Some days I think I should reserve a permanent space on my site for the zombie reporters over at the Gawker network. It’s not that they are better than other bloggers out there, it’s just that they tend to be first in line to get some major undead skinny. And the skinny is never skinny. It’s always fat, smeared in mashed brain and congealed blood. In a word … tasty!

Well, if you like your dead pressed between the pages of a good book, you might want to check out the new anthology, The New Dead. Here’s what the futuristic minded folks over at io9 have to say about it:

The New Dead is both a product of this undead fascination and a response to our culture’s monolithic take on the zombie story. The authors serve up an array of reasons for postmortem resurrection (outbreak, voodoo, divine intervention, military meddling), and the characteristics of the zombies change from tale to tale. We get sentient zombies, brainless zombies, rotting zombies, indestructible zombies, hungry zombies, sated zombies, and – in David Liss’ “What Maisie Knew” – fuckable zombies.

Indeed, the book’s main appeal is this cornucopia of fetid literary tropes, and The New Dead contains some fantastic experiments in worldbuilding. Jonathan Maberry’s “Family Business” hilariously details the job market post-zombie apocalypse (the crummiest gig is “Fence Tester”), and Mike Carey of Lucifer fame describes an undead Gordon Gekko type who preserves his body so he can work the global economy 24/7. What’s even more astounding is that Carey’s tale manages to be touching, despite the fact that it’s about a stockbroking zombie who lives in a freezer to prevent putrefaction.

This sounds really cool with a lot of accomplished authors contributing their views to the world of our undead friends. I believe this is in bookstores now so if you are hungering for some undead fiction, swing on over to your local bookseller, or hit up the library then tell me what you think.

The New Dead Offers 20+ Variations On An Undead Theme (io9.com <- new window)