2012-01-11 15:15:01 från
”Gareth Wood Gareth Wood are working on a zombie trilogy that soon is completed: Rise , Age of the Dead and Dead Inside . Permuted Press has recently published the first book , Rise . Wood has also written Black Horizon , a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel. Check out Gareth Wood at PERMUTED PRESS WIKI RISE at AMAZON RISE at SMASHWORDS Swedish Zombie: What was it that made you start writing about the apocalypse and zombies? What were your first influences? Gareth Wood: I first decided to write about the undead, zombies specifically, after I saw a few movies. I was struck by the …”
Taggar: handla böcker och köp böcker. Läs bokrecensioner om kultur och litteratur. Gareth Wood Gareth Wood are working on a zombie trilogy that soon is completed: Rise , Age of the Dead and Dead Inside . Permuted Press has recently published the first book , Rise . Wood has also written Black Horizon , a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel. Check out Gareth Wood at PERMUTED PRESS WIKI RISE at AMAZON RISE at SMASHWORDS Swedish Zombie: What was it that made you start writing about the apocalypse and zombies? What were your first influences? Gareth Wood: I first decided to write about the undead, zombies specifically, after I saw a few movies. I was struck by the characters poor choices. People mostly died due to stupidity in these films, not due to accident or ill intent. A good example is George Romero’s film ‘Land of the Dead’, when the character Mouse is left alone in the middle of the night on a dock with an automatic weapon and a walkman. It’s like his compatriots were setting him up to be killed! The first zombie he sees, he blasts away at with an extremely loud and inaccurate weapon. He’d have heard it coming a long way off if he hadn’t been listening to music on his earphones. This struck me as completely wrong. The character had grown up in this world, and should have known better. I asked myself what would happen if some reasonably intelligent people, capable of learning from the situation they found themselves in, were the focus of a story. Thus I began to write, and it turned into my novel ‘Rise’. Swedish Zombie: How do you look upon the zombies? What do they mean to you? Are they metaphors, or simply cool monsters? Gareth Wood: Both. To a writer the zombie is useful as both metaphor and cool monster. They can stand for all kinds of things, or simply be background. As metaphor they have a certain strength, since the framework of the zombie tale can be used to explain much. Zombies can be the background menace for an altogether different type of horror as well. Playing it straight can be limiting, though satisfying. As a cool monster the zombie is visceral and appeals to us on a primal level. The fear of the unrelenting, nigh unstoppable, untiring and unemotional dead thing hits us in the gut. It provides excellent visuals as well as metaphorical delight. Swedish Zombie: Zombie enthusiasts are often conservative. How much do you think that one should experiment with the concept? Gareth Wood: A lot. We have had many great zombie books, as well as a host of good ones. There have been a few ‘genre defining’ books as well. What I think we need now is one or two ‘genre transcending’ books. Something that makes the public at large sit up and notice it as a story that goes well beyond the normal “there’s a zombie apocalypse, how do you react to it?” tales we seem to be limited to at the moment. The vampire genre has done this already, and I feel that the zombie genre is next to have one of these transcending moments. Swedish Zombie : It is often hard to pick favorites, perhaps it is simply foolish to try. But are there two or three books in modern zombie fiction that you think has meant something extra for the genre? Gareth Wood: Yes, the original ‘Book of the Dead’ compilation from years ago. It scared the hell out of me, particularly the Stephen King short story in it. Swedish Zombie: How do you consider the genre’s future? Zombies seem to be viable. Can this peak last and if so what is then required by the authors? Gareth Wood: The genre will survive only as long as it remains fresh. That means we will have to be constantly pushing the boundaries and reinventing our stories into a broader scope. The backdrop of the zombie apocalypse should allow us to explore some very diverse areas in human interaction and societal change. If we allow the genre to become stagnant, we will eventually fade away much as a zombie should, given time and proper environment. Swedish Zombie: A good book is always right. Some writers want to renew, others strive to convey an already well-known story with his or her unique twist. How do you look upon your own writings? Gareth Wood: My own stories are definitely within the ‘unique twist’ path. I began with the first moments of the apocalypse and wrote from there. I feel now that I want to write more about the world that has come about than the world left behind. Swedish Zombie: Through the ages, writers and directors stuck to various explanations for the end of the world: infections from space, environmental degradation, military experiments, terrorism etc. Which scenario behind the zombie apocalypse do you think is most interesting / believable at the moment? Gareth Wood: The most interesting to me is the idea that in an infinite multiverse anything is possible. As a result, there must be a universe out there similar to ours in almost every way, but where the dead have returned to life to feast on the living. A parallel universe, of sorts, where almost everything happened exactly the same way, right up to the moment when the agent that caused the dead to rise remained dormant in our world, but activated in that one. Swedish Zombie: What will you write in the future? What stories remain in you, do you think? Is there anything in particular you feel like writing? Gareth Wood: Having written two zombie novels I am now working on a third in the series, as well as a post apocalyptic science fiction novel unrelated to the zombie genre. After that I want to explore more science fiction, alternate horror ideas, and possibly some variant fantasy. Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om Författare , intervju , Gareth Wood , Rise , Permuted Press , apokalyps , zombier , Swedish Zombie
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