#23 Robopocalypse: All Watched Over By Machines Who Want To Kill You

This month we’re going to be taking a look at some non-zombie related apocalypses. After all, I deliberately called this blog “Chris Writes About the End of the World” not “Chris Writes About Zombies” so that I had a get out clause in the event of zombie overload.

So, with zombie apocalypses off the board, let’s take a look at the next best thing: Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse.

A robot uprising differs from a zombie apocalypse in a lot of ways, but perhaps the most crucial one is plausibility. When the zombie apocalypse happens we don’t need to know how it happens, only how people react to it. The zombie apocalypse is the story of how humans respond in the face of an irrational and impossible event that flies in the face of everything we knew about the world.

Like Ted Danson becoming the lead on CSI

A robot uprising is different however. The robot uprising is the culmination of advances in technology that are supposedly taking place right now, it is the logical extension of where our society is already heading.

A Brief History of You Getting Killed by Robots

So it is that previous robot apocalypses have been very much a reflection of current concerns. The very first robot uprising- in fact, the very first use of the word “Robot”-dates back to 1921, not all that long after an actual uprising had taken place. In R.U.R or Rossum’s Universal Robots, the robots are less mechanical men and more artificial humans, built as a slave race. It’s not hard to see why, not long after the Russian Revolution, people (by “people” here I mean “rich people”) would be scared by the idea of such an uprising. The robots here aren’t just a slave race, there the basis of an entire economy. They keep the factories working, the streets clean, and what’s more they’re doing tasks in your home. If they revolted, your society would collapse and your home would no longer be safe.

Poor people are nature’s robots!

Skip forward a few decades to a better known robot apocalypse. This one, admittedly, takes place almost entirely off screen, with the entire battle being symbolised by a punch up between that space marine from Aliens, and that body builder from Jingle All The Way.

This time the rebellious robots weren’t our slave race of robofactory workers and robobabysitters. Instead, the rebellion came in the form of Skynet- a "Global Digital Defense Network" and given command over all computerised military hardware and systems. So, being a massive super-intelligent computer, it did what all massive super-intelligent computers do- became sentient and dropped nuclear bombs on everyone.

This film came out in 1984- Your guess is as good as mine as to why people in 1984 might have been scared of a vast, faceless machine killing us all with nuclear fire. Maybe it was a metaphor for fast food or disenfranchised youth.

My generation’s parents saw this video and thought “Hey! Let’s bring a child into this world!”

So while R.U.R’s robot apocalypse was a metaphor for poor people, and The Terminator’s nuclear Armageddon was a subtle metaphor for our fear of nuclear Armageddon, today the robot apocalypse is a metaphor for... well.

We live in an age where the army regularly deploys robotic drones. Remote controlled robotic drones, but they’re working on that, and occasionally they have been known to lose control go rogue. Meanwhile we have AI controlled cleaning robots and MIT has built a computer that can teach itself to read English, in order to learn how to play Civilisation- that game about taking over the world.

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. Oh wait! Nukes!”

Aside from the scientists who seem to be actively working towards our own annihilation however, we’ve got the same anxieties about machines that monocle wearing factory owners at the start of the last century has about the proles. We rely on them, they keep our economy running, they’re telling us where to drive and they’re in our home. And they know us, everything we do, from shopping online, to using our bank cards, to wandering around with your smart phone in your pocket, is resulting in information being collected by us.

More overtly than ever before, our fictional worries about technology are a mirror to our actual worries about technology. This is when Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse steps in.

An Actual Review of the Book We’re Supposed to be Talking About

Spoilers from here onwards.

First things first- Robopocalypse does feature some similarities to Max Brooks’ World War Z, a story that some might think is more suited to this blog. Like World War Z, Robopocalypse is a novel by a writer who has previously written a How-To guide to surviving just that sort of event. Like World War Z, Robopocalypse starts its story in the aftermath of the war, then takes on the form of an oral history telling the story of the war from several different points of view. Whether or not Daniel H. Wilson was deliberately mimicking Max Brooks’ style, his book’s publicists certainly did. We at Chris Writes About the End of the World aren’t that bothered by this however, because as we’ve said before, all writers are thieving bastards.

