Preface

In popular culture, zombies are inevitably associated with the apocalypse. Section One dealt with the apocalypse, and Section Two dealt with the zombie. Section Three deals with their collision and with its sprawling and dizzyingly variegated aftermaths. Chapter Nine explores the question of how the zombie wound up in America in the first place, something that is linked to U.S. neo-imperialism and capitalism. After Frankenstein and Dracula had made a fortune for the film industry, Hollywood was primed for a new monster. Enter the zombie, from Haiti, on the heels of the U.S. occupation of the Caribbean nation. The subsequent explosion of zombie literature and cinema are the foci of Chapter Ten. Section Three looks critically at some rather astonishing things concerning how, why, and when people decided to put zombies into video games and then to dress up like them and get drunk and walk like them in places like Asbury Park and Cleveland and Cape Town and Tokyo and Mexico City. It’s really creepy and weird, when you think about it, and it is also the focus of Chapter Eleven. Chapter Twelve then plunges us into a philosophical morass to theorize about all of this, through which we may learn something deeply meaningful about ourselves and society and about our present, future, and fate.