Editor John Joseph Adams has finalized the table of contents for his forthcoming zombie anthology, The Living Dead. The 230,000-word, 34-story book will be published in September by Night Shade Books, and is available for pre-order on this page (they’re offering the trade paperback for $15.95).
Adams describes the mostly reprint anthology: “From White Zombie to Dawn of the Dead; from Resident Evil to World War Z, zombies have invaded popular culture, becoming the monsters that best express the fears and anxieties of the modern west. The ultimate consumers, zombies rise from the dead and feed upon the living, their teeming masses ever hungry, ever seeking to devour or convert, like mindless, faceless eating machines. Zombies have been depicted as mind-controlled minions, the shambling infected, the disintegrating dead, the ultimate lumpenproletariat, but in all cases, they reflect us, mere mortals afraid of death in a society on the verge of collapse.
“Gathering together the best zombie literature of the last three decades from many of today’s most renowned authors of fantasy, speculative fiction, and horror, The Living Dead covers the broad spectrum of zombie fiction. The zombies of The Living Dead range from Romero-style zombies to reanimated corpses to voodoo zombies and beyond.
This table of contents indicates when and where the stories were originally published:
“This Year’s Class Picture” by Dan Simmons (Still Dead, 1992)
“Some Zombie Contingency Plans” by Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners, 2005)
“Death and Suffrage” by Dale Bailey (F&SF, 2002)
“Ghost Dance” by Sherman Alexie (McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, 2003)
“Blossom” by David J. Schow (Book of the Dead, 1989)
“The Third Dead Body” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman (The Ultimate Zombie, 1993)
“The Dead” by Michael Swanwick (Starlight 1, 1996)
“The Dead Kid” by Darrell Schweitzer (The Book of More Flesh, 2002)
“Malthusian’s Zombie by Jeffrey Ford (Sci Fiction, 2000)
“Beautiful Stuff” by Susan Palwick (Sci Fiction, 2004)
“Sex, Death and Starshine” by Clive Barker (Books of Blood, Vol. 1, 1984)
“Stockholm Syndrome” by David Tallerman (Pseudopod, 2007)
“Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead” by Joe Hill (Postscripts, 2005)
“Those Who Seek Forgiveness” by Laurell K. Hamilton (Strange Candy, 2006)
“In Beauty, Like the Night” by Norman Partridge (Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales, 1992)
“Prairie” by Brian Evenson (The Silver Web, 1997)
“Everything is Better with Zombies” by Hannah Wolf Bowen (Phantom, 2006)
“Home Delivery” by Stephen King (Book of the Dead, 1989)
“Less than Zombie” by Douglas E. Winter (Book of the Dead, 1989)
“Sparks Fly Upward” by Lisa Morton (Mondo Zombie, 2006)
“Meathouse Man” by George R.R. Martin (Orbit 18, 1976)
“Deadman’s Road” by Joe Lansdale (Weird Tales, 2007)
“The Skull-Faced Boy” by David Barr Kirtley (Gothic.net, 2002)
“The Age of Sorrow” by Nancy Kilpatrick (Postscripts, 2007)
“Bitter Grounds” by Neil Gaiman (Mojo: Conjure Stories, 2003)
“She’s Taking Her Tits to the Grave by Catherine Cheek (Ideomancer, 2008)
“Dead Like Me” by Adam-Troy Castro (A Desperate, Decaying Darkness, 2000)
“Zora and the Zombie” by Andy Duncan (Sci Fiction, 2004)
“Calcutta, Lord of Nerves” by Poppy Z. Brite (Still Dead, 1992)
“Followed” by Will McIntosh (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, 2006)
“The Song the Zombie Sang” by Harlan Ellison & Robert Silverberg (Cosmopolitan, 1970)
“Passion Play” by Nancy Holder (Still Dead, 1992)
“Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man” by Scott Edelman (Postscripts, 2007)
“How the Day Runs Down” by John Langan (this is the only original story in the book)