Customer Reviews

I, Zombie

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I discovered this title thanks to a list of available zombie fiction on Amazon and I am pleased I got a used copy through the website.

I, Zombie came well before the more recent spate of Zombie titles out there and I believe it was written just a few years after Dawn of the Dead hit the scene in 1979. Although many might consider anything to do with Zombies these days originating back to Romero, this work certainly is not necessarily a tale of horror or even of the zombies we have all come to know and love.

Our nameless character is a hulking woman who has discovered that she is still alive after "dying" at the bottom of a lake. She is stronger and more intelligent than she was before, thanks to a chip that has been implanted in her head. Unfortunately, the whole reason it was implanted there was because no one paid close enough attention and realized she was still alive.

Thus our character joins a multitude of other "stiffs" who are now the labor force on a backworld colony of Earth's sometime in the future. They are the grunts that do all the heavy lifting. Cheaper than robots and controlled electronically through helmets worn by drivers, they can no longer feel or think. They still breath, eat, and can move about but the chips in their brain is the only reason they remain animated. Except with this single case.

Our heroine goes with the flow, not revealing her identity and actually discovering that she has the ability to also control the other zombies that are around her somewhat. Since she chooses to hide the fact that she is actually alive and is now much more intelligent (whereas before her accident she was at least borderline retarded) she resurrects the vestiges of her dead roommates personalities and interacts with them, although it is quite clear they are truly dead with no ability to think or act independently.

The story is fast paced and interesting with plenty of interesting twists and turns as our main character hides her identity but raises the suspicions of those living humans around her. She, like the other dead workers, is treated like any other machine. As the story unfolds she discovers that some of the living and thinking humans are less humane than her own dead counterparts.

This story is quite entertaining and an easy read. I found myself quite attached to our stoic main character and her strong sense of nobility in the face of tremendous prejudice and outright hatred as she unravels the mysterious murder and keeps her facade intact through the story.

The book demonstrates that even when someone is beaten down and thought of as the less than the lowest form of life they can still demonstrate great strength and perserverance.

I grabbed this dog-eared copy of I, Zombie from [local store].

The cover bears little resemblance to what actually transpires within the pages... but that is nothing new in Science Fiction.

Need a new premise? OK, try this... zombies are real, in a sense. At this future time, technology has progressed to the point where a recently deceased individual can have his/her body reanimated with an electronic "pack" replacing consciousness, if not the actual brain itself. Zombies are inexpensive labor, controlled by a trained individual who makes use of various levels of technology to do so.

This works just fine... so long as morals are lax, and so long as the subject of reanimation is actually dead when she is processed. Unfortunately, one individual, ugly, brain-deficient, but very much alive is declared dead and has a pack implanted before it is discovered that the cold water she apparently drowned in kept her alive longer than was known. Waking up with an electronic widget tied into her brain, she finds that she is immensely strong and considerably more intelligent than she had previously been. She also has various complexes... either natural or artificial... in place that prevent her from actually telling anyone she is alive.

The attempts to rectify that little state of affairs begins fairly early in the story.

It is a rather heart-wrenching story with a happy, yet tragic ending that is quite surprising... though the author did not quite play fair in providing the surprise at the end.

The story ends with a distinct possibility of a sequel... one which apparently never materialized, unfortunately. The book is out of print, but can still be found at prices ranging from two to six dollars. In my opinion, a bargain at any available price. Finding one may present some problems.... and no, I won't sell you mine, but it is worth the effort.

Dale A. Raby
Editor/Publisher
The Green Bay Web
[URL]

Truely life among the working stiffs, slap a generator pack on a dead person and put them to work...just make sure they are 100% dead first. Otherwise results are not guarenteed. Scenes that will make you laugh years later just thinking about them. This book is on my science fiction sampler list.