Night of the Living Trekkies

From The Independent:

Kevin Anderson's Night of the Living Trekkies is set to be published by Quirk Books, announced industry resource Publishers Lunch on March 4. Due out in September 2010, the mash-up novel, "mixing a zombie apocalypse with the enduring mythology of Star Trek," will join such Quirk Books titles as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Android Karenina.
According to a description posted on Sea of Stories, an intellectual rights agency site, Night of the Living Trekkies "follows a rag-tag group of 'Trekkies' en route to an annual Star Trek convention. Arriving with homemade uniforms, glued-on prosthetics, and plastic phasers, these fanboys know more than any rational adult should know about Kirk, Spock, Next Generation, particle physics, and black holes. But when aliens release a zombie plague upon the Earth, all of this 'Starfleet training' suddenly becomes a lot more relevant."​

ETA: as mentioned downstream, this is by Kevin David Anderson, not the more well-known Kevin J. Anderson.

 

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but...

I will never, if I live to be 120, then die, then rise from the dead again and lurch on for another 120 years, understand my people's obsession with zombies, vampires and other "undead" beings. Where is the attraction? I simply can't fathom any reason why zombies are of any interest whatsoever, personally . But that's just me.

Sorry to post here only to moan! If you are going to read it, please do post your thoughts on it.

I hope they'll at least mention the Zombie!Vulcan TV episode.

 

Check out the cover. I love it.

But, yeah, I'd rather have a hot poker shoved in my ear than read a KJA book. :-/

 

Okay, that is great, I admit.

 

Okay, that looks great. When's the release date?

There needs to be a scene where some unlucky Trekkie gets his brain eaten while screaming, "No! This isn't canon!"

As for the appeal of the undead: death, decay, hunger, immortality, a freakish disruption of the natural order. What's not to like?

Sex, death, and religion . . . people are always going to be fascinated by primeval, irrrational forces. Especially when you combine them in shocking ways.

 

Well, sex, death and religion appeal to me as driving forces behind the creation of (and within) fictional stories, certainly, but lurching corpses trying to eat people has never worked for me at all. Whatever part of the psyche it stimulates obviously isn't active in me .

But, I've changed my avatar in honour of this announcement anyway. Make of that what you will...

 

September 4.

 

Thanks! I think I know what I'm reading on Labor Day.

Too bad it won't be on sale in time for Shore Leave!

 

Fair enough. I don't have the mafia gene. Organized crime stories have never interested me. I've never even seen THE GODFATHER, even though I know it's supposed to be a masterpiece . . . .

Maybe you need to be imprinted with the undead at an impressionable age. Lord knows I grew up on DARK SHADOWS, "Nightmare Theater," and FAMOUS MONSTERS.

 

I've actually just received an e-mail from the author.

His name is Kevin David Anderson. Not Kevin J. Anderson. I'm putting down the hot poker now.

 

Yeah. I'm in.

That's gonna disappoint some of the KJA haters out there. One less thing for them to bitch about. I've been reading some of those folks on Twitter, and they're hilarious in their utter loating of all things KJA. I mean, you'd think the dude offed Janeway or something.

 

Oh yeah, that's a must!

 

"Send more security guards."

 

Why'd you have to mention KJA-haters on Twitter? Now I've gone in search of them, and... Wow. Who harshed on their mellow?

By the by, I don't think of myself as a KJA-hater. I've read maybe forty of his books, from Star Wars to novelizations. Mainly, I don't like his prose style (I find it lifeless), but I was willing to give this book a shot when I thought he was writing it. Though I will confess, I was relieved when I found out it was a different Kevin Anderson...

 

i've only read his Jedi Academy trilogy. didn't hate them.

 

^ I've not liked everything I've read by KJA, either, but having hung out with him and his wife, they are two of the nicer people you'll meet.

Now, about those zombies. If there's not a scene with zombified Trekkies wrecking the Saturday night "Federation Ball" or the costume contest, and nobody figuring it out right away because they think the eaters are just going all out with their costumes right up to the point were a zombie chews a chunk out of a filker's skull, I'm gonna cry.

 

Mine too!