I come not to satirize Truesdale, but to bury him.

When Bill Schafer asked me to write these columns, he also mentioned that he’d like it if I could be as outrageous and topical and argumentative and controversial as possible. I’m honestly a pretty phlegmatic soul about most things, and I cautioned him that I wasn’t sure how much of that I could manage, really.

Well, you know. I could talk about the Hugo Ballot, and whose fault it is that there aren’t many women on it (1). And the Philip K. Dick Award, and why there aren’t many men on it. (2)

I could talk about how the Hugos are decided by a small group of dedicated fans of a certain age, who have well-established favorites, and who have a lock on the award for as long as they continue voting, because they are the ones voting. I could talk about the apparent trend that books nominated for the Hugos are those released in hardcover, and the perception that women writers are more likely to be released in paperback. I could speculate on whether this is due to their readerships, the coincidence of editorial tastes, the sort of topics that women writers trend to, the business models of the publishing houses that feature a preponderance of women writers, or the intersection of all of the above.

I could talk about why Chris Moriarty isn’t in hardcover, say.

I could talk about my inexpressible relief that Dave Truesdale can’t be arsed to read my books, especially when he considers calling some of the top women writers in SFF a bunch of pussies to be somehow satirical. I could talk about Adrienne Martini’s apparently bottomless ignorance of the Hugo nominating process. I could talk about whether or not a major genre magazine is undermining its credibility by featuring a columnist who by his own declaration isn’t a “writer.”

I could suggest that, as a genre, or a critical discussion, or whatever, what we really need is some satirists who are actually, you know, funny.

I could.

You know, I could, really. I could go on for hours. With minimal provocation.

But who the hell cares? I’d be bored before I got to the bottom of the page, and so would you (3). Talk about beating your dead horses.

So, in the spirit of flagellating corpses, I’d rather talk about zombies.

Now, zombies (4) are cool. They rot. And drop bits all over the place. And they shuffle, so you can run faster than they can(5), but they’re pretty much inexorable and implacable. What with being already dead.

And they want to eat your braiiiiinnnnssssss.

In some ways, I think of zombies as being like the creepy old man at the end of the block, when you were a kid. Remember him? The one in the paint-splattered medium-gray trousers cut off at the knee and the mustard-stained v-neck T-shirt, with his hair combed over his glossy age-spotted pate? Probably with a large carbuncle on the side of his head?

The one who would come lurching out his front door, around the patio wall, in his black socks and carpet slippers, shouting “You kids get off of my laaaaaaaaaawnnnn?”

Pretty much just like a zombie. Which is to say, carrying out a reflexive action (bellowing, and possibly waving a rake) without really any consideration of the whyfor or howfor of it. You step on his lawn. He bellows. You run, laughing like a fool.

He never seems to catch on that all the fun in tromping across his lawn is to get him to come out and bellow.

Zombies are the same way. They don’t have a lot of higher processing functions (after all, their brains are mostly mush. Or maggots. Which is why they want to eat yours.) They don’t move very fast. So you can outrun them. They’re only really worrisome in groups, because then they can surround or overwhelm you.

Well, admittedly, some zombies will ambush.

But under most circumstances, if you’ve got just one zombie, or a small group, your best bet is either to keep your distance, or maybe whack them with a cricket bat. That’s kind of violent, though, and you have to get close to them to do it. And if you don’t behead them with the first blow, then you’re stuck in close combat.

You can’t reason with a zombie. As I mentioned above, they react reflexively. They just shuffle around looking for brains to suck, and you’re not going to get much sense out of one.

Besides, in going in there with that cricket bat, you run the risk of zombie bite. Which, untreated, can turn you into a zombie too, mindlessly flailing about and bellowing BRAINS and YOU KIDS STAY THE HELL OUT OF MY ROOOOSEEEEBUUUSHES! And that’s where the real trouble starts.

Too much of that, and then you have zombie packs.

And besides, the damn things are already dead. They can’t adapt. They can’t process new ideas. (6) They’re hopelessly stuck at the moment of their demise. Brain-death.

So, okay, not great conversationalists. And they are, of course, dead. And rotting. (7)

And a bit stinky.

But they’re still cool.

They’re cool because they serve as a metaphor for the destructive influence of conventional society, among other things. For the perniciousness of programmed behavior and ossified thought patterns.

They provoke the protagonist into motion, and provide the impetus for him (or her) to get it together. To change his (or her) life. To win the boy (or girl) of his (or her) dreams.

To take action. To stand up.

To become a hero.

To take that swing. To become a leader. To get involved.

Also, bonking them on the head can be a pretty fantastic workout. Cricket bats aren’t light.

***

(1) Eleven women in seventy-six slots, of which two are nominated for fiction, and some of whom share their nomination with a man, but in the spirit of putting my thumb on the scale as ridiculously as possible, I counted each of those as a whole nomination. It comes to 14.5%. If you count the JWC not-a-Hugo-Award.

(2) Two out of seven, or 28.6%.

(3) Bet you a shiny penny.

(4) Unlike internet slapfights

(5) Unless of course they are the superspeed zombies from 28 Days Later, which are all zippy and can run you down! They’re highly evolved zombies! They’re way cool, but they are not germane to the satire.

(6) Except for George Romero zombies. Which are also way cool, and also not germane to the satire.

(7) Some of them, such as Michael Jackson, can dance. However, bits may still fall off occasionally.

Links for Context:

Adrienne Martini’s column.

Dave Truesdale’s column.

Dave Truesdale on “satire”, and how his piece should be considered as such.

Dave Truesdale’s comment on not being a “writer”.