We’ve talked about, and with, Mr. Maberry before but this latest interview with Buy Zombie is a bit depressing:

JONATHAN MABERRY: I have two main reasons for my fascination with zombies. As a storyteller, I love the fact that there is no end to the number of stories you can tell about a zombie outbreak or apocalypse. It’s the ultimate doomsday scenario. Everything you know is called into question, all of the infrastructure you rely upon collapses, even the people you know and love can turn on you. This allows us to explore the dynamics of people under great pressure –and that’s pretty much the definition of ‘drama’.

I feel so sad that so many automatically associate Zombies with the apocalypse, I really do. Is it that people fear change? Is this like thinking that rock music was going to create a generation of uncontrollable social deviants or that videogames could turn our nation’s children into an army of violent sociopaths?

I’ve always marveled at how many Anti-Zombie authors appear to be genuinely afraid of their own creations. Max Brooks seems to be almost literally worried his own books will come out and bite him, but you see some of the same signs with Mr. Maberry. I guess that’s part of creating a believable story? That even the author believes it?

One more excerpt and then I insist you go read for yourselves:

BUYZOMBIE: What scares you?

JONATHAN MABERRY: The thing that frightens me the most is the potential disaster of a misuse of technology. Every day we see amazing leaps forward in all aspects of technology, science, medicine, and warfare. But what I don’t see is a leap forward in maturity, restraint, subtlety, compassion, tolerance or basic common sense. I don’t think we, as a species, are mature enough to play with some of the toys we’re creating. A monster could get off the lease way too easily. That’s why I write science-based thrillers.

A leap forward in tolerance, Mr. Maberry? I have two words for you: Zombie Tolerance.

Food for thought, isn’t it?

Tags: Books

This entry was posted by John Sears on Thursday, February 16th, 2012 at 1:01 am and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.