Zombies–the stuff of horror movies, books, short stories, and, of course, for the personal army I’m building up to one day take over the world…oops. I may have said too much! But, Xombies–no one has written about them before, and author Walter Greatshell decided to take up that effort in his page-turning, end-of-the-world novel Xombies: Apocalypse Blues. Check out my review, if you’re curious to know more about the book!
Walter Greatshell has graciously offered to let me interview him, and I and the entire staff at BSC are thrilled to have him here, and we hope that our readers will enjoy it! On Christmas Eve, may visions of zombies and Xombies dance over your heads!
Professor Crazy: First off, Walter, I would like to ask you what your inspirations were for Xombies: Apocalypse Blues, and what caused you to rethink the image of zombies in literature and movies, and go a different direction with them, making being one (A Xombie, at any rate) perhaps a desirable thing to be!
Walter Greatshell: Thanks, Professor. Well, when I wrote Xombies in 2001, there were no other zombie novels that I knew about, except for I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson, which had been written about forty years earlier. Even the last zombie movie I had seen was sometime back in the ’80s, so I thought I was reviving a dead subject. What I liked about zombie movies was their capacity for social satire–particularly George Romero’s films. I thought the time was ripe for a Kurt Vonnegut-type novel, because this was right after 9/11, and the hysteria was intense. I had been thinking about a zombie project for a long time, but it suddenly seemed much more relevant.
You chose a seventeen-year-old teenage girl as the first-person narrator for your novel. I can think of at least one reason you decided to do so–because using a woman to be the protagonist in a brave new world in which women are generally feared would make the reactions of the male characters to her that much more interesting to read.
Could you please expand a bit more on this, and also tell our readers why you chose to name the narrator Lulu Pangloss? One reader suggested that maybe you were influenced in your choice of her last name by a character from Candide. Is that a reasonable assumption to make?
Lulu is a Candide-like character, and the two books have a similar episodic structure, as well as the satire. But unlike Voltaire, my political agenda was secondary—I mainly wanted to tell a good story. As you suggest, the reason I chose to tell it from the point of view of a teenage girl was because I thought it would be a good source of conflict, as well as an interesting writing challenge. I’ve always liked stories told in the first person; it’s more intimate. It’s also a perfect way of simplifying a very complex scenario, since the reader only knows what Lulu knows…or chooses to tell. That said, the sequel is going to be in the third person, so we can get inside the heads of the other characters.
Louise, or Lulu, is being taken on a quest as the novel opens by her mother, hot on the trail of her father, Fred Cowper. They don’t have much media contact, so don’t learn of the outbreak of Xombies caused by Agent X until it’s swept throughout the country.
Why are they trying to find Fred Cowper, and why did you decide to make him an ex-Navy officer? Have you, also, been in the Navy?
I haven’t been in the Navy, but my wife and I spent over ten years overseas as part of DODDS—the school system for military family members. We’ve lived in Korea, Japan, Spain, and Turkey, which has given me a lot of material for future books! As to why Lulu and her mother are chasing Fred Cowper, I suppose the Freudian answer is that I never knew my own father and spent my childhood in search of substitutes, such as Jacques Cousteau. Cousteau was the perfect absentee dad, because I could enjoy his oceanographic adventures on TV. He was also a retired officer in the French navy, so there you go.
Eventually, you have Cowper and Lulu persuading a somewhat reluctant officer to take them along with some teen boys who helped assemble and rejuvenate subs on a sub to Thule, Greenland.
The details you use to describe the sub and the living conditions on one made me think that you perhaps have had experience, yourself, serving on one, which I remarked upon in my review. Have you served on a sub, or have you just done a lot of research on them, or both?
I’ve never served on a nuclear submarine, but I’ve helped build them as a former employee of Electric Boat. That’s no substitute for riding in one, so I’ve also done a lot of research, which is fun for me because I’ve been interested in submarines and sea technology since I was a kid–probably thanks to Jacques Cousteau and Jules Verne, as well as the submarine ride at Disneyland.
I was impressed by how you thought up a potential scientific and medical cause for people becoming Xombies, and for why their skins turned blue. Also, I liked the twist of having an officer on the submarine, Sandoval, actually being incredibly wealthy, and behind the whole scheme of the world’s most wealthy citizens’ desire to become Xombies in order to extend their lives indefinitely.
