Ever since George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, people have assigned meaning to zombies. Maybe the creator of a zombie film or book intended for audiences to draw parallels between the walking dead and some sort of societal issue, like racism with Night. Why is the zombie genre so ripe for analogies?

A couple of reasons. Zombies are, on one level, a manifestation of the worst that is humanity. Dead, skulking, trying to kill everyone in its path. If people are the light, zombies are the dark. They’re two sides of the same coin. That allows for writers and filmmakers to make a lot of thematic connections between the two. Take Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. The survivors hole up in a shopping mall, because it’s familiar, and has pretty much everything they need. It’s not the safest place, since the people will eventually have to leave, and when they do, chances are zombies will surround the place. That’s exactly what happens in the film. At the end, when the zombies break into the mall, they shuffle around, riding the escalators, and roam through the shops, exactly like humans once did, making the analogy that humans are zombie slaves to consumerism.

Zombies are also a blank slate. They can come from most anywhere or anything, and their mythology isn’t quite as sacred as vampires or werewolves. There’s not as much freedom for interpretation with those creatures. Zombies, however, can be a sign of anything. In Shaun of the Dead, it’s insinuated that humans already were zombies, ambling about their lives in a dazed stupor.

That’s what makes zombies are so open to reinvention and interpretation. They’re literally a blank slate. A writer or filmmaker can make a zombie represent anything their hearts desire.

The other reason zombies make for great analogies is the two sides of the same coin theory I mentioned earlier. When a person comes face-to-face with a zombie, they’re also coming face-to-face with their own mortality. To live, they have to kill. With vampires or werewolves, this isn’t the case. Only with zombies. People react differently when they stare death in the eye. Much like a societal connection, that’s great fodder for interpretation with a writer or filmmaker, and that’s why zombies remain… fresh to this day.

When the the leader of a powerful cult kidnaps the woman Holt loves, he teams up with his best friend to save her from a fate worse than death.

Fans of Jonathan Maberry’s ROT & RUIN and AMC’s hit series, The Walking Dead will devour Hill’s action Âpacked take on the Zombie genre. DEAD NEW WORLD is now available at Amazon and Curiosity Quills. Get to know more about Ryan in this exclusive letter to readers

DEAD NEW WORLD

Zombies arenâ€™t mindless anymore.

Before the world fell into chaos, the undead existed only in the imagination. Now, more of them walk the earth than living. Zombies move about freely, while humans entomb themselves inside concrete barricades to stay alive.

All that, while the leader of a powerful cult – known only as Reverend – becomes the next threat to the rebuilding United States. Believing zombies to be Godâ€™s latest creation, making humanity obsolete, he wants to give every man, woman, and child the chance to become one. With his combined army of humans and zombies, he may well get his wish.

Best friends Holt and Ambrose went up against the Reverend once. Holt lost a foot and a zombie bit Ambroseâ€¦though he survived the virus, only to become a human-zombie hybrid, reviled by the living and unwelcome among the dead. When the Reverend kidnaps the woman Holt loves, the race is on to save her from a fate worse than death.

Ryan Hill

Growing up, Ryan Hill used to spend his time reading and writing instead of doing homework. This resulted in an obsession with becoming a writer, but also a gross incompetence in the fields of science and mathematics. A graduate of North Carolina State University, Ryan has been a film critic for over five years. He lives in Raleigh, NC, with his dog/shadow Maggie. Ryan also feels strange about referring to himself in the third person.

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