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Post by dem bones on Jan 31, 2008 21:39:15 GMT
John Skipp & Craig Spector (eds.) - Book Of The Dead (Bantam, July, 1989) Foreword - George Romero Introduction: "On Going Too Far" - John Skipp & Craig Spector
Chan McConnell (David J. Schow ?) - Blossom Richard Laymon - Mess Hall Ramsey Campbell - It Helps If You Sing Stephen King - Home Delivery Philip Nutman - Wet Work Edward Bryant - A Sad Lost Love At The Diner Of The Damned Steve Rasnic Tem - Bodies And Heads Glen Vasey - Choices Les Daniels - The Good Parts Douglas E. Winter's - Less Than Zombie Steven R. Boyett - Like Pavlog's Dogs Nicholas Royle - Saxophone Joe R. Lansdale - On The Far Side Of The Cadilac Desert With Dead Folks Brian Hodge - Dead Giveaway David J. Schow - Jerry's Kids Meet Wormboy Robert R. McCammon - Eat Me "DJ laughs and Skip pushes in my Birthday Party tape and twists up the volume and Nick Cave screams ......" - Douglas E. Winter, Less Than ZombieThe back cover says it best: "Each of the stories in this anthology is set in a world where the dead have risen to eat the living, and each author has his own intimate vision of what these days will be like: in the brilliant and caustic On The Far Side Of The Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks, Joe R. Lansdale spins what should be a traditional western yarn about a lawman tracking a badman - the deadly dead, however, give that tradition a special twist: Stephen King's pregnant heroine in Home Delivery learns the exorbitant price of survival and of patience: Robert McCammon's Eat Me answers all the questions about love among the newly risen: and Douglas E. Winter's Less Than Zombie allows us a very unhealthy peek at the pampered, exclusive and totally lifeless life-styles of the rich and famous ..." This book is very gory, but also laugh-out-loud funny at times. For the most part, the setting is post- Night Of The Living Dead America (on initial reading the Ramsey Campbell story seems utterly incongruous - to me), and the zombies are everywhere. Some humans have succeeded in training them. Brother Lazarus (in Lansdale's superlative novella ..Cadillac Desert ..) has even converted them to his own religion and taught them to groan along to a number of hymns. Mostly though, they're drifting around eating people. There are blood and entrails by the bucket-load. Richard Laymon creates one of his most frightening serial killers for Mess Hall. Coming second story in, I was thinking nothing could out-gross it, but the unbearable climax to A Sad Lost Love At The Diner Of The Damned does just that. Less Than Zombie - which also turns up in Ellen Datlow's psychic vampire collection Blood Is Not Enough - depicts yuppie hipsters (with an unfeasibly tasteful record collection) as literally soulless, walking voids. Dead Giveaway is the game show from Hell. Even the intro - the editors' passionate defence of the Splatterpunk movement in response to a Robert Bloch comment, "What's going to come out of these people who think Night Of The Living Dead isn't enough?" - is more interesting than most. Lots of t-shirt action: a drooler granny sports an I'm With Stupid number while Wormboy has a neat collection of XL's: Butthole Surfers, Rudimentary Peni, Dayglo Abortions and Giving Head To The Living Dead. Best Zombie collection ever?
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Post by dem bones on Apr 3, 2008 18:53:53 GMT
Time for some (mostly) splatterpunk fun!
Chan McConnell - Blossom: "Quinn thought of that crazy shit on the news. Cannibal attacks on the eastern seaboard. Some whackpot scientist had claimed that dead people were reviving and eating live people. It was all Big Apple rat shit ....."
Or maybe not. Quinn wines and dines Amelia, a secretary at Columbia Savings, and takes her home for some sexy fun and games. He's interested in people's 'aberrations' (hers is eating flowers) or maybe he just needs reassurance over his own. Unfortunately, he doesn't think to ask her if she has any respiratory problems before zipping her into a leather mask and she expires, still tied to the bed, with Quinn ramming away inside her. He doesn't even notice. Until she gets hungry ....
Richard Laymon - Mess Hall: Jean and Paul are disturbed by a stranger while enjoying a romp in the park after nightfall. When he blows Paul's brains all over Jean's face, beats her up and makes off with her in his car, Jean realises she's fallen into the clutches of the Reaper, a torture murderer with seven victims to his name. Handcuffed to a tree in the 'Mess Hall' - the lonely stretch of woodland where the Reaper does his stuff - Jean watches hopefully as six shadowy figures emerge from the thickets and crawl toward the killer as he's dipping into his tool-box. But look at the state of them .... !
Violent, grisly, sick, well nasty .... one of Laymon's most effective shorts!
Philip Nutman - Wet Work: "There is no time to care, just the will to survive."
Washington, AZ ("After Zombification") and Corvino, Harris, Skolomowsky and Lewis front a team of wet workers, a Government clean-up operation who prowl the streets bagging up the leftovers and report directly to the President. All have trained killer backgrounds with the Pole being particularly sadistic. But there's such a thing as too much job satisfaction and a certainly amount of local hostility from the living makes for a supremely meaty confrontation.
