Generation Dead, by Daniel Waters
Waters, Daniel (2008). Generation Dead. NY: Hyperion. 392 pages.
Dead teenagers are coming back to life and trying to exist among the living. The undead or, as the politically correct would have it, "differently biotic," are not the most welcome new additions to the population. For one thing, they look dead--think pale skin and silver eyes--for another, not all of them returned to "normal." Many of the undead are shells of their former selves, speak slowly and haltingly and with a flat affect. One school, Oakvale High, has become something of a mecca for dead teens; as one of few schools with an undead mainstreaming program, it, and the town in which it is situated, has attracted a number of dead kids and their families. When (living) goth Phoebe Kendall develops a crush on one of the dead, a boy named Tommy, and Tommy decides to try out for the school football team, conflict ensues. With one of Phoebe's best friends, a jock named Adam, on Tommy's side on the team, threats made by some of his meathead teammates never get completely out of hand; however, most of the town (not to mention society) remains hostile towards the zombies.
It would be easy to read Generation Dead as something of an allegory for any kind of institutionalized or social bigotry; details of the zombie's lack of citizenship, the mandatory conscription requirements, and their random murders by townspeople are reminiscent of American racism and homophobia. That the party being discriminated against consists of the reanimated dead complicates the metaphor. Can we really draw a parallel between the undead and the (living) victims of hate? Would that parallel inevitably lead to questions about the validity or even "naturalness" of life on either side?
I'd like to have seen the book go a bit deeper into the experiences of the dead and begin to feel out questions of "biotics" and existence (at an existential level, of course, har har); however, the jabs at consumerism were enough of a beginning for me. Interestingly, the author has set up a "live" extension of the novel in the form of a blog, "My So Called Death," featuring the thoughts of Tommy who, coincidentally, maintains a blog of the same name in the book. Visit "Tommy's" blog here. I've visited once and found myself more interested in the readers' comments than in Tommy's musings. While many of the blog's readers have clearly read the novel, I wonder if all of them are completely in on the dissemblance.