The Living Dead (2008)
The Living Dead is a 2008 zombies book written by John Joseph Adams and Dan Simmons.
A big-tent reprint anthology from editor John Joseph Adams, gathering nearly thirty zombie stories by writers who mostly are not zombie writers. Stephen King contributes Home Delivery, Neil Gaiman the haunted Bitter Grounds, George R.R. Martin the notorious Meathouse Man, and Dan Simmons This Year's Class Picture, in which a small-town teacher keeps holding class for her undead pupils. Kelly Link, Clive Barker, Joe Hill, Sherman Alexie and Joe R. Lansdale fill out a lineup that treats the walking dead as a lens on grief, labor, politics and love rather than a body count. It stands as the defining zombie-fiction survey of its era.
Quick answers
What is The Living Dead about?
A big-tent reprint anthology from editor John Joseph Adams, gathering nearly thirty zombie stories by writers who mostly are not zombie writers. Stephen King contributes Home Delivery, Neil Gaiman the haunted Bitter Grounds, George R.R. Martin the notorious Meathouse Man, and Dan Simmons This Year's Class Picture, in which a small-town teacher keeps holding class for her undead pupils. Kelly Link, Clive Barker, Joe Hill, Sherman Alexie and Joe R. Lansdale fill out a lineup that treats the walking dead as a lens on grief, labor, politics and love rather than a body count. It stands as the defining zombie-fiction survey of its era.
When was The Living Dead published?
The Living Dead was published in 2008.
Who made The Living Dead?
The Living Dead was written by John Joseph Adams, Dan Simmons and Kelly Link.
Similar books
A few thoughts on The Living Dead
The Walking Dead shares this book's core conviction that the dead are the weather and the living are the story. The Last of Us turns that idea into the strongest character writing games have produced. And George Romero's Night of the Living Dead remains the source nearly every story here is answering, still lean, still frightening.
Anthologies that reprint the best of an entire horror subgenre
The Living Dead gathers thirty writers who are mostly not zombie specialists into one definitive reprint collection. These sit on the same shelf: a landmark horror anthology spanning decades of the genre's best short fiction, a reprint devoted entirely to vampires, a treasury built around the supernatural in all its forms, a survey of horror's modern masters, and a themed collection built around one dark holiday.
Single-author horror collections that turn genre tropes literary
The Living Dead uses zombies as a way into grief and politics, treating a pulp premise as literary material. These do the same trick from one voice: a King collection that turns small dread into lasting unease, a contemporary writer's stories rooted in real community and loss, a classic pulp author's reprinted catalog of damaged minds, and a nineteenth-century writer's gothic tales that still read as literature first.