Zombie Q&A—Isaac Marion: “George Romero tried to touch on the humanity of the zombies.”
Photo by Juliann Itter
“I find it telling how quick people are to dismiss zombies as non-human cannon fodder the moment they stop behaving in ways we understand.”
In this exclusive interview, the Warm Bodies author shares the personal inspiration for his unique take on zombies, explains his biggest genre pet peeve, and reveals why zombies stories are “hard to love” as a category.
Isaac Marion’s 2010 debut novel WARM BODIES became a New York Times bestseller, inspired a major film, and was translated into 25 languages. He spent the next eight years writing the rest of the story over the course of four books, now concluded with THE LIVING.
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What’s your unique spin on zombie fiction?
My protagonist is a zombie, so this is obviously not a story about rugged survivors mowing down hordes of undead monsters. I’m not interested in that. It’s about what it feels like to be dead inside and the struggle to find life again.
What inspired you to go in this direction?
Feeling like a zombie myself. Depression and loneliness, feeling disconnected from humanity. Zombies seemed like a perfect metaphor for exploring those feelings in a way that could also be funny and exciting.
When and how did you first become interested in zombie stories? (Childhood reading, movies, what?)
Honestly I’m not interested in zombie stories! I was always aware of the creature, the trope, and I did my homework while writing these books, but it was never a genre that appealed to me much. It tends to follow a very rigid formula and explore the same ideas over and over when it explores ideas at all. There are a few standouts that did interesting things with the premise, but they’re surrounded by so much mass-produced bottom-feeder junk, it’s hard to love it as a category.
I do love a post-apocalyptic setting, I’ve always been fascinated with that desolate beauty and the possibilities that emerge from a ruined world, but the zombies themselves don’t do much for me unless we’re exploring their humanity, which most zombie fiction avoids.
What are your “zombie story” pet peeves?
My biggest peeve is just how nobody seems interested in the zombies themselves. They’re used as props and obstacles for the living characters and rarely ever explored individually.
Many zombie stories make the distinction between zombie vs “human” but zombies are human. They’re people in some kind of horrific altered state. I don’t buy the notion that a zombie can be truly “mindless.” The actions they perform in most zombie fiction require some form of consciousness. I find it telling how quick people are to dismiss them as non-human cannon fodder the moment they stop behaving in ways we understand.
What do YOU look for in a good zombie story?
I’m pretty much only interested in zombie stories that are interested in the zombies themselves. And there are damn few of those.
I can make an exception for a warmhearted comedy like Shaun of the Dead, which has so much fun playing with the trope. Or the original Night of the Living Dead, because it’s just so simple and pure with the concept. Zombie fans tend to ignore that George Romero himself actually tried to touch on the humanity of the zombies on multiple occasions, with zombies who talk, listen to music, mourn their fallen comrades, and lead revolutions.
But sadly, zombies ended up being confined to B-movie camp and lowbrow horror, so those ideas could never really be explored. I would love to see an aesthetically beautiful, emotionally honest story about the idea of being trapped in a lifeless body in a world you can’t understand, existing without being alive. I tried my best to make a story like that.
But I think the genre is too polluted at this point and should probably be left to rest for a decade. Although we may all be living in it by then.
Find Isaac Marion Online
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Twitter: @IsaacInSpace
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Warm Bodies: A Novel (The Warm Bodies Series Book 1)
In Warm Bodies, Isaac Marion’s New York Times bestselling novel that inspired a major film, a zombie returns to humanity through an unlikely encounter with love.
“R” is having a no-life crisis—he is a zombie. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse, but he is a little different from his fellow Dead. He may occasionally eat people, but he’d rather be riding abandoned airport escalators, listening to Sinatra in the cozy 747 he calls home, or collecting souvenirs from the ruins of civilization.
And then he meets a girl.
First as his captive, then his reluctant house guest, Julie is a blast of living color in R’s gray landscape, and something inside him begins to bloom. He doesn’t want to eat this girl—although she looks delicious—he wants to protect her. But their unlikely bond will cause ripples they can’t imagine, and their hopeless world won’t change without a fight.
The New Hunger: A Warm Bodies Novella (The Warm Bodies Series Book 2—prequel novella)
The end of the world didn’t happen overnight.
After years of societal breakdowns, wars and quakes and rising tides, humanity was already near the edge. Then came a final blow no one could have expected: all the world’s corpses rising up to make more.
Born into this bleak and bloody landscape, twelve-year-old Julie struggles to hold on to hope as she and her parents drive across the wastelands of America, a nightmarish road trip in search of a new home.
Hungry, lost, and scared, sixteen-year-old Nora finds herself her brother’s sole guardian after her parents abandon them in the not-quite-empty ruins of Seattle.
And in the darkness of a forest, a dead man opens his eyes. Who is he? What is he? With no clues beyond a red tie and the letter “R,” he must unravel the grim mystery of his existence—right after he learns how to think, how to walk, and how to satisfy the monster howling in his belly.
The New Hunger is a crucial link between Warm Bodies and The Burning World, a glimpse into the past that sets the stage for an astonishing future.
The Burning World: A Warm Bodies Novel (The Warm Bodies Series Book 3)
The New York Times bestseller Warm Bodies captured hearts worldwide in twenty-five languages, inspiring a major film and a cult fandom. Now R the reluctant zombie continues his journey in this much-anticipated sequel.
Being alive is hard. Being human is harder. But since his recent recovery from death, R is making progress. He’s learning how to read, how to speak, maybe even how to love, and the city’s undead population is showing signs of life. R can almost imagine a future with Julie, this girl who restarted his heart—building a new world from the ashes of the old one.
And then helicopters appear on the horizon. Someone is coming to restore order. To silence all this noise. To return things to the way they were, the good old days of stability and control and the strong eating the weak. The plague is ancient and ambitious, and the Dead were never its only weapon.
How do you fight an enemy that’s in everyone? Can the world ever really change? With their home overrun by madmen, R, Julie, and their ragged group of refugees plunge into the otherworldly wastelands of America in search of answers. But there are some answers R doesn’t want to find. A past life, an old shadow, crawling up from the basement.
The Living: A Warm Bodies Novel (The Warm Bodies Series Book 4)
The New York Times bestselling Warm Bodies Series has captivated readers in twenty-five languages, inspiring a major film and transcending the zombie genre to become something "poetic" (Library Journal), "highly original" (Seattle Times), and "ultimately moving" (Time Out London). Now the story of a dead man's search for life reaches its conclusion on a scale both epic and intimate.
Before he was a flesh-eating corpse, R was something worse. He remembers it all now, a life of greed and apathy more destructive than any virus, and he sees only one path to redemption: he must fight the forces he helped create. But what can R, Julie, and their tiny gang of fugitives do against the creeping might of the Axiom Group, the bizarre undead corporation that's devouring what's left of America?
It's time for a road trip.
No more flyover country. This time they'll face the madness on the ground, racing their RV across the wastelands as tensions rise and bonds unravel—because R isn't the only one hiding painful secrets. Everyone is on their own desperate search: for a kidnapped daughter, a suicidal mother, and an abused little boy with a gift that could save humanity... if humanity can convince him it's worth saving.
All roads lead home, to a final confrontation with the plague and its shareholders. But this is a monster that guns can't kill. A battle only one weapon can win...
Horror and comedy both make us jump—which is why these elements work together so well together. Looking at books from authors like Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Tanya Huff, Kelley Armstrong, John Scalzi, Diana Rowland, and Kevin J. Anderson, plus many authors you should meet.