Brian Hodge - Dead Giveaway: "The first television program conceived entirely for zombies. I want my ZTV.": A fairly extravagant claim perhaps, but The X Factor & Co were still some years away. Following the zombie apocalypse, Monty Olsen, former Game Show host, heads for the studio where he made so many of his hits, intent on blowing his brains out. But his one-time producer - himself a walking dead - has realised that the zombies still spend much of their time slumped before the TV screen and persuades Olsen to host Dead Giveaway, a variant on Wheel Of Fortune with truly to-die-for prizes!
Stephen King - Home Delivery: Maddie, a lobster-man's widow at 22, three months pregnant and the dead scampering from their graves eating the living. It could be better. At least the remote Jenny Island doesn't have much by way of a dead population to worry about - just the one tiny graveyard which Old Frank and the men keep under constant surveillance. Her late husband Jack proves what a doting father he'd have been by slithering out of the sea for the birth, but - unlike any other story in Book Of The Dead I can think of - there's a quietly optimistic tone to Home Delivery which also reads as though it was extracted from a longer piece.
Les Daniels - The Good Parts: In Dawn Of The Dead, Romero had the mindless zombies flock to the shopping mall as that's where they'd spent most of their lives. Not the obese slob in The Good Parts who opts for the Naughty Nites Bookstore. With a never-ending supply of free porn and - in the early days, at least - as much fresh meat as he can stuff his face with, becoming a zombie is the best result he's ever had! He even finds himself a 'girlfriend' and enjoys his first legover, albeit losing his dick in the process. And now his decomposing babe is pregnant ....
Pitch black comedy from the brilliant 'Don Sebastian' man!
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Post by dem bones on Apr 6, 2008 3:41:08 GMT
damn! Should've pulled on some protective clothing and wellies before I delved further into this butcher's shop of a collection. All these congealed puddles of decomposing body parts and spaghetti strands of intestine are messing up my best spiky boots and I've lost count of the times I've had to dive for cover to avoid a fresh volley of severed dicks. And the stench! Think downwind to an unregulated abattoir in a heatwave and you're close. What an exquisitely vile book! And just when you think it can't get any worse, a zombie gang-bang no less ... David J. Schow - Jerry's Kids Meet Wormboy: Wormboy, a put-upon slob who first satisfied his appetite for human flesh when his chief tormentor was char grilled in a car smash, has done quite well out of the Zombie Apocalypse, holed up in Valley View Cemetery with a an abundance of ammo. He digs a trench around his sanctuary, obsessively booby-traps all approaches and dines on the remnants of zombie who stumble into his minefield. As time goes by so the droolers decline in number so it's with some excitement he greets the arrival of the Right Reverend Jerry and his flock. The Holy Joe has discovered that spider venom makes the zombies susceptible to mesmerism and has taught them (a) to worship as best they can, and, perhaps more importantly, (b) not to eat him when they get peckish. The scene is set for a barbaric conflict. This one is arguably grosser than Mess Hall, but pales in comparison to ... Edward Bryant - A Sad Lost Love At The Diner Of The Damned: The Cuchara Diner, Fort Durham, South Colorado and boorish bully boy Bernie Hernandez lusts after quiet waitress Martha, the most beautiful girl in town. Martha rejects his increasingly crude advances as she has her heart set upon that nice young Sheriff's Deputy, Bobby Mack if only he'd ask her out. Last night the zombies struck at the old folk's home and Bernie's Ma is among the victims. He has great fun blowing her head off. Soon the entire district is over-run with living dead and things are looking increasingly grim at the diner, like tonight could be the last stand. Bernie, having already killed Bobby Mack, decides it's now or never. While his boys hold her, he strips her off and gets ready for rape. Bobby's corpse bursts through the plate glass window: even in death he has feelings for Martha. Trouble is, all the other locals have wanted to have their evil way with her for years and a little thing like death has done nothing to dampen their ardour .... Plenty of pop culture references: Stephen King's Cujo and a jukebox that plays Joe Ely, Nick Cave's cover of Long Black Veil, the Beat Farmer's Sweet Jane. "Turn off that shit, I want to hear something good", scowls the deeply unpleasant Bernie. Like what? "Conway Twitty. Good shit". There was a second book in the series, though I've never seen a copy. Anyone else? John M. Skipp & Craig Spector (eds.) - Still Dead (Mark V. Ziesing, 1992) Tom Savini - Fast Foreword John M. Skipp & Craig Spector - Introduction: Nineteen New Ways To Kick Dead Ass or Resisting The Urge To Decay
Mort Castle - The Old Man And The Dead Chan McConnell - Don’t/Walk Nancy A. Collins - Necrophile K. W. Jeter - Rise Up And Walk Glen Vasey - One Step At A Time John M. Skipp & Craig Spector - The Ones You Love Dan Simmons - This Year’s Class Picture Simon McCaffery - Night Of The Living Dead Bingo Women Elizabeth Massie - Abed Gahan Wilson - Come One, Come All Kathe Koja - The Prince Of Nox Gregory Nicoll - Beer Run Douglas Morningstar & Maxwell Hart - Prayer Poppy Z. Brite - Calcutta, Lord Of Nerves Roberta Lannes - I Walk Alone J. S. Russell - Undiscovered Countries Brooks Carruthers - Moon Towers Nancy Holder - Passion Play Douglas E. Winter - Bright Lights, Big Zombie
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Post by goathunter on Nov 4, 2008 2:32:28 GMT
For completeness, here's the cover of the Ziesing hardcover: And a German edition: Hunter
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