John Joseph Adams (editor) - The Living Dead

The Living Dead 2008 by John Joseph Adams
This edition of The Living Dead 2008 by Night Shade Books
Cover art 2008 by David Palumbo
Cover design by Michael Fusco
Interior layout and design by Ross E. Lockhart
All rights reserved
"Introduction" and author notes 2008 by John Joseph Adams
The following two pages represent an extension of this copyright page.
Printed in Canada
First Edition
ISBN 10: 1-59780-143-7
ISBN 13: 978-1-59780-143-0
Night Shade Books
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"Some Zombie Contingency Plans" by Kelly Link. 2005 Kelly Link. Originally published in Magic for Beginners. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Death and Suffrage" by Dale Bailey. 2002 Dale Bailey. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Blossom" by David J. Schow. 1989 David J. Schow. Originally published in Book of the Dead, 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"The Third Dead Body" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. 1993 Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Originally published in The Ultimate Zombie, 1993. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"The Dead" by Michael Swanwick. 1996 Michael Swanwick. Originally published in Starlight 1, 1996. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"The Dead Kid" by Darrell Schweitzer. 2002 Darrell Schweitzer. Originally published in The Book of More Flesh, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Malthusian's Zombie" by Jeffrey Ford. 2000 Jeffrey Ford. Originally published in SCI FICTION, May 2000. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Beautiful Stuff" by Susan Palwick. 2004 Susan Palwick. Originally published in SCI FICTION, August 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Sex, Death and Starshine" 1984 Clive Barker. Originally published in Books of Blood, Volume 1 by Little, Brown Book Group Limited.

"Stockholm Syndrome" by David Tallerman. 2007 David Tallerman. Originally published in Pseudopod, June 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead" by Joe Hill. 2005 Joe Hill. Originally published in Postscripts #5, December 2005; and also in 20th Century Ghosts, copyright 2005, 2007 by Joe Hill, published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

"Those Who Seek Forgiveness" by Laurell K. Hamilton. 2006 Laurell K. Hamilton. Originally published in Strange Candy, 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"In Beauty, Like the Night" by Norman Partridge. 1992 Norman Partridge. Originally published in Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales, 1992. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Prairie" by Brian Evenson. 1997 Brian Evenson. Originally published in The Silver Web #14, 1997. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Everything Is Better with Zombies" by Hannah Wolf Bowen. 2006 Hannah Wolf Bowen. Originally published in Phantom #0, 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Home Delivery" by Stephen King. 1989 Stephen King. Originally published in Book of the Dead, 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Sparks Fly Upward" by Lisa Morton. 2005 Lisa Morton. Originally published in Mondo Zombie, 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Meathouse Man" by George R. R. Martin. 1976 by Damon Knight. Copyright renewed 2004. 2004 by George R. R. Martin. Originally published in Orbit 18, 1976. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Deadman's Road" by Joe R. Lansdale. 2007 Joe R. Lansdale. Originally published in Weird Tales, February/March 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"The Skull-Faced Boy" by David Barr Kirtley. 2002 David Barr Kirtley. Originally published in Gothic.net, March 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"The Age of Sorrow" by Nancy Kilpatrick. 2007 Nancy Kilpatrick. Originally published in Postscripts #10, April 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Bitter Grounds" by Neil Gaiman. 2003 Neil Gaiman. Originally published in Mojo: Conjure Stories, 2003. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"She's Taking Her Tits to the Grave" by Catherine Cheek. 2008 Catherine Cheek. Originally published in Ideomancer, June 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Dead Like Me" by Adam-Troy Castro. 2000 Adam-Troy Castro. Originally published in A Desperate, Decaying Darkness, 2000. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Zora and the Zombie" by Andy Duncan. 2004 Andy Duncan. Originally published in SCI FICTION, February 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Calcutta, Lord of Nerves" by Poppy Z. Brite. 1992 Poppy Z. Brite. Originally published in Still Dead, 1992. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Followed" by Will McIntosh. 2007 Will McIntosh. Originally published in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #18, Summer 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"The Song the Zombie Sang" by Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg. 1970 by Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg. Renewed, 1998 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation and Agberg, Ltd. All rights reserved. Harlan Ellison is a registered trademark of The Kilimanjaro Corporation.

"Passion Play" by Nancy Holder. 1992 Nancy Holder. Originally published in Still Dead, 1992. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man" by Scott Edelman. 2007 Scott Edelman. Originally published in Postscripts #12, December 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author.

"How the Day Runs Down" by John Langan. 2008 John Langan. Original to this volume.

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse
Seeds of Change

"You know Macumba? Voodoo. My granddad was a priest in Trinidad. He used to tell us, 'When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.'"

Ken Foree as "Peter" in George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead

When I first started assembling this anthology, I thought to myself: This is not going to be the sort of book that begins with an origin of the word zombie. Because that's not the point, is it? Zombie fiction is about the unburied dead returning to life and seeking human victims. It's about battling a frightening, implacable foe and imagining what it would be like to survive the end of the world and trying to figure out what to do when the dead won't stay dead.

Regardless of where the word actually comes from, today the word "zombie" generally refers to the sort of shambling reanimated corpses as depicted in George A. Romero's landmark film Night of the Living Dead. In his short fiction collection Zombie Jam, author David J. Schow explains the influence of Romero: "The plain fact is that the aptly-christened 'Romero zombies' have infiltrated the culture to the extent that even people who have never experienced the movies 'know' what zombies are in shortform: They're dead, they walk, they want to eat you, and they usually outnumber you."

Most of the stories in this book are either inspired by Romero's "unholy trilogy"Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Deador are a reaction to it. That influence is obvious in much of the fiction contained herein, and authors frequently cite seeing Romero's films as pivotal moments in their youth (and, indeed, their lives).