What matters is, what does it do with the rip off?

Another way that the robot uprising differs from the zombie apocalypse is that in a zombie apocalypse you don’t have to pay much attention to the zombies. Zombies do what zombies do- which is mostly walking towards you going “Nom!”

With the robot apocalypse the writer has to think about how the robots look, how they’re designed, and, in its biggest departure from the zombie apocalypse, what the robots want. Most of these questions are ones that Wilson has good answers for. He’s the first to admit that if you’re trying to design the ultimate killing machine for a combat environment, you don’t base it on a shape that can’t survive a car crash without a seatbelt on.

That’s right you guys! I’m talking to you!

There are humanoid robots in Wilson’s world, but it’s repeatedly pointed out that the only design advantage the human shape has for robots is that it’s better for interacting with humans. Far more useful are the gigantic preying mantis shaped robots, or the exploding insect-like stumpers. Think about that name for a second. Lovely.

The scariest portion of the book however, is the opening chapters that emphasise just how dependent we are on the machines that turn on us- from the robotic toys that start trying to blackmail a senator’s child in a sort of Satanic version of Toy Story (In fairness, a talking doll will always be more terrifying than anything that isn’t a talking doll) to the hacker who finds the phone and computer network he uses to screw with people turning on him, to the sheer chaos when an air traffic control computer just decides to crash planes into each other. Once the robots finally decide to just go nuts and kill everybody a survivor looks out his window to see what the robots have done to his New York Street. What he sees isn’t an image from a zombie apocalypse, or even a war zone- he sees a perfectly clean, well maintained street, because cities are environments designed to be convenient for machines to get around, and why would you screw with that?

Although a road paved entirely with human skulls works too I guess...

One area where the book misses a trick is with its Afghanistan plotline, where a US soldier ends up fighting alongside Taliban insurgents for the justifiable reason that the Taliban have been fighting robots for years. Given that, like World War Z, this book makes a point of giving us protagonists from every conceivable age, race, nationality and background, I do wish that as well as giving us the US soldier as a PoV character the story had given a chapter or two over to an Afghani narrator fighting alongside him.

It’s also worth noting that, given that this is a story about mankind fighting machines, the book doesn’t take the easy and obvious anti-technology standpoint. Humankind wins the fight not by resorting to slingshots and bows and arrows, but by salvaging and repurposing robot technology, eventually even working alongside other robots that don’t fight for “Big Rob”.

And Big Rob himself is never painted as necessarily evil. Throughout the book he is curious about humans, as well as all other forms of animal life- it’s repeatedly pointed out how well the natural world seems to be doing once the humans are cut back. We never really learn exactly what his motives are, but whatever they are, they are complex.

I guess what I’m saying is that should a super-intelligent homicidal AI- maybe one that’s taught itself to learn English- be unleashed upon the Internet, I want to point out that I wouldn’t necessarily be against it, and could in fact be an extremely loyal and useful ally, totally willing to serve his probably completely benevolent dictatorship.

Just saying.

Right- the drinking game.

Do the characters spend most of the story under siege in some manner of building? One character does end up building a massive fortress for survivors to take shelter in, and many other fort-like outposts form throughout the book, so I’m going to let you take a shot.

Are the people coming to rescue you incompetent or more dangerous than the zombies? Is mankind the real monster? I’m actually going to go with no on this one. The Big Rob does seem to think humankind are fairly monstrous, but in terms of how they actually behave throughout the story, humans actually seem like a decent enough species.

