NEWSLETTER

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INTERVIEW BY ANDY CAPPER
PORTRAIT BY TARA SINN, WITH A PHOTO BY DAN MONICK


Anybody who cares even an iota about the state of the world and what happens to people when disease and wars happen should read World War Z by Max Brooks. It’s a fictional oral history of “the zombie wars” and it ranks as one of my favorite books of the last ten years. And I know what you’re thinking: zombie wars—how corny.

Nevertheless, World War Z is the kind of book that has you constantly saying “This is amazing” out loud. Not only is it a work of horror fiction to rival the best, but it’s also a well-researched treatise (in disguise) on survival, human nature, and the tiny, teeny thread that separates civilized society from total fucking chaos.

Max, the son of Anne Bancroft and Mel Brooks, is a former Saturday Night Live writer. He also wrote The Zombie Survival Guide and has a graphic novel based on it coming out. Max is the latest addition to the zombie cognoscenti—a small group of glorious men like George Romero, Tom Savini, and Lucio Fulci—and we welcomed the chance to speak with him recently.

Vice: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, I’m a massive fan of your books.

Max Brooks: Where are you calling from?

London. East London. I’m in fashionable Shoreditch. It’s very fashionable here.

Just trying to get a mental picture. I used to live in London.

What were you doing here?

I was working for the BBC on documentaries, a thing on great railway journeys in Africa. This was a long, long time ago.

How did you like London?

Oh, I’ve been to London many times my whole life. I’ve got to watch it change. It’s great—you guys are back now!

We’re back?

Yeah!

In what way?

As a bona fide nation-state world power! Now when you go to London everything’s shiny and new and clean and bright. You have Starbucks!

We have Starbucks everywhere.

Yeah, you need to get rid of those.

I just wanted to find out what the first fiction you read as a kid was.

Growing up, I was very, very dyslexic. Reading was really hard. It was torturous. I never read anything unless I absolutely had to, for school.

What did you have to read?

Oh, you know, they make you read the classics. But it was just murder, and it was only when I was about 15 or 16 that I sat down and read my first fiction book.

Which was what?

The Hunt for Red October. It was the first book I ever really wanted to read and from there I just went crazy to the point that, when I was in London, there was this fantasy and science-fiction bookshop on Holloway Road and I must have bought a hundred books from that shop.

What sort of science fiction did you like?

I’m a bit of a snob about science fiction. For me, it’s got to be real and it’s got to make sense. I enjoy science fiction because I enjoy playing with reality. Actually my favorite science-fiction miniseries was the 1970s’ The Day of the Triffids.

The British one?

Oh yeah. I thought that was absolutely brilliant because it didn’t so much deal with the fantastic worlds of the Triffids as it did with what would happen if the world went blind—the social, the political, and the economic ramifications. And that’s what good science fiction has to be about, I think. It has to be about us.

I liked John Wyndham’s novel.

Oh yeah, the book was just excellent. It was really good sci-fi. Another one of my favorite science-fiction books is On the Beach by Nevil Shute. It was so dark and horrible and yet it made perfect sense. It’s about a nuclear war where the northern hemisphere is completely devastated. The survivors gather in little pockets in Australia. They know the radiation is coming. It’s not a question of if they’ll die, but when they’ll die. And what I loved about it was that it wasn’t fantastic. It wasn’t like Mad Max.

So World War Z is being made into a movie.

Yeah, well, we’ll see what happens. You know, I’m not as involved in it as people might think. I’ll probably be the last to know. You’ll probably know before me. And that’s exactly the way I want it.

Why’s that?

When you’re a writer, and when you create a work like World War Z, your heart and your soul are in it. And then you turn it over to Hollywood and it becomes art by committee. And that’s fine, that’s how movies are made, and I know that. But I don’t want to be part of it. I’ve had my artistic moment. I don’t need to go any farther.

What if the movie is like really, really terrible?

Then it’s even better if I’m not involved, because I’ll have had nothing to do with it. I sold them the book, and that was it. But I am lucky in that they have a really dynamite screenwriter attached.

It’s the Babylon 5 guy, isn’t it? Michael Straczynski.

Yeah, and I’m a huge fan of his. So for me they’re already on the right track.

So you like Babylon 5?

Oh my God, I loved that show. I’m a history major. Even before I’m a science-fiction nerd, I’m a history nerd. And I loved the way they dealt with human history. Everything they did had a historical bent to it. And that’s what I mean about not being fantastic: the technology and the aliens, that was just window dressing. It was a very human story.

Have you seen any of the recent zombie films?

I loved 28 Days Later. To make good science fiction, to make good horror, I think you need people from outside the genre. I think what happens is that makers of horror movies, they get stuck within their world and their devices. So when it’s by Danny Boyle from Trainspotting? You’re not going to get better than that. And what he did was he brought real human horror into something as crazy as… well, they weren’t zombies, they were infected, but you get the idea. He made it believable because he had real human characters. So when I saw that I went, “You go, Danny Boyle!”

He was the first guy to bring zombies who can run into the mix.

Certainly in modern times, yes. Because they weren’t dead, they were human beings who were infected. That’s the beauty of Danny Boyle. And I thought Trainspotting was one of the best horror movies ever made.

Did you see the Dawn of the Dead remake?

Yeah, I thought that it was fine, but it can’t compare to the original.

There’s a theory that the new zombies that run are the studios pandering to the supposedly shortened attention spans of the audience.

I think that’s exactly right. I’m not as frightened of the fast zombies. Fast zombies and slow zombies illustrate to me the difference between fear and anxiety. Fear is when a threat is right in your face. Anxiety is worrying about a threat that might be in your face someday. The slow zombies are much scarier to me. It’s the difference between skydiving and scuba diving. For example, I went skydiving once…

How was that?

It was an adrenaline rush and it was terrifying but it was so fast and furious and quick that I didn’t realize it until it was over. Whereas with scuba diving, there’s plenty of time to think about all the ways you can die. And that’s the thing with the slow zombies. Like with the original Dawn of the Dead, there’s plenty of time to think about all the amazing ways you can die. If you’re fighting fast zombies, you’re fighting for your life and the adrenaline’s pumping and there’s no time to think. But with slow zombies, you have months to imagine your death.


CONTINUED
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