All zombies are created equal. All zombie stories are not.

From its humble beginnings as an indie comic book, The Walking Dead has become a pop culture juggernaut boasting New York Times–bestselling trade paperbacks, a hit television series, and enough fans to successfully take on any zombie uprising.

Triumph of The Walking Dead explores the intriguing characters, stunning plot twists, and spectacular violence that make Robert Kirkman’s epic the most famous work of the Zombie Renaissance.

Flames Rising is proud to present an exclusive excerpt from this book. The Walking Dead novels’ co-author Jay Bonansinga provides the inside story on translating the comics into prose.

In Ashes of the Earth Eliot Pattison pieces together a new society after global annihilation. While most novels set in the future offer heavy doses of imagined science and technology, in his new novel Pattison constructs a more realistic society out of the ashes of apocalypse—with characters who sometimes became a little too realistic for the author.

A little known fact of my life: when I was 5 my parent decided to vacation in Florida for the first time, and they picked the later half of October for this family outing. Of course, when I was 5 the year was 1962, and if you do a quick search on The Google you’ll discover in the last half of October, 1962, Florida was probably the last place in the world you wanted to be, since the odds of experiencing a live reenactment of Alas, Babylon, were pretty high.

Now, I remember none of this, but my parent often told me the story of how, right in the middle of the stuff about to go down, they decided the place to hang was a motel in Clearwater, Florida, which is about a 10 mile jaunt across Old Tampa Bay from MacDill AFB, a huge Strategic Air Command base and, at that moment in time, a target that was going to get whacked out in short order should the Cuban Missile Crisis have decided to go hot.

While at PAX East this year, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a panel on developing independent RPGs. Vincent Baker was among the panelists, and I was incredibly excited to see the man who had created the well-known and critically acclaimed Dogs in the Vineyard. Immediately after the panel I went to his booth and saw that he had another game for sale, Apocalypse World. Its cover, featuring a nude, ambiguous form in a gas mask, haunched over and lit from behind, intrigued me– I had just finished my thesis on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and was on an apocalypse kick, so although I had gone to the booth expecting to pick up DitV, I came away with a game I hadn’t even heard of before.

With Apocalypse World I didn’t really know what to expect. I admit, I don’t have very many systems under my belt– I’ve read far more games than I’ve actually played, and I don’t like to pass judgment on a system without actually playing it. But just from the get-go, Apocalypse World had a lot going for it.

I previously reviewed Barbarians of Lemuria for which this is supplemental/replacement material. BoL is an excellent product with a strong focus and some innovative ideas. Barbarians of the Aftermath isn’t quite so great and doesn’t add a fantastic amount to BoL but what it is, is a good source of inspiration and ideas. It doesn’t present an ‘after the apocalypse’ world but, rather, provides a toolkit for you to create your own. I’ll include some examples of what I came up with using the tables in the book, after the review proper…

I woke up today without any power which is a large part of the reason as to why this review is a day behind. Not that you needed to know that little fact, or really even, not that my day to day is all that relevant to the review itself. We are living in the 24/7 digital world here, so it shouldn’t matter when I do the reviews, right?

No, wrong. This was the perfect setting to nearly blow all my battery power and candles on writing a review. Especially a review of Survival Horror/ Zombie Apocalypse superstar writer David Moody’s latest book in the autumn series by Thomas Dunne St Martin’s Griffin press. In fact it was probably the most perfect setting to write the review in. Picture it.

2010 was the Year of the Zombie (again). In fact, the first 10 years of the new millennium can safely be called the Decade of Apocalyptic Fiction. Movies, books, comics — you name it. There was a surge in interest in the sub genre that has never been seen before. And the interest shows no signs of slowing down.

Movies and television shows have managed to incorporate some form of zombie feature. Whether an alien virus taking over the world (in Smallville) or a demon unleashing a plague of the apocalypse (in Supernatural), writers and directors found something to draw in the zombie crowds.

There have also been numerous articles trying to explain the appeal of the zombie culture. Deep sociological analysis, fun fluff pieces, and even courses on respected college campuses.

This and that and everything …

I hate the New Year.

Ok, I get it, you’re probably thinking “get on with it old man, you hate a lot of things,” but if you’ll indulge me here for a brief moment, then you’ll see that I have something to really say about the New Year.