Are the zombies walking dead who move slowly and can only be killed by destroying the brain? This a book about robots, not zombies. So it’s actually pretty surprising when, near the end of the book, the human survivors have to face off against a bunch of slow moving (take a shot) walking dead (take a shot) soldiers who have been taken over by robots, and who can only be killed by shooting the (robotic) brains (take a shot). Who knew?

#14 Everything You Wanted To Know About Zombies (But Were Afraid To Ask Daniel Defoe): Everything New is Old Again

Welcome to our most belated, longest titled blog entry yet. Now it takes a great man to admit when he’s been wrong. From the very beginning of the blog, I have emphasised that the zombie apocalypse genre is one that is, for want of a better pun, cannibalistic. I have argued that everything in the genre today can be traced back to Night of the Living Dead, which itself is traced back to I Am Legend.

So it is with all due humility that I say- it turns out I was more right than even I suspected.

Everything You Wanted To Know About Zombies (But Were Afraid To Ask Daniel Defoe) was a lovely event held in London last week, hosted by the Birkbeck Literature Club where various academics and zombie geeks met up to listen to a series of talks and readings about the zombie apocalypse genre- and how it related to 18^th century literature- specifically, the historical recordings of the events surrounding the spread of the plague in that period.

From the very start the venue for the event gave off mixed signals. On the one hand, the walls were littered with red crosses and pleas for God’s mercy- on the other hand, there was free wine and nibbles. I poured myself a glass and found myself a seat.

The opening talk came from a man named Peter Jones, who told us about the “Anointers” from Alessandrro Manzoni’s  Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed).

Not this Peter Jones. He knows nothing about 18th century literature or the zombie apocalypse

Faced with the horrific death and destruction, medieval peasants (Here we are defining the word “Peasant” to mean- “Anyone who doesn’t own a TV”) reacted the way they always have in the face of horrific circumstances- a great big group prayer meeting. Modern scientists have responded to the idea of fighting a contagious disease by getting everyone in your community together in a poorly ventilated building, or having them march through the streets from one end of the city to the other en masse as “Oh for the love of God no! What are you doing! And Jesus Ever-Loving Christ do none of you wash your hands?” but community leaders at the time hung up a big “Mission Accomplished” banner and told everyone to go back to their daily business.

Known today as the Mayor Larry Vaughn Technique

Those of you who have just finished googling that pop culture reference (Come on! There was picture of a fin on the poster behind them! Surely that was a give away?) will probably be able to guess what happened next. If you guessed lots and lots more people dying, you can have a gold star.

As this highly crumpled hand-out I still have left over from the event says (In an extract from The Betrothed):

“The men who had fought so long and so resolutely against the view that a seed of a disease had from the beginning been near at hand, or in their very midst, which could multiply and spread by natural means to cause a disaster – those men were no longer able to deny that the disease was in fact spreading through the city. But they could not admit that it was due to natural causes without also admitting that they had completely misled the public and done great harm thereby. That disposed them to find some other reason, and to accept any explanation of the sort that might offer itself.”

This sounds not just like Mayor Larry Vaughn (For Christ’s sake people, he was the mayor in Jaws! The one who kept insisting that there was no shark because it would damage tourism? Jaws is only one of the most successful films ever made! For once, watch something that came out before Kung Fu Panda!) but also rings a bell pretty close to the news reports we hear at the beginning of every zombie movie. It’s taken as read that when the zombie apocalypse starts, our government will leap right into action to fuck it up. And while we’d like to believe that we’re better than medieval peasants (those of us with televisions anyway) deep down we kind of know we aren’t.

So, if prayer meetings don’t work, what do medieval peasants do next?

If you answered "Horror" have a gold star

Yes, it turns out, face with unimaginable tragedy and worrying uncertainty, people’s first reaction was to find people who “didn’t fit in” and weren’t from round these parts” and then torture them. Fortunately people are much more civilised now.

