Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

THE SADNESS (2022)

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Fresh from Taiwan, THE SADNESS (2022) is a nasty, viscerally disturbing horror film that is somehow fitting for the COVID pandemic era.

Jim and Kat are young lovers who separate in the morning, Kat to take the train to work and Jim to grab coffee and start his own day. In the background, we become aware of a new virus dubbed Alvin, which scientists are saying is dangerously mutating, though the COVID weary public, sick of lock downs and infected in a way themselves with viral disinformation, is having none of it. As usual, the annoying scientists are right; Alvin is mutating, and those infected become compelled to inflict pain.

If you’re thinking this sounds like the graphic novel CROSSED by Garth Ennis, which isn’t so much read as inviting stomach-turning visual assault, you’re right; CROSSED is an inspiration for the film, just as it was for THE RETREAT, my zombie series written with Stephen Knight and Joe McKinney (it was also inspired by THE ANABASIS by Xenophon). And man, does it deliver: blood and gore and hacking and stabbing indulged to the max, spiced with moments of graphic torture and sexual assault held back just short of indulgent.

It’s ugly stuff, brutal and nasty, and man, it sets up one hell of an apocalypse. The grinning sadists who form the “zombies” in this story are pretty darn freaky and frightening. The combination of blood, tension, and cruelty is viscerally upsetting. The filmmakers handled all of it right in my view, punching you in the face without celebrating the punch, if you will. They adeptly set up long scenes of steadily escalating tension as characters react with terror and paralysis until the zombies arrive to play. The fairly cynical story runs right up to the point of nihilism, as our protagonists try to help people only to get burned, average people lash out in ignorance and fear and cowardice, and even the expert we meet is villainous.

It all ends on a note of hope, though it’s vague and also not very emotionally satisfying. The problem is in the lack of character arcs. In TRAIN TO BUSAN, for example, a detached dad learns the value and responsibility of fatherhood during a zombie apocalypse. In THE SADNESS, nothing is really learned or gained, making the story entirely about the world ending in slaughter and perhaps a thematic message that when it comes to public health maybe we should listen to public health experts. As a result, I wasn’t as invested as I would have liked in the protagonists, whose story simply ends, and it would have been interesting to see more of the best of human nature in contrast with the infected’s worst.

Despite this, I like this one quite a bit as something new in zombie land, a serious gut punch.

LOVE, DEATH, AND ROBOTS, Season 3

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The first season of LOVE, DEATH, AND ROBOTS (Netflix) wowed me with its anthology of stunning, action-packed, and titillating animated stories. Season 2 upped the production quality though at the expense of story, and I feared the show had become nothing more than a series of self-promo resume reels for its creators. Season 3 put all those fears to rest, delivering a really terrific series of animated shorts that fire on all cylinders. I loved it.

In “Three Robots: Exit Strategies” (written by John Scalzi), three robot tourists from the first season revisit Earth to learn about its apocalypse; this time, we learn it was climate change that killed everyone, and we see how different strata of society reacted to the end, with the have-nots fighting each other and the haves secluding themselves until they died out. Poignant, funny in a harsh “haha, we’re a really stupid species” kind of way.

In “Bad Traveling” (David Fincher’s animation debut), a massive shark-hunting sailing ship runs afoul of an intelligent sea monster, forcing the crew to make a decision about whether to save themselves or a nearby island full of people. Brutally satisfying.

In “Night of the Mini Dead,” we see a condensed zombie apocalypse from a bird’s eye view, looking down at tiny people and cities. Funny and quirky.

I intended to only describe the ones I really, really liked, but I’m now realizing that’s almost all of them. I was really impressed with the consistency of quality across the entire anthology this season. I’ll skip the others with a recommendation to just watch if it you have the chance, but I should talk about the finale, “Jibaro.” In this fantasy story, a squadron of warriors and priests pauses to rest by a lake in the wilderness, only to draw the attention of a local siren. The catch: Her charms don’t work on Jibaro, who is deaf. Thus beings a game of attraction and repulsion between the two, a tale of violence and greed. It’s simple with frenzied, exquisite action and visuals, and it’s quite beautiful and stirring to watch. Even if you discover this season of LOVE, DEATH, AND ROBOTS isn’t for you, I hope you’ll at least give this episode a crack.

Overall, I found this season brilliant, different, and giving me plenty of reasons to hope for a fourth season.

THE RETREAT #6: FORLORN HOPE Available!

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Written by my writing partner Stephen Knight, THE RETREAT: FORLORN HOPE, the last episode of our brutal “zombie” series, is at long last available for Kindle at Amazon. I’ve received a lot of letters asking when it would be coming out–thank you for your patience! The book is out, it ends the series with a hell of a bang, and you’re going to love it.

Based on the classic Greek story THE ANABASIS, THE RETREAT is about a battalion of light infantry that evacuates Boston during a horrific pandemic that compels its victims to seek out inflicting or receiving pain, which delivers excruciating pleasure–and makes them laugh and laugh. As America collapses around them, the lost battalion travels south toward Florida, where the last bastion of the government is holding out. If you read them in order, they were #1 (I wrote), #2 (Stephen Knight), #3 (Joe McKinney), #4 (me), and #5 and #6 (Stephen Knight). In this last episode, we find out if they make it, and what it means for humanity.

Stephen is an ace at the military procedural, and the result in an episode packed with non-stop gritty, violent, authentic action that is not for the squeamish. Here’s the Amazon description:

The road has been punishing.