I really (emphasis is clearly my own) hate the New Year because it forces me to think about the fact that another twelve months of my life has flown by, in what seems to be an ever increasing and perilous amount of speed. It forces me to acknowledge that I am one more year closer to death, one more year removed from the awesomeness/horribleness (not really a word, I’ve slammed two industrial sized Red Bull’s, three pots of coffee and possibly enough over the counter truck stop speed to kill a small battalion of polar bears, so go easy on me) that was my twenties and the foulness that is the onset of my thirties.

Before I go off on how wonderful I thought the season finale of AMC’s The Walking Dead was, how the series has changed television, how it may or may not be one of the most relevant social commentaries of the 21st century in media right now, I want to thank all of you who have read and shared these reviews. You make typing these little posts something to look forward to.

Now that, that is out of the way, let’s begin.

So, here we are, we’ve come to the end, that was it, for now. I hope you paid attention. because if you didn’t then this is going to be a little confusing. I want to talk about the “reality” that is portrayed in the series, especially in the the season finale. It’s a sticky subject, reality that is, as everyone produces to a certain extent their own version of it. Not in the way that they can interact with the physical world on a scientific level, you couldn’t interpret the laws of physics in your own way. Say with a suspension in the belief of Gravity, and live to tell about it. No matter how many happy thoughts you think, you’re going to plummet off the top of a building if you jump, you simply can not get around that reality.

Enter a world rich and strange – even the cover art suggests this even before you read a word! But it’s stranger – and scarier – that you might imagine. The opening piece of fiction sets the scene: a heady mix of warfare, implacable enemies, fighting machines… and yet at the core human beings, maybe a bit different but still real people who care, who love, who hate… and have nightmares afterwards.

Then Chapter 1 bids us Welcome. Welcome to a near-future alternate world in which giant mecha, magic, technology and unspeakable horror are melded together mixing That Which Should Not Be with hopes, harbored by all who go to war, that better times are just around the corner. It begins by explaining unfamiliar terms, both those of role-playing and those specifically for this setting. Now obscure references in the opening fiction become clear – not, alas, the sidebar text, small black text on a strident and messy dark pink background is not conducive to clarity: rather a shock in a work where excellent design is otherwise evident. Many of the references are familiar if you happen to read Lovecraft – Cthulhu himself, and many of the cults and dark gods that lurk around – and others if you care for anime and mecha in general.

Enslaved is a post-apocalyptic re-telling of the classic Chinese tale ‘Journey to the West’. It spins off from the original tale significantly but still retains a great deal of the character and themes of the original, even though the main theme – redeeming a chaotic land by finding missing enlightenment – is one of the casualties (or at least ends up transmuted into something else). It’s a gorgeous game, with very few niggles, which seems to have – unfortunately – gone relatively unnoticed around a lot of higher profile releases.

The game opens with you, Monkey, trapped inside a prison cell by slavers. Your prison is an egg-shaped metal orb – a nod to the origins of monkey – and as you languish helplessly in your prison, things start to go wrong all around you. The slaver prison – which turns out to be a flying ship – starts to explode and fall apart and its a race against time to get to the rapidly depleting number of escape pods.

After the other reviews, I don’t really have much to say concerning this episode of AMC’s, The Walking Dead. In fact, I don’t know how much more I can say, which brings me at a place that I never thought I could really be. A place where zombies, walkers, shamblers, runners, etc, etc have sufficiently taken their toll on my psyche.

I know, I know-you’re thinking, “Surely Eric, you jest.”

I can assure you that I don’t, and to prove my point, well, OK, not so much to prove my point but more to keep these posts going, I will explain why. Also I may have signed a contract while drugged, you never know about such things, as they are (contracts and random druggings) arcane in nature.

Flames Rising reviewer and Survival Horror fanatic Eric Pollarine had the chance to talk to author David Moody for Zombie Week.

We had previously posted the first chapter of David’s novel Hater here on Flames Rising. In this interview David tells Eric about his work on the Autumn and Hater series.

Zombies: the kids love ‘em. Now you can have your very own zombie film soundtrack album thanks to the good folks at Nox Arcana; their Zombie Influx album is just the ticket to put a person in a brain-chomping mood.

All kidding aside, Nox Arcana has done some great work producing albums of evocative background music suitable for gaming and often inspirational for writing – whether fiction, gaming adventures or scenarios, or what have you. With Zombie Influx, Jeff Hartz of Buzz Works and Joseph Vargo of Nox Arcana explore new musical avenues of horror. There is a fairly solid level of cohesion at work on this album’s 19 tracks; however, many of the cuts do not necessarily evoke zombie sort of horror. Most evocative here of a mob of zombies wandering aimlessly in search of food are the tracks “Ground Zero” and “Flesh Eaters,” with a chorus of hoarse, moaning voices winding through the opening strains of both.