Specifically, in this book the plague was blamed on “Anointers”- suspicious, shady types who would sneak around, “anointing” people with plague. Now apparently there don’t exist that many visual representations of these Anointers, and other academics (for the purposes this article: Wussydemics) would have been stopped by that. Peter Jones however showed he was a good ten times more awesome than his Dragon’s Den counterpart by giving his talk dressed like this:

Peter Jones dressed as an Anointer. Photos courtesy of Hannah Eiseman-Renyard, the Jimmy Olsen to my Lois Lane.

Peter Jones’s talk was followed by a break, where we all got more wine and sat down to be suddenly interrupted by a man bursting in and angrily reading from  'God's Terrible Voice in the City' by Thomas Vincent, who stayed in London and was giving sermons during the plague. It was while he described the gruesome, terrifying sights of the plague to us in an underground room a little way out from King’s Cross, that I decided that I wouldn’t be going to any more apocalyptic pandemic based events in London. Thinking about this stuff is the best fun in a small, out of the way city that even the Romans had trouble clinging onto- thinking about it near the centre of a huge mass of humanity that has historically dealt with plagues by burning itself down is a little more disquieting.

I've no idea what I did to him but I am so very, very sorry!

The final talk of the evening, before the Q&A and the retreat to the pub, was Amy Cutler, who delivered a great paper on how Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year is echoed by modern zombie movies.

Amy Cutler immediately admitted that her readings of the texts she was talking about were Marxist, which wasn’t a huge surprise. We’ve already mentioned Romero’s parodies of consumerism and capitalism in Dawn and Land of the Dead, as well as his take on I Am Legend as a story about revolution.

Although you could read it as the ultimate example of letting the free market decide...

She started out by drawing on some the more obvious parallels between zombies and plague victims- mainly that people walked around looking really gross, in the process infecting other people who then went on to look really gross. She pointed us to a quote from Defoe’s Journal that went “many People had the plague in their very blood, and preying upon their spirits, and were in themselves but walking putrified carcasses, whose breath was infectious, and their sweat poison”. She goes on to describe how: “The behaviour of the sick and infected also poses a form of geographical insurrection, for ‘they were with great difficulty kept from running out into the Fields and Towns, and tearing all in pieces wherever they came’”

Amy moved on from here to talk about more structural similarities however, such as “the ways in which the city space is performed and changed bodily by the actions of groups of people, of the bodies of the sick and the healthy.”

This is a key part of the zombie apocalypse genre- in the least few weeks I’ve furnished you with plenty of examples of pubs, shops and radio stations being reinterpreted as fortresses and streets and office blocks becoming battlefields. I think this is not only a key trope in the genre, but also part of its appeal. Unlike the Western, Space Opera or Historical Romance, you can easily re-imagine your own street as it is hit by the zombie apocalypse, a sort of instant Augmented Reality game.

Amy also talks about the mechanics of groups of survivors. She talks about plague survivors in Defoe’s book who “develop their own social, economic, and moral laws: they pool their money on the condition that any further money any one of them gains will be added to the public stock. In Epping Forest they build their own shelter, kill their own food, and almost totally avoid interaction with anyone outside their group.” She compares this to zombie movies where “The zombie film heralds the return of the ultimate democratised travel. There are typical scenes such as a hijacking on the road and the fall into what is basically land piracy. And there are no more zones of exclusion or privilege as each is broken into.”

I’m not sure how much I agreed with Amy’s idea that there is anything Marxist about your typical zombie movie survivors. If anything films like I Am Legend, Dawn of the Dead and Land of the Dead show the survivors as practicing the ultimate in Laissez-Faire capitalism, hording as much as they possibly can behind barricaded windows and locked doors, struggling to keep out or kill the baying hordes outside.

She did go on to point out some interesting trends that immediately seemed obvious after she said them, but hadn’t occurred to me before. Such as the prevalence and importance of petrol stations in pretty much any zombie movie you care to mention- which is odd considering that these same films are often built around static siege narratives.

