Zombies and Shit [Paperback]

Carlton Mellick III (Author), Brian Keene (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 17, 2010

Battle Royale meets Return of the Living Dead in this post-apocalyptic action adventure.

Twenty people wake to find themselves in a boarded-up building in the middle of the zombie wasteland. They soon discover they have been chosen as contestants on a popular reality show called Zombie Survival. Each contestant is given a backpack of supplies and a unique weapon. Their goal: be the first to make it through the zombie-plagued city to the pick-up zone alive. But because there's only one seat available on the helicopter, the contestants not only have to fight against the hordes of the living dead, they must also fight each other.

Zombies and Shit is Mellick's craziest book to date. A campy, trashy, punk rock gore fest that is as funny as it is brutal, as sad as it is strange. An edge-of-your-seat thrill ride that twists the zombie genre into something you've never seen before, but always wanted to.

This edition features an introduction by master of horror BRIAN KEENE.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Praise for Zombies and Shit

"It's fucking exhilarating--a tight, breakneck narrative and lots of awesome ultra-violence and quirky, distinct characters."
- BRIAN KEENE, author of The Rising and Dead Sea

"Unlike any zombie apocalypse novel you've ever read, Zombies and Shit takes the zombie mythology and reimagines it in a brutal reality game show like no other. Filled with sentient zombies, zombie smart cars, mechanized zombie dogs, and a cybernetic Mr. T, Zombies and Shit is part Running Man, part Battle Royale, part Lost, and all Carlton Mellick III."
- S. G. BROWNE, author of Breathers

"For fans of zombie fiction, this is an absolute MUST FUCKING READ!"
- JEFF BURK, author of Shatnerquake

"Crazy and delightful."
- JACK KETCHUM, author of The Woman and The Girl Next Door

From the Back Cover

Praise for Carlton Mellick III

"Easily the craziest, weirdest, strangest, funniest, most obscene writer in America."
- GOTHIC MAGAZINE

"Carlton Mellick III has the craziest book titles... and the kinkiest fans!"
- CHRISTOPHER MOORE, author of The Stupidest Angel

"If you haven't read Mellick you're not nearly perverse enough for the twenty first century."
- JACK KETCHUM, author of The Woman and The Girl Next Door

"Carlton Mellick III is one of bizarro fiction's most talented practitioners, a virtuoso of the surreal, science fictional tale."
- CORY DOCTOROW, author of Little Brother

"Bizarre, twisted, and emotionally raw--Carlton Mellick's fiction is the literary equivalent of putting your brain in a blender."
- BRIAN KEENE, author of The Rising and Dead Sea

"Carlton Mellick III exemplifies the intelligence and wit that lurks between its lurid covers. In a genre where crude titles are an art in themselves, Mellick is a true artist."
- THE GUARDIAN

"Just as Pop had Andy Warhol and Dada Tristan Tzara, the Bizarro movement has its very own P. T. Barnum-type practitioner. He's the mutton-chopped author of such books as Electric Jesus Corpse and The Menstruating Mall, the illustrator, editor, and instructor of all things Bizarro, and his name is Carlton Mellick III."
- DETAILS MAGAZINE

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Deadite Press (October 17, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1936383195
• ISBN-13: 978-1936383191
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #353,253 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Like a real world Kilgore Trout, cult author CARLTON MELLICK III has been pumping out some of the weirdest, trashiest, most imaginative books that you'll never want to admit you secretly love.

His books are released on a quarterly basis (every January, April, July, and October).

Best known as one of the leading authors of the bizarro fiction movement in literature, he is also one of the most prolific authors of his generation with over 40 books in print since 2001. He won the Wonderland Book Award for his novel "Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland" and has had short stories make it into The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade.

Although many of his earliest works are on the surreal and experimental side, his current style is to take the most ridiculous concepts imaginable and approach them with complete sincerity, as if they are not intended to be ridiculous at all. Always full of tongue-in-cheek humor, social satire, and told in a simplistic straightforward prose style similar to that of children's literature or early pulp fiction, Carlton Mellick III's work is one of a kind, to say the least.

He lives in Portland, OR, the bizarro mecca.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars CEREBROS!!!!!! December 6, 2010

By David W Barbee

Format:Paperback

Ah, zombies. Like vampires before them, they are marching into that stale oblivion that we know as the mainstream. It's a shame really, especially if you were already a fan when the zombie boom hit. Thanks to that boom there are no shortage of books, movies, TV shows, and pop references to the shambling dead. This is both a good and bad thing. Back when zombies were rare, we appreciated them more. Now you have to slog through a lot of plain stuff that just uses the zombie formulas that are now classic. All so you can find a zombie story of ANY kind that does something truly different and interesting.

