The Stiff: Chapter 3: Page 106
The map of zombies is 99% complete and the semi-final map is now online at io9.com! Check it out and behold it in all its tentacular glory. (I’d say “veiny glory,” but that sounds wrong for some reason.)
I say 99% complete… there’s still a few more items I want to add to the list here and there (Eric Frank Russell’s “Impulse” probably among them), and some color adjustment that needs to be done. As of the time that I write this on Wednesday night, there’s around 48 hours to go, and it looks very likely that the Kickstarter is going to cross $10,000, which means I’ll be doing a SECOND map categorizing monsters/creatures in an as-yet-undecided genre. Will there be a Map #2?!? What will it be of?!?! Stay tuned for the details!!
UPDATE: Also, I wrote an article about the best manga zombie stories for Anime News Network! Check it out! Of course, all the 10 listed titles are included on The Map. ;)
NEXT UPDATE: Friday!
Jason, I’m honored (not to say startled) that you would consider adding Russell’s story to your map! Here’s a few excerpts to give you the flavor of the story:
The visitor was sprawled in an easy chair. Dr. Blain looked him over and saw a cadaverous individual with mackerel eyes, mottled skin, and pale, bloated hands. The fellow’s clothes didn’t fit him much better than a sack.
“Dr. Blaine, I believe?” said the man in the chair. His voice gargled slowly, uncannily, and the sound of it grew pimples down Blain’s spine.
Without waiting for a reply, and with his dead optics fixed on the standing Blaine, the visitor continued. “We are a cadaverous individual with mackerel eyes, mottled skin, and pale, bloated hands.”
Sitting down abruptly, Dr. Blain grasped the arms of his chair until his knuckles stood out like blisters….His iron-gray hairs were erect on the back of his neck. Before he could open his mouth, his visitor spoke his unuttered words for him. “Good heavens! You’ve been reading my very thoughts!”…..
“Two days ago,” gargled Clegg, or what once had been Clegg, “a so-called meteor landed outside this town…..That phenomenon was actually a space vessel…..It was a space vessel that had carried us from our home world of Glantok. The vessel was exceedingly small by your standards–but we, too, are small. Very small. We are submicroscopic, and our number is myriad.”
“No, not intelligent germs.” The ghastly speaker stole the thought from his listener’s mind. “We are less even than those.” He paused while he searched around for words more explicit. “In the mass, we resemble a liquid. You might regard us as an intelligent virus.”
“We took this body, liquefied the congealed blood, loosened the rigid joints, softened the dead muscles, and made it walk. It seems that its brain was fairly intelligent in life, and even in death its memories remain recorded. We utilize this dead brain’s knowledge to think in human terms and to converse with you after your own fashion.”
The awful eyes bulged slightly. Their owner added, “Since this inefficient body is beyond even our power to animate much longer, we must have a fresh, live, healthy one as soon as it can be obtained….You will assist us”–the finger swerved toward the door–“and that body will do for the first.”
The girl in the doorway was young, fair-haired, pleasingly plump…..The girl gasped….She screamed on a note weak because of its height. Then, as the living dead tottered toward her, she closed her eyes and slumped….
Tasty stuff, no? This would make a nifty short horror film (and inexpensive, to boot!)
I just saw your almost finished map of zombies, and I find it amazing, but I was wondering if you also considered one of the protagonists of Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett: Windle Poons, a very old wizard who dies but, not finding death to show him his path to the afterlife, returns to his body as an intelligent and funny zombie. It is also to notice that in the novel he’s not the only zombie, as the zombie “activist” Reg Shoe is a zombie too. In general in many other Discworld novels there are different zombies. I hope this proved helpful for your zombie map.
@Iquon – Thanks for the suggestion! I’ll check it out, although I don’t know if I have space to put ’em on the map at this stage… in general, also, I’m focusing on zombies in the “real world” (whether from supernatural or science causes) rather than in fantasy worlds. If I were going to include all the different types of zombies in even fantasy RPGs, for instance, that’d be 100s of extra zombies.