Can you save it? (Things that need saving.)

[schally]

Zombies. Can we save them?

The recent outpouring of zombie-themed stuff just shows that nobody has any interesting new ideas for zombies. They're like vampires, only vampires have already been done to death (haaarr) and zombies might theoretically have some mileage left in 'em.

Sentience might help. But does that take us too far from the essence of what a zombie is? And you can't just do a combo and fix it, like say, zombie pirates or zombie ninjas. They still have the same basic problems as normal zombies.

[dnl2ba]

Land of the Dead did somewhat smarter zombies, albeit not intelligent.

Omega Man did intelligent zombies. I guess they were technically vampires, but the whole "almost all humans get converted into monsters" thing is the basis of a zombie story. And in the remake (I Am Legend), they seemed more vampire-like, but they were dumb like zombies.

[schally]

In the book I Am Legend the protagonist initially encounters zombie-like vampires who are mindless, but he later encounters another group of vampires who have established a functioning society (and those guys end up being good [because they prove human society can go on] but also bad [because they want to punish him for being a vampire hunter]).

A friend was telling me last night about a book where some zombies run rampant, but others try to covertly reintegrate into living human society by hiding the fact that they're dead. I'm not too sure about that idea at the basic level, but it might work with the right details. I think the movie Fido was the one where zombies are a part of society and they're basically treated like pets or servants or something. They are still relatively mindless, but people could get them to do basic tasks like maintenance gardening. It reminds me a little of the original lore, where zombies were mindless servants and you could supposedly buy so-called zombi to till your fields or whatever. (They work endlessly and don't require payment, but I guess the trade-off is they probably don't do a particularly good job.)

[dnl2ba]

In Legend of the Seeker, which is based on the Sword of Truth books (which I haven't read), people who die have a choice to come back as Banelings to serve the Keeper (the lord of the underworld). IIRC, they have to kill once every 24 hours or they return to the underworld for good, and they start looking pretty ripe toward the end of the 24 hours. So anyway, a lot of Banelings come back and try to live their old lives. In one episode, a mom came back to raise her son, but after she accepted her fate and re-died, it was revealed that her kid was a Baneling, too, and she didn't even know.