I say all this because Carlton Mellick's Zombies and Stuff is one of the zombie stories you SHOULD pay attention to. It's got a strong plot, unique characters, and a setting that provides a nice twist to the zombie apocalypse. It's set long after the zombie outbreak, and humanity has survived by relocating to an overcrowded island where there is a strict caste system. The people in the Copper Quadrant are surrounded by poverty, disease, and crime. The people in the Platinum Quadrant are ridiculously wealthy and get their kicks watching the reality show Zombie Survival. On this show, twenty citizens from Copper are drugged, kidnapped, and abandoned on the zombie-infested mainland to see who can be the last man standing.

The contestants include punks, prostitutes, cyborg mercenaries, a genetically engineered predator, and the T-2000 (with some average joes mixed in for a good body count). Only one of them will be allowed to escape the city and win the contest, so they not only have to beware the zombies, but also each other. Each character has a back story that lets you see who these people are, sometimes right before they're killed and eaten by zombies. This provides a lot of action and some cool fight scenes, whether it's between contestants or against zombies. But this book doesn't just have demented characters competing against one another in a brutal landscape, it's also got plenty of the undead. And that's what we're here for, right? Well I'm happy to say that Mellick delivers. The zombies here are drippy-fleshed ghouls who cry out for "Braaains!" They puke radioactive slime that will infect you. They prefer to consume brains and nerve tissue before eating regular flesh. They're similar to the zombies of "Return of the Living Dead," but with little extras like plants taking root in the decayed crevices of their bodies, or car parts melded awkwardly to their flesh.

Each one-on-one encounter with the zombies is memorable because Mellick makes the dead just as freakish as the living. His talent lies in making ideas that normally wouldn't/shouldn't work into things that are brilliant and cool. The T-2000 is a prime example of this. I won't spoil who/what he is, but it's a ridiculous idea that wouldn't work for anyone else but CM3. And it turned out to be my favorite part of the book. It'll be your favorite, too. I guarantee it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Favorite Zombie Novel December 9, 2010

By Troy Chambers

Format:Paperback

Zombies have a tendency to show up in a lot in Bizarro novels, but usually not as a main theme. They generally just tend to be there, because everything can have some zombies in it and get a more awesome. I am a firm believe in the awesome power of Zombies.

Carlton Mellick III's newest novel 'Zombies and Sh:t' is just about zombies- though very much in Mellick's style. He's not the type to write us one of those 'mashup novels' of zombies and classic lit, or a dumb soap opera that happens to have people getting eaten by zombies, nope- what we get with Carlton Mellick's 'Zombies and Sh:t' is something a LOT more entertaining than that. Thank god.

It's 'Battle Royale' style: an array of really friggin' weird citizens from the post-zombie-apocalypse lower caste are kidnapped and dropped off in the middle of the Zombie wasteland, given a weapon, and told their only way out is on the helicopter deep into the zombie infested town. They are being filmed in reality TV show style for the amusement of the rich. The catch? There's only one spot available on the helicopter. Not only do they have to fight off the zombies, they also have to fight EACH OTHER if they want to escape and survive.

Mellick's talent for gifting us with an assembly of weirdos to populate his books is at its highest in 'Zombies and Sh:t'. I don't want to give much away about them- part of the fun of the book is following these people through and discovering more about their, uhh... 'quirks'. You'll have to read it see what I mean.

Easily my favorite part of this book though is the nature of the zombies themselves. These guys aren't just filler, they're not a big horde of cardboard cutout zombies. These are 'Return of the Living Dead' style zombies ('Braains!!'), that have started to mesh with the environment. One of the first zombies we see has melded with some plants and his head is a flower pot. It's awesome. It really, really is.

I also wanted to say that I usually prefer my zombies on the screen. I'm a zombie movie guy, and not usually a fan of zombies in books. This book works with zombies in it though- and Mellick's writing style makes it feel as if we're watching this as a Zombie movie instead of reading a book.

'Zombies and Sh:t' has broad appeal- zombies fans, pick it up. Bizarro fans, pick it up. Horror fans (that don't hate zombies), pick it up. Punks that liked 'Return of the Living Dead', pick it up. This is NOT a book to miss.

Highly recommended.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This is pure awesome July 5, 2011

By Jason Wuchenich

Format:Paperback

I LOVED this book. I can't ever recall having more fun reading a book. That's the key word - fun. At first, I thought it was going to be a train wreck. Having 20+ characters in a Battle Royale-esque style of literature sounds almost impossible to accomplish successfully. But holy crap, this kicked the teeth out of anything I expected. Backstories of all 20 contestants are seamlessly placed throughout carefully constructed chapters that detail the characters objectives. Finding out how everyone got to the situation they started in was as entertaining as the zombie gameshow itself. Oops... Yea, it's a gameshow - like The Running Man with zombies. And if you're a zombie movie nut, you'll be able to spot the individual inspirations from select zombie movies. Again, this is an awesomely fun read. One I don't want to disclose anything more about. Get this, and have fun!