Posts Tagged ‘zombies’

Now a few years ago a famous game designer pointed out that all successful RPGs include zombies.  I think it was Robin D Laws but I could be wrong.  This was extended by others to suggest that a game could be made a success by including zombies.  Back then zombies were the preserve of horror and fantasy fiction, TV and budget horror films.  They were niche.  They were cult.  It wasn’t too many years before that time that rail adverts featured Jimmy Saville and the only undead on a train were the British Rail sandwiches.  We were told it was the Age of the Train.

Now British Rail and British Rail sandwiches don’t exist anymore. The fried breakfasts have been replaced with croissants and a full fat, ethical, posh coffee from a franchise on the renovated station.  You don’t have a brief encounter in the door with a woman as you’re both wearing backpacks and you’d get jammed in place if you tried to pass with a flirtatious smile.  Pretty soon new University students will have been born after BR was broken up.

The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Resident Evil and Shaun of the Dead have happened.  Zombies (along with Vampires and Werewolves) have become more and more mainstream.

Every day on my way to work this week I’ve faced by a Virgin Trains advert on a big screen featuring zombies…

Its now the Age of the Zombie.

So my question is are they now too main stream?  Are zombies past their sell by date?  Have they sold out  like an aging punk in an insurance advert with a million pounds in his back pocket?

What cool monster will fill the niche left by zombies?  Will it be another undead or something else?

Before I get to any more lucid thoughts – was it just me or did the two water zombies marching around look a lot like Ray Liotta and Mark Kermode?

So the long awaited second Doctor Who special The Waters of Mars was on tonight.   It was good fun.  From the trailer I’d expected a lot more of the creaping horror in space and not so much of the Doctor running through corridors.  Which brings me to a little gripe: if lifting a bicycle from Earth would have used so much fuel how much did lifting those long corridors use?  It’s the daft things like that that pull me out of the show.

Good points the acting was good, the effects didn’t let it down.  Excellent points: the early parts with the scary, martian, water zombies.  Best bit: the Doctor walking away – Tennant’s wordless performance reminded me of Bob Hoskins at the end of The Long Good Friday.  Part of me wishes he’d just kept walking because that would have been more powerful and dramatic.

Anyway I’m looking forward to the next special. Especially given who it looks like is coming to Christmas dinner…

Update: Dark Dwarf and Kim Knox have now posted their thoughts too.

The latest issues of Ragnarok (The Magazine of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargaming) arrived by post today. An interesting mix of articles including Daleks, Zombies, SF Armoured warfare, Fantasy Naval and Luna Exploration alongside the regular rules and miniature reviews.

My article, The Panzerfauste Song Book, takes up more pages than I thought it would. If I’d realised how long it is I’d have split it in two!

The SFSFW’s been busy on the WWW today launching the SFSFW blog and SFSFW twitter to go along with the existing SFSFW web site and SFSFW Facebook page.