So what do these talks teach us about the zombie apocalypse? Well, they teach us we keep retelling the same old stories, and that horrible things that happened centuries ago still haunt our nightmares today. They tell us about how we view cities- places of safety and civilisation that could be transformed into a jungle at a moment’s notice. But I think most of all these talks show that there is no threat so great, no common cause so important, no unifying action so crucial to our survival, that we will not act like a complete shower of dicks to one another.

Our zombie experts: Jennifer Cooke, Amy Cutler and Peter Jones, destroying your hope in humanity

I emailed Amy before writing this blog, asking for a copy of her talk and also inviting her to adjudicate the drinking game rules for this week’s blog (since some people still seem to think I’m being overly lenient). Her rulings were as follows:

Do the characters spend most of the story under siege in some manner of building? (One shot) NO

Are the people coming to rescue you incompetent (One shot) or more dangerous than the zombies? (One shot) YES

Does nobody ever actually use the word zombie? (Two shots) YES

Is mankind the real monster? (One shot) YES

Has anybody said “They’re coming to get you Barbra!” (Two shots) NO (didn't actually mention that film or play a clip from it!)

Are the zombies walking dead (One Shot) YES who move slowly (One shot) NO (seemed to deal more with running zombies) and can only be killed by destroying the brain? (Head shot) NO 

Kiddy zombies? (Two shots) YES

Do the dead rise regardless of whether they were “infected”? (Two shots) NO it's all about infection.

#10 Contact: Plus An Interview With The Director!

So, something a little different for the blog this week (I know, twice in two weeks! But you hate change! Don’t worry, next week I promise to stick entirely to formula). This week we’re going to take a look at the short horror film Contact from director Jeremiah Kipp. No zombies, and only the merest whiff of a post-apocalyptic landscape, but you’ll see soon enough how it fits right in with the rest of our catalogue here.

I believe you’ll find that Contact is the perfect date movie, and ideal for watching with a partner of your gender of choice to get them in the mood. Watch it here:



Yes, I’m sorry, that was a cruel, cruel lie.

Contact is about as disturbing and head-fucky as a film can get. It’s the sort of film that is best watched alone in a darkened room, immediately before going into a bright space full of people.

However, here at Chris Writes About The End Of The World we know better than to judge art based on the first, visceral gut reaction. So once you’ve got over the “What would it be like if Agent Smith had done that mouth sealing thing to Neo while he was getting off with someone” image, we can look at the film from a slightly more rational perspective.

I’ve talked before about the way horror tends to be an inherently conservative genre- regardless of the sympathies of the artist. Usually horror works by showing us something horrifying to define what isn’t horrifying- most explicitly in all those drunken promiscuous girls that get knifed to death while their chaste, sober friend is able to defeat the baddy before going off with the hunky but boring dude who only wants to hold hands.

At first glance Contact seems to be the epitome of this. In fact, its roots seem to go further back, past horror movies to their grizzly, considerably more child-murder friendly ancestor, the fairy tale. It’s the story of a girl who leaves her family, goes off the path in search of romance and adventure, finds something horrible there and runs back to her family wiser and more chastened.

The nice, civilised looking dining room is contrasted with a world of ruined buildings and sinister drug dealers with police batons and eyeliner. The sexual contact that ends in a gross, fleshy Chinese finger trap is contrasted with a wholesome paternal hug.

The worst part? He's still using too much tongue

On the surface that’s pretty much exactly what this film looks like, and I’ve got to admit on my first couple of viewings that’s exactly what I thought it was. But even then there were certain things that didn’t sit right with me. The wholesome, safe family home that our heroine runs from and returns to doesn’t seem all that appealing. There’s nothing all that homey or comforting about the neatly set table and wordless parents. The protagonist looks uncomfortable in the buttoned down outfit she’s wearing. The scary sting at the end of the movie shows us she’s still traumatised by her bad trip, but there’s an argument to be made that the real fear is that this has scared her into never leaving the comfort zone she was brought up in.