Do you have a medical background? Also, could you please go into the appeal in somewhat greater detail of why becoming a Xombie might be of great interest to the world’s wealthiest/most powerful people?
No medical background, but I studied biology as a student at St. John’s, and I read widely. I have a layman’s interest in biomedical ethics and biotechnology, and relatives who are pharmaceutical researchers to check my facts. I just like science. Once I got it into my head that I wanted to write a zombie story, I became obsessed with solving the zombie problem without resorting to magic, looking for a halfway-plausible scientific explanation. Maenad Cytosis—Agent X—fit the bill perfectly. It gave me a very different type of zombie, a creature I could call my own rather than a Romero knock-off. I’ve been a bit astounded by how freely people rip off George Romero. As to why the rich would want to be immortal, just look at history: the pyramids of Egypt and Mesoamerica, the castles and cathedrals of Europe, the temples of Asia—all crazy monuments to the quest for eternal life. It’s not that rich folk are any more evil than the rest of us, it’s that their influence is so much greater. They’re also capable of great good. But thank God they can’t buy eternal life…yet. Right now, money is their only immortality, and look what they’ll do for it: corrupt their own government and wreck the economy. Everybody still worshipped the super-rich when I wrote Xombies, and some people took offense at my portrayal of them as creeps, but the country’s had a slight mental adjustment since then.
One of my favorite musical groups ever is the Beatles. I really liked your somewhat minor but pretty cool characters, the Blackpudlians, members of a Beatles tribute band. I was curious if you, also, are a Beatles fan?
I love the Beatles too, but their music has been so exploited at this point that its social significance has been completely neutralized. Those anti-war and anti-authority messages are now just another tool of cynical corporate manipulation. The music’s so unthreatening that a cheesy cover band can play it for fogies on a cruise ship, and even a bunch of soulless tycoons can get weepy listening to it. Sandoval is using the music to scam them, a la Bernie Madoff.
The inhabitants of Thule live in inflatable pressurized reinforced buildings. All of them, except the wealthy and powerful people behind the scenes, have special headgear fastened to their heads, to track their whereabouts at any given moment.
Where did you come across the idea to have a whole community of people living in inflatable buildings, and also the concept of having people tracked in the method you describe?
The huge inflatable domes of the Moguls are interesting to me from a practical standpoint, but also as symbolism: We’ve all learned what it means when the bubble bursts—it gets cold real fast. The forehead implants are just a slightly more grotesque form of the technological intrusion we’re all being forced to accept as governments and corporations track our every move. Maybe we’re willing to sacrifice privacy if it means we’re safer from criminals…but what happens if the criminals are in charge of the government? The totalitarian surveillance state of 1984 may be closer than we think.
There’s likely no way that Fred Cowper will be a character in your sequel, unless it’s in flashbacks, but how about Lulu? I don’t recall reading about her in the first chapter to the sequel, Xombies: Apocalypticon, included at the conclusion of your novel, but she is a very memorable character, and I wondered if you’ll have her reappear later on in the sequel, or if you’re taking the series in an entirely new direction.
Don’t count out Cowper! And I can promise that Lulu plays a part in the sequel, though the story is centered more around the travails of the living, particularly a group of boys who have been sent ashore. It’s a much more complex and action-packed book.
I know that you’ve been asked about whether there are any plans to have Xombies: Apocalypse Blues made into a movie, and that you’ve said who you’d like to portray some of the characters in that eventuality in a past interview. Also, you mentioned that someone on a website did a puppet version of the book.
Are there any plans in the works currently for a movie version to be made of the novel? If so, it’s one that I, for one, would be looking forward to seeing!
Thanks—me too! The book is being shopped around Hollywood, so we’ll see what happens. The problem is that it would be an expensive project to produce: lots of characters, lots of sets and locations, lots of special-effects. Personally, I think it would make a great cable series, something along the lines of Battlestar Galactica: a nuclear submarine full of refugees exploring a post-apocalyptic world. Maybe even go back to my original title: Dead Sea.
When will your sequel be published? Also, are you working on another book in the series now, and how is the artwork you also do going? I liked checking out some of the cover artwork you’ve done for various people at your website, so I was wondering if you were busy on working on a painting now.
The sequel, Xombies: Apocalypticon, is coming out in February, and I’m working on the third book in the series right now, which should come out in Spring of 2011. My artwork comes in fits and starts, because I generally don’t get paid for it. I do it whenever I can find the time. I have some children’s books I’d eventually like to get published, and an unