Trek writers original works

[Greg Cox]

You do realize that the title could be taken another way, right?

Granted, but hopefully the zombie thing raises different expectations.

Just as a tease, the first line of the story:

"Being a zombie makes me feel alive."

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Being a zombie makes me feel alive.

Hmm.

But Lucy, I'm engaged to Mina... and you're dead.

I'm not dead. I'm undead.

Yes, well, I'm not unengaged.

 

[Greg Cox]

From the Mel Brooks movie?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

From the Mel Brooks movie?

Yes!

Yes, we have Nosferatu! We have Nosferatu today!

(And I'm absolutely certain that I used that joke in connection with a showing of Murnau's Nosferatu [with Robert York's live accompaniment on the "Mighty Austin" at St. Luke's, Long Beach] at least a year before the first time I saw Dracula: Dead And Loving It.)

Personally, I think that the only reason why Dracula: Dead And Loving It was a butt-monkey among Mel Brooks movies is because Young Frankenstein was such an impossibly tough act to follow.

 

[JD]

Proud to finally announce that I have a grisly new zombie story, "People I Want to Eat," in the next issue of WEIRD TALES magazine.

Like there's another kind of zombie story?

Well, I've never watched them, but I have feeling the Disney Chanel Zombies teen romance musical movies probably aren't very grisly.

 

[Greg Cox]

Well, I've never watched them, but I have feeling the Disney Chanel Zombies teen romance musical movies probably aren't very grisly.

And prior to 1968 and Night of the Living Dead, zombie movies were often more moody and eerie than grisly. See White Zombie (with Lugosi) and I Walked with a Zombie (Val Lewton). Zombies were also played for laughs in movies like The Ghost Breakers (with Bob Hope).

Old-fashioned voodoo zombies, that is, before the flesh-eating, Romero-style zombies took over.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Please note that the proper weapon for attacking a zombie is . . . a tall glass.

 

[Christopher]

It’s been almost exactly a year since the start of the Kickstarter campaign that included my story collection Aleyara’s Descent and Other Stories, which we’d hoped would come out last July in time for that year’s Shore Leave Convention. But eSpec’s cover artist Mike McPhail wanted to take some extra time to create a suitable cover image of the Biauru characters from the title story. This proved more challenging than we expected, and Mike’s been dealing with illness and other things, so the cover ended up getting delayed quite a bit. Ultimately, we decided to settle for a simpler cover and just get the book out there in time for this year’s Shore Leave, though Mike hopes to revisit the cover art later. The book is now scheduled to release on July 1, 2025, and will debut at Shore Leave on July 11-13.


Cover by Mike McPhail of McP Digital Graphics

Infinite Dimensions. Endless Possibilities. Universal Questions.
Across multiple realities and millennia of past and future history, heroes human and otherwise challenge their limits and brave the unknown in pursuit of the fundamental truths of the universe—and each other.
From bestselling author Christopher L. Bennett comes Aleyara’s Descent, eleven tales portraying the search for understanding, connection, and hope that unites seekers of all species, eras, and realities.

• In an alien past, four impetuous youths brave a forbidden realm to discover their world’s true nature.
• A first contact between a UFO believer and a real alien doesn’t go the way either one expects.
• Scientists battling a kaiju invasion must overcome the mistrust of the insular enclave they strive to protect.
• A government agent’s drive to safeguard the future hits a speed bump when she questions a suspected time traveler.
• The inheritor of a fabled superhero name must prove herself by solving the one mystery her predecessor never could.

These and other diverse tales, many in print for the first time, bring a multiverse of aliens, monsters, time travelers, and heroes to life with plausibility and sensitivity.
Includes the brand-new tale “Nilly’s Choice,” a companion story to the Arachne novels.

 

[Turtletrekker]

I need to find my copy of Peter David's Howling Mad and give it a reread.

 

[Christopher]

Personally, I think that the only reason why Dracula: Dead And Loving It was a butt-monkey among Mel Brooks movies is because Young Frankenstein was such an impossibly tough act to follow.

DD&LI wasn't one of Brooks's greats, but it was reasonably good. "Yes, we have Nosferatu" cracked me up in the theater. Like Robin Hood: Men in Tights, its most compelling feature was Amy Yasbeck, who was never more luminous than in her Brooks movies.

And prior to 1968 and Night of the Living Dead, zombie movies were often more moody and eerie than grisly. See White Zombie (with Lugosi) and I Walked with a Zombie (Val Lewton). Zombies were also played for laughs in movies like The Ghost Breakers (with Bob Hope).

Old-fashioned voodoo zombies, that is, before the flesh-eating, Romero-style zombies took over.

Yes. It fascinates me how quickly the popular conception of what "zombie" means has transformed just within my lifetime (barely, since I was an infant when NotLD came out). Romero didn't even call his creatures zombies, but ghouls, and as you certainly know, they were inspired by the vampires in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. But I guess they were close enough that people started calling them zombies, and that version increasingly displaced the traditional voodoo zombies over the next 2-3 decades. The idea of zombies eating brains didn't even originate until Return of the Living Dead in 1985, but it quickly became part of the default portrayal.

But then, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Some elements of vampire lore that we now take for granted didn't originate until the era of motion pictures, like Nosferatu introducing the idea of vampires being burned up by sunlight. And didn't the association of werewolves with the full Moon come from the Lon Chaney movies?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

And didn't the association of werewolves with the full Moon come from the Lon Chaney movies?

You mean, it didn't come from Stefan Koepekne, Kenny Tigar's recurring character in Barney Miller?

 

[Greg Cox]

And didn't the association of werewolves with the full Moon come from the Lon Chaney movies?

The Wolf Man (1941) invented and/or popularized a lot of modern werewolf lore, but the full moon thing can also be in found Werewolf of London (1935), Universal's previous stab at a werewolf movie.

 

[Christopher]

The Wolf Man (1941) invented and/or popularized a lot of modern werewolf lore, but the full moon thing can also be in found Werewolf of London (1935), Universal's previous stab at a werewolf movie.

Stab? I thought you needed silver bullets. Well, that must be why there was another one -- they didn't get it the first time.

 

[Greg Cox]

Stab? I thought you needed silver bullets. Well, that must be why there was another one -- they didn't get it the first time.

Yep. "Werewolf of London" is pretty much the rough draft for Universal's later Wolf Man movies.

For one thing, you didn't need silver bullets in that one. Ordinary lead bullets sufficed.


A bit of Trek-related trivia; the movie begins with a shot of Vasquez Rocks, doubling as Tibet!