Or maybe it’s just a film about how drugs are bad. Either way, it scared the crap out of me.

It’s likely you’re going to be hearing more from Contact’s director, Jeremiah Kipp. He’s got another short film coming out soon, Crestfallen (which I’ve already seen, because I’m just that cool). Crestfallen is equally atmospheric in a very different way, doing away with the ambiguity of Contact to make the point that killing yourself is a bad idea. Not long after that, he also has a feature length horror movie coming out starring legendary zombie murderer Tom Savini.

Oh, and look, he’s here now to answer some of my questions. Isn’t that handy?

Okay, so the first question I want to ask, and I'm sure you get this a lot, is: What is wrong with you?! Why can't you just make a charming romantic comedy, or something where Tom Hanks triumphs over adversity?

You don't think CONTACT is life-affirming? I am interested in people, and hope for the best when it comes to interpersonal relationships. CONTACT may seem like a dark movie, but when we made it, much of the time we were filled with enthusiasm and had a wonderful time. As little children, we aren't interested in fairy tales about two children picking flowers in a field -- unless those children get lost in the woods, find a witch in a gingerbread house, and find themselves nearly broiled in a steaming pot for lunch. Kids intuitively understand these grim little stories, because in some way they live them. The adult world is a strange and complex place. While we can triumph, the road is not an easy one, and that is the lie most movies tell us. A lot of times, I feel like the so-called feel good movies are insidious and cruel, and some video nasties are surprisingly more humane because they show life as precious, fragile and worth fighting for.

The film contains a pretty strong anti-drugs message. Did you set out to make a movie that demonstrated the more traumatising side of substance abuse, or was this just the most effective way you could think of to make people poo their pants?

People say that this is an anti-drug film, but that's not what I set out to make. Drugs can press someone to reveal their true character, their deepest fears, their paranoia and dread, and this particular couple rides the gauntlet and can't break through the barrier. For this reason, a lot of folks including good friends of mine think I was making a horror variation of a public service announcement. It's fair enough, though, because once you complete the movie it no longer belongs to you. It belongs to the audience, and they can interpret it however they like. I will say our latest short film, CRESTFALLEN, is very specifically intended as an anti-suicide film. The screenwriter, Russ Penning, wrote a very personal, very daring and sincere piece about a young woman (Deneen Melody) who feels like she has no other recourse but killing herself, and the movie takes a journey with her where we want the audience to see the value of life. I do like the idea of the audience being scared by trauma, though -- drugs and suicide are real life transgressions and have vast consequences for you and for your near and dear.

On a similar note, how important do you think gore is in these films? Aside from being an excellent way of making people watch a movie through the cracks between their fingers, what uses do you think gore has?

I wish there were more gore and nudity in films. Special effects allow you to make a metaphor into a reality -- if you feel like you and your lover are being torn apart, then gore effects can make that quite literal. The gory effects in VIDEODROME and THE THING and in much of Clive Barker's writing is a triumph of the imagination, and yes, it's really nightmarish and grotesque, but so are the things we're afraid to see. We're also afraid of pain, or of cancer and death, but it's easier to see someone transform into a giant fly than watch someone perish at their death bed. The gore in CONTACT (by Daniel J. Mazikowski) was all about making a connection to another person, but that can be incredibly frightening. Isn't it scary during the first month of dating someone? You know so little about them, you're in many ways quite vulnerable and see their vulnerability. The actors who braved the special effects and nudity in CONTACT and CRESTFALLEN were incredibly courageous, and I'm grateful they trusted me, since this sort of material can easily be prurient, offensive and gratuitous. It's important to me that the cast and crew understand what we're trying to achieve, because we're asking them for the difficult. I hope not to let them down with the finished movies. It has our names on it; it has to have value for us as creative people.

