems to be at the end of its collective rope. And, so it goes in World War Z ...

That much of the script is nothing new to any fan of the Zombie genre. What is new, however -- given away by Brooks' subtitle, "An Oral History of the Zombie War" -- is the author's approach. Rather than following an unlikely group of survivalists thrown together by chance in an abandoned shopping mall (as in the 1978 movie, Dawn of the Dead) or an isolated farm house (its predecessor, 1968's classic Zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead), World War Z by Max Brooks is a matter-of-fact telling of events ten years after the last "hot zone" has been cleared of the walking blight. Unlike most other works of Zombie horror, where all but a scarce few survivors eventually fall victim to the undead themselves, invariably faced with the quandary of having to put a bullet through the head of a reanimating once-friend turned Zombie, every voice in Brooks' novel is that of a survivor. Not one Zombie was interviewed.

As a result, readers of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War never get all that close to any of the main characters. The effect of these mini-narratives is a series of vignettes to a much wider story. At times, the narrative seems a bit stunted. But taken together, their stories add up, building one upon the next in mood if not linearly, to describe just what it took for humanity to survive a massive, earth spanning outbreak of the walking undead.

The individual stories in World War Z are good -- really good -- but rather than selecting my favorites, or the ones which I think would be best for a movie adaptation, I will leave that for the reader to discover.

Just when their stories begin to grow on the reader, Max Brooks takes us across the globe to another scene of Zombie mayhem, and the often ghastly accounts of another survivor. Many of these recollections could easily be expanded into more complete novels. (And many of these scenes are just screaming for the big screen.) But the reader may often feel robbed of a good protagonist when his or her story line in World War Z abruptly ends. It all comes together nicely in the end, however.

What I enjoyed most about World War Z -- aside from the generous helpings of Zombie clobbering, of course -- was Brooks' description of how a world at war with the undead has profoundly changed the nature of human relationships. Evacuating as much of its population as possible (sort of ...) west behind the Rock Mountains, which become the front lines against the Zombie hordes, what remains of the U.S. Government tries desperately to hold what's left of its citizenry together while mobilizing the nation for war. Self-sufficiency is a must in this new world order. The once privileged Hollywood movie starlet, having no real talent to contribute now to society, sits in a classroom learning rudimentary sanitation skills from her former housekeeper. Likewise, the former hi-tech securities trader who couldn't so much as change the oil of his SUV before the pandemic blight is now subordinated in social standing to his former auto mechanic. Indeed, the world of Max Brooks' World War Z, in those pockets of civilization that have held back the Zombie hordes, is one that has in many ways been stood on its head. Even the military has reverted back to simple weaponry and 19^th-century tactics.

It's the stuff to make a good movie; and, if done right, a great movie.

I've hinted at a movie adaptation of World War Z above. And in fact there was a bidding war between Leonardo DiCaprio's production company (Appian Way) and Brad Pitt's production company (Plan B) even before Max Brooks' second book hit the shelves. And it was announced last summer that Plan B won the rights to the World War Z movie. The buzz among Zombie movie geeks like myself is that production begins soon, and World War Z is slatted to hit the big screens in 2008.

Rumors are that J. Michael Straczynski, creator of TV's "Babylon Five," is writing the screenplay for World War Z. (Max Brooks was not interested in writing the screenplay.) When pressed in early January 2007 by fans at Internet Movie Data Base, Straczynski's response was a terse non-denial denial. All he could say was, "There's nothing I can say about it at this time."

This much I know: Word War Z by Max Brooks would make one hell-on-earth of a Zombie movie ... if done right.