it's just a perfect story, and a love letter to fandom/geekdom in all its manifestations. I loved this one the first time i read it, and i loved it EVEN MORE this second time. San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats I wanted to focus on one of those people. What about the people who looked at the face of the changing world - the world that was never going to be the same, even if they made it out the other side - and decided to say 'you know what, thanks but no thanks I'd rather be a statistic'? Any disaster is going to come with a certain soft cost: A certain number of suicides and accidents surrounding the deaths that come as an immediate consequence of the event. Everyone had unleashed the virus everyone had devoured the world. Because I needed a short story that said something new and interesting about the zombie apocalypse, and I wasn't finding it. it didn't leave much of an impression on me, although i really appreciated her introduction in which she discusses her inspiration for writing this one, when asked to contribute a story to The Living Dead 2 and being at a loss about what to write, feeling like she'd covered so many angles in previous zombie tales (little did she know how fruitful she would find this world in the future - how much unexplored territory, because she's always finding one more dark corner to shine an undead light into) This one was a first-time read for me, and i'd always felt a bit of a hole in my life for not having read it, as it was the only one i hadn't read. grant? hmmm, are ya?) but in the world of newsflesh, it's true that a little insanity will always serve you well, amiright, foxy?

It also had two major advantages: most of the roads were already half blocked to prevent campus traffic from disturbing the residents, and most of those residents were slightly insane by any normal societal measurement.Ĭonsidering that a replica of a medieval weapon is later used, to great effect, in a different newsflesh story, the idiocy seems instead to be just good thinking. and also her many wonderful turns of phrase:īerkeley, being a university town in Northern California, had two major problems: not enough guns, and too many idiots who thought they could fight off zombies with medieval weapons they'd stolen from the history department. i'd read it so many years ago, but i still remembered all of it, which is a testament to the staying power of mira grant's imagery. It was good to revisit this story, like seeing an old friend.

Mira grant the rising