Now on this blog I've written a lot about how, particularly in genres like horror and sci-fi, everyone is constantly ripping off everybody else. So this is a great chance for you to 'fess up. Which artists and works do you make a habit of ripping off, what is it about them that you most want to steal?

Oh, I steal all the time. But so did George Romero (he robbed from I AM LEGEND), Wes Craven (from Ingmar Bergman's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT), John Carpenter (from Howard Hawks) and Sam Raimi (from Bugs Bunny!). For CONTACT, I am sure David Lynch and David Cronenberg were on the brain. You can't make experimental body horror movies without in some way acknowledging them. I also drew from the painter Edvard Munch, whose "The Kiss" has haunted me for a long time, and photographer Gregory Crewdson for the scene involving the parents. Crewdson steals from Steven Spielberg, though, so I don't feel bad robbing from him.

Until just now you thought this painting was really romantic

And for CRESTFALLEN, my conversations with the director of photography/editor Dominick Sivilli revolved around BEOWULF, Chris Cunningham and commercial and music video director Chris Milk, but that movie was also us trying to reach for the epic and the mythic because it was based on a naturalistic true story, and we wanted to make the picture feel as large and grand as our emotions. When we feel love or pain, it is as large as castles and kingdoms. That said, we only had $300 to make that movie, so it's a chamber piece that yearns to be an opera.

Your next film, The Sadist looks sort of like First Blood, if Rambo hadn't been such a peaceloving hippy. How did it come about, and what more horrible, horrible things will you expose us to next?

THE SADIST is a bad-ass killer in the woods movie. The producers (Frank Wihbey and Joe Pisani) saw CONTACT and hired me as a work-for-hire director based on that. We approached the material with high aggression, with tremendous empathy for the characters who meet this strange enemy in the forest. Most of the crew from CONTACT was on board, including Dominick Sivili (DP/Editor), Daniel J. Mazikowski (Special FX), Alan Rowe Kelly (Production Manager) and Bart Mastronardi (Associate Producer). We're still in post, but hope to be finished soon. As for what's next, I'm starting principal photography on another feature in May (this time a non-genre film) and am in early talks for another horror feature later this year. Executive Producer Marv Blauvelt is finishing up the horror anthology PSYCHO STREET, and I associate produced the segment "No Rest For The Wicked" directed by Raine Brown. I'm looking forward to that. But when it comes to projects, it's best to let the future reveal itself. We rarely know what's around the corner. I'd love to work on a larger project with Zoe Daelman Chlanda, the star of CONTACT, and Jerry Murdock, a wonderful actor who is the Bruce Willis of indie horror.

The Sadist stars Tom Savini, who when he isn't appearing in virtually every horror film ever, is doing the make up, special effects and stunts for every other horror film ever, and still manages to find time to fit in some directing as well. It's fair to say he's something of a legend in the genre, so how was it working with him? Were you daunted at all?

Tom Savini signed up because it gave him the opportunity to play a non-speaking predatory villain, not unlike some of the roles played by his hero Lon Chaney. Tom was fantastic to work with, full of enthusiasm and high energy. When I called around to other directors asking what he was like to work with, to a man they said he was a true collaborator. Let it be known he does not suffer fools gladly, and if he doesn't trust you, he will walk all over you. But my time with him was wonderful; one of the best experiences of my professional career.

Finally, given this is a blog primarily about the zombie apocalypse, we have to know: What is your zombie apocalypse survival plan?

I subscribe to the George Romero technique, which is still the best way to go: (a) Steal a helicopter, (b) bring a film crew and some guns, (c) take over a shopping mall, and (d) let loose the dogs of war.

CONTACT from Dominick Sivilli on Vimeo.

On Thieving Bastards

Writers: What a bunch of thieving bastards. From Shakespeare to Dan Brown, they love nothing more than taking someone else’s idea and passing it off as their own work. It’s like candy to them, candy that until recently belonged to a baby.

