Sure, you could read Max Brooks' newly released Recorded Attacks or Seth Grahame Smith's best-selling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but why not read a knock-off instead? They're like the those books, but written by someone else!
The world of zombie literature offers a wide variety of knock-off books, some more blatant than others. A mash-up like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is, by its nature, kind of a knock-off already, and has only set off a series of knock-off knock-offs! God bless America!
Zombie "Survival Guides"
Before there were zombie mash-ups, the Max Brooks' 2003 Zombie Survival Guide set the water mark for a tidal wave of survival guide knock-offs, including Richard Greene's The Undead and Philosophy: Chicken Soup for the Soulless (Popular Culture and Philosophy) (2006), Robert Cordray's Zombies 101: Knowledge is Survival (2008), and Bob Curran's Zombies: A Field Guide to the Walking Dead, to name a few.
Greene's Chicken Soup for the Soulless is a collection of essays on the philosophy of the living dead, such as are zombies morally responsible for their actions and so forth. Cordray's Zombies 101 is pretty much a straight-up knock-off, while Curran's Field Guide to the Walking Dead takes after the latter part of Zombie Survival Guide and explores the zombie plague throughout history.
Zombies: a Record of the Year of Infection
Don Roff's book seems like a long title but is actually much shorter than World War Z if the Guy From I Am Legend Wrote It. To be fair, WWZ followed a reporter who spoke to many survivors of a zombie apocalypse, while the hero in Zombies writes and documents the infection in an attempt to explain why everyone has become vampires zombies.
With illustrations from Chris Lane, the book is getting good reviews. CraveOnline gave it "8/10."
Eric S. Brown's Catalog
If Roff's book felt a little too knock-off-ish, then you'll love the audacity of zombie novelist Eric S. Brown. Just this year, Brown has published The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts, and Zombies and World War of the Dead. Brown's "collaboration" with H.G. Wells came only three weeks after Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, so give him credit for copying a copy faster than the rest.
World War of the Dead sounds more like a knock-off than it actually is, as it tells the story of some soldiers during World War II who encounter zombies as well as German soldiers. Brown also distances himself from WWZ by instilling a "positive Christian message amongst the gore". Still, the title is a clear knock-off, kind of like if someone saw The DaVinci Code and made some straight-to-DVD knock-off movie called The DaVinci Treasure. Wait, someone did.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim
It took author W. Bill Czolgosz a few months to capitalize on the mash-up success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, where as Brown pushed one out in only weeks. What took you so long, Czolgosz?
Huckleberry Finn and Zombie Jim is just one of many capitalizing on the zombie mash-up craze. In fact, any classic literature mixed with monsters is New York Times Best-Seller material. Anything to trick those kids into reading!
What's really hilarious about zombie mash-ups is that they are usually copywritten, just so no one can mess with the book that messed with another book. Ah, mash-ups.
