Here’s a small sampling of other topics Brooks covers in his lecture: Chernobyl. Flatulence. “Snow Klingons.” Fjords. Rambo. Saber-toothed tigers. “Ball cancer.” Crystal meth. Socialists. Rodney King. Rednecks. Glitter.
What’s clear from all this is that Brooks has a deep understanding of history and geopolitics — he isn’t just a standard-issue sci-fi author hopping on the zombie train. Rather, he’s the engineer of that train, at least in its modern renaissance. “W.W.Z.” was featured on a reading list put together by a former president of the U.S. Naval War College, and Brooks has lectured at various army bases on zombie preparedness. He’s a zombie laureate, our nation’s lone zombie public intellectual, touring everywhere from Long Island to Ireland to Sugar Grove to prepare humans for the coming zombie plague.
What’s not clear is just how much of this zombie stuff he believes himself. One thing is for sure, though: Max Brooks is very afraid of something.
When we met in West Hollywood for lunch two days after the Sugar Grove lecture, he tried to explain. He’s not making a joke. It’s not even that he’s being hammy or gimmicky. It’s just that it feels obvious to him: Of course there’s no such thing as zombies. And yet —
“Since 2001, people have been scared,” he explained. “There’s been some really scary stuff that’s been happening — 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, anthrax letters, D.C. sniper, global warming, global financial meltdown, bird flu, swine flu, SARS. I think people really feel like the system’s breaking down.”
He can be a little intense, but hear him out.
“It’s Hurricane Katrina. It’s neighbors knifing each other for food, women being raped, the cops not showing up, children dying of starvation, an old lady dying in a wheelchair.” Brooks reasons that many folks can’t cope with real-life dangers; they (like him) would prefer to metabolize their anxiety through science-fiction. “If all that happens because of a zombie plague, then you can say, ‘Oh, well, that would never happen, because there’s no zombies.’ ”