And among these thieving bastards, you’ll find no one more thieving and bastardly than the writers of science fiction and fantasy. They just love to steal! One of the biggest franchises in the genre only exists because George Lucas couldn’t get the rights to Flash Gordon, so decided to blatantly rip it off instead, and the rest aren’t any better. Every alien invasion, time travel story, robot apocalypse, every scientist killed by his own creation, every group of hard as nails space marines in power armour, the truth is, if you’re a science fiction writer who is not blatantly and unashamedly ripping off the hundreds of other science fiction writers who came before you, you’re probably from the mid-to-late 19^th century.

You didn't invent this George Lucas!

But even in this hive of scum and villainy that we call a genre, there is a group of kleptomaniacs that go beyond the pale. These are the writers that other writers should watch their wallets around. I’m talking of course, about the writers in the zombie apocalypse genre.

There are some in the genre that don’t even bother writing their own books. It’s not unknown for writers to simply cram the zombies into someone else’s existing book- even when it obviously isn’t needed and there’s no point in doing so and really, seriously, why would you do that?

As for the rest of them, every single piece of the work in the genre owes its existence to one film: George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. And we’re not just talking about the zombies, we’re talking themes, plot structure, characters, individual scenes. Hell, due to a legal loophole some people just flat out remake the movie without buying the rights.

And George A. Romero, father of the genre, originator of everything we think of as a zombie (despite the fact the word “zombie” is never spoken in the film), he is in no position to complain, as he freely admits to stealing the “last survivors fighting off hordes of fleshing-eating, living-dead once-humans” idea off Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. (Although we have to assume Mr. Roger’s Neighbourhood was another influence)

But then, Richard Matheson’s monsters were actually vampires, using rules ripped pretty much wholesale from Dracula, by Bram Stoker, who in turn happily pillaged centuries of European folklore and took the idea of an aristocratic vampire from John Polidori’s The Vampyre, which, fun fact, was written on the same summer holiday that Mary Shelley came up with Frankenstein’s monster.

CONFESSION TIME

Phew. So, by now you probably understand the sheer level of the theft that exists in the zombie apocalypse genre, although writers like to dress it up with words like “influence” or “homage”, it all comes down to the moment of reading or watching something cool and deciding “That looks fun, I’ll have that.”

I know, because I am a writer (Plug Book Here) and right now I’m in the process of writing a story about a kind of zombie apocalypse. Over the years I’ve devoured all kinds of fiction set during the zombie apocalypse (not to mention a few other kinds of apocalypse) in books, movies, videogames and TV shows. Like all the other writers before me, if I see anything fun in these I’ll nick it and use it for my own purposes.

The question is, with a genre so enthusiastic about cannibalism in every sense, is there anything new to say? After all, most of these stories don’t use the premise of the zombie apocalypse- they follow exactly the same plot beats (SPOILERS: A bunch of people who don’t like each other hole up in a building and argue until they’re ripped apart by the undead).

That is my excuse for writing this blog. Every week I’m going to be taking a piece of post apocalyptic fiction, it could be a book, movie, TV show, it could be old, it could be brand new, and I’m going to see what’s new about it. What does this do that nobody else has done before, and sometimes, how does it change the way that we look at all the stuff that comes before it?

I’m not going to stick strictly to the Romero style zombie apocalypse. I’m going to be making the case that Rage infected people count as zombies, so suck it up, and even if there is nothing gore splattered, murderous and moving in hordes, I’ll be taking a look at anything where bedraggled survivors walk abandoned streets looking for shotgun ammo and tinned food.

Oh, and I am going to be sticking to writing about the things I love. This sucks if you are the Resident Evil movies or the third act of the I Am Legend movie, and I wish I could say I was sorry for that.

Tomorrow I’m going to kick off this blog properly, starting off with Night of the Living Dead. I’ll also be laying down the rules for a new drinking game.