Traveling from Boston to ill-fated Fort Drum, then on to Philadelphia, and again to Mount Weather and Fort Stewart, the First Battalion, 55th Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division (Light) is run out, blown out, and virtually waiting for death’s embrace. Now at the border of Georgia and Florida, the battalion receives new orders:

Encamp at Moody Air Force Base…

…and call in the Klowns.

Lieutenant Colonel Harry Lee knows this will spell the end of the battalion. But executing the mission could mean the the difference between life and death…not for the 1/55th, but for what remains of the United States of America.

Lee took an oath when he enlisted with the US Army. But he hadn’t thought it was a suicide contract…

Check it out here.

ALL OF US ARE DEAD

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Korea’s latest awesome contribution to apocalyptic horror is ALL OF US ARE DEAD (Netflix), a series about a group of high school students struggling to survive a zombie apocalypse that starts at their school. I went into it warily, expecting it to be YA but not in a good way, and was pleasantly surprised. Wowed, in fact, with me thinking this just might be the best TV series I’ve ever seen with zombies that wasn’t a comedy.

In a high school in a small city in Korea, a student accidentally becomes infected with a virus designed to increase aggression. (What this virus is and why it’s there is explained as the story develops.) The outbreak snowballs across the school and the city at large, resulting in the Army being called in to quarantine it all while managing tens of thousands of refugees. Stuck at ground zero is a few small groups of students, most of them likeable and kids we can root for, some of them hateable villains. What follows is a nonstop, horrific struggle to survive and hopefully escape.

As far as zombies go, they’re the usual rabid runners a la TRAIN TO BUSAN, and the virus is evolving, promising some surprises. When they first start to spread across the school and city, the action is incredible, and the zombies are genuinely scary. The zombies aren’t as important, however, as the human characters are, how they respond to the crisis, how they pull together or fall apart, who survives and who dies. The show is brutal; not everybody is going to make it, though some who die do so with what has to be some of the most badass sacrifices I’ve seen on television.

One of the things I liked most about the show was its attention to realism. A lot of dialogue, character change, and screen time is devoted to the kids trying to figure out what to do next based on available options and then doing it, with every step they take dogged by horrific obstacles and sometimes shadowed by the dynamics of their high school relationships, which they slowly shed as they realize how unimportant all that stuff was in the face of the current threat. Over time, they realistically fuse into a tribe. There is a little philosophy, like why live after you’ve lost everything, but mostly tough ethics, such as what to do if your best friend is hurt and therefore might turn into a zombie and threaten everybody. Most of the action is devoted to surviving the next few hours with courage and homegrown ingenuity, which culminates in a series of incredible set pieces.

Oddly, this strength is also fodder for a criticism of the show, which is its twelve episodes could have been easily shortened to maybe ten by cutting some of its repetitiousness. But no matter, overall, I loved ALL OF US ARE DEAD pretty much from start to finish. If you enjoy good stories with zombie mayhem and apocalypse, you’ll probably love it.

THE INFECTION Series Free This Week

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This Friday, THE FINAL CUT, the long-awaited conclusion to The Infection trilogy, publishes on Amazon. Between now and then, the first two books in this classic zombie series are now free for Amazon Kindle!

Get THE INFECTION (book 1) here.

Get THE KILLING FLOOR (book 2) here.

Preorder THE FINAL CUT (book 3) here.

(New audio versions of the first two books and for the third book are coming out in early 2022. The paperback edition of THE FINAL CUT comes out around Friday.)

Thanks for reading!

THE FINAL CUT Available for Pre-Order

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I’m excited to announce that THE INFECTION, the classic zombie series, is now a trilogy, with the third book, THE FINAL CUT, available for pre-order with a release of December 10, 2021.

THE INFECTION was published by Permuted Press in 2011 and did very well. It was always intended to be a standalone, but the publisher wanted a sequel, and so I gave them THE KILLING FLOOR. Permuted asked for a third book, but my writing journey went on a different trajectory to working with Simon & Schuster and Hachette and also self-publishing. All the while, I often thought about returning to THE INFECTION’s grimdark world to round out a trilogy and provide a stronger sense of closure to the story.

In 2021, I was able to get the rights back to both novels and decided to finally do it. And so THE FINAL CUT was born, where old and new characters struggle with the final question of Infection—extermination, accommodation, or assimilation—and each makes a final choice. I was happy to be able to get to know these people again, give them new life and a voice, and help them find the end of their stories.

Here’s the synopsis:

Infection turned the world into a slaughterhouse. Months later, America is exhausted and dying, its military stalled in the fight to save what’s left.

In the ruins of a West Virginia town, a band of survivors count their losses after a horrific battle to secure a pure sample of Infection. Their destination: “Fort Doom,” USAMRIID, the Army’s germ warfare laboratory, which is under siege.

With humanity facing the possibility of extinction, the Army wants to use the sample to build a superweapon against Infection. One scientist hopes to control Infection; another believes she can cure it. And outside the fort’s walls, a lone survivor offers a new way to survive what’s coming. Each will choose how far they’ll go to survive and what they’re willing to lose to save humanity.

In THE FINAL CUT, Craig DiLouie’s brutal vision of the apocalypse concludes with a revelation of the final mysteries of Infection. Will humanity survive the end of days?

Click here to learn more and pre-order.