Fallout 3 was a giant, radioactive monster of a game, an awesome game that was SO awesome that we could forgive it many of its flaws and drawbacks simply because the awesomeness factor was so strong that they didn’t matter. We didn’t CARE if the game crashed the console every so often or if you couldn’t get to the boat to Point Lookout because the level wouldn’t load properly, because we wanted to play so very much it gave us boners that could double as battering rams. We forgave it its sins.

Second time around we, or at least I, are not as liable to be so forgiving. Especially if many of the flaws and errors of the game are the same ones that dogged our experience with Fallout 3. We sort of expect them to be fixed or, at least, for the same flaws, errors and bugs not to show up this time around, given that they were patched in Fallout 3 and that this is a ‘whole new game’ which has had more time to finesse the engine and iron out the issues.

If I were to just flip through this issue and not take in the story and how the art relates to it I can honestly say I might have passed on it. What a mistake that would have been. I will admit that the art style is jagged and can seem choppy at times, but when taken into how it relates to the storyline I couldn’t be more satisfied with it. A Heavy Metal style of artwork lends itself to the overall enjoyability of this book through the designs of the dead, and of a world that has never been seen by human eyes.

So I mentioned that the art really played off the story. What I meant by that was we are presented with a future that is not our own. In the reality here there are many things to be left explored. In this issue alone were treated to a new futuristic approach to skydiving which was really cool. Of course were talking the future so anything could be possible, but the way that it was taken into context here works.

What is there that hasn’t been said about author Kim Paffenroth? I mean come on, the guy practically invented the thinking man’s zombie story with his “Dying to Live” series, used the original Romero movies as the main focus for a book entitled “Gospel of The Living Dead,” is a Professor of Religious Studies and his latest work has taken him into the depths of the 14th century poet and author of “The Divine Comedy,” Dante Alighieri’s soul.

How is that for a resume?

But really all you need to know about Kim Paffenroth, is that he is a prolific writer and larger than life figure in the Zombie/Survival Horror genre. A man that, in today’s scene of lumbering unholy living dead, needs absolutely no introduction from the likes of a opinion pusher like me, so let’s get into the bone and sinew of this interview, with author Kim Paffenroth.

Sometimes, when I’m itching for a story, I’ll pick up an anthology and check out some of the short stories that lurk within. To me, a good anthology has a broad range of stories; some will appeal to me, and some won’t. Released in April 2010, CTHULHU’S REIGN is a collection of tales edited by Darrell Schweitzer that gives authors like Jay Lake, Ken Asamatsu and Gregory Frost the opportunity to describe what happens after the Old Ones appear.

My interest in this anthology is more curiosity than anything, because so much attention is often placed on summoning Cthulhu or the Old Ones. So what happens after they appear? Well, if these stories are any indication, humankind wouldn’t last long. Such Bright And Risen Madness In Our Names by Jay Lake is a great story that meshes the first person voice so common in Lovecraft’s stories with a post-apocalyptic feel.

It’s come to my own personal attention that there are no longer any things in this world that excite me. It’s not that I am some dispassionate postmodern intellectual existential snob, OK-maybe I am, but it’s not as if my world view doesn’t allow for some joy. And when I got the email from Jacob over at Permuted Press, regarding an opportunity to review “Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile” from Zombie fiction legend, JL Bourne, I danced the dance of a thousand joys; which if you don’t know what that is –well, imagine a fully grown man running around flapping his arms like a 12 year old girl who just got to meet “Edward” from the “Twilight” saga.

Yeah- I will hang my head in shame as I write this. But my joy is still there, you can’t take that away from me.

So I decided to take a break from my normal routine here, and review a book that doesn’t fall under the realm of “zombie fiction” , I know dear readers- it’s a scary world out there when you decide to jump- but I if you can’t broaden your horizons, even just a little, you are doomed to a life of sedentary devotion, and well- I looked around and saw that the book had never been reviewed which is a shame because it’s fantastic, so might as well, right? Onward ho!

Albert Camus, the mid twentieth century writer and philosopher, who penned the fantastic piece of literary work called “The Stranger” along with the concept of “the absurd” in post modern, existential philosophy also released a book entitled “The Rebel” which was an essay on man in revolt, or at least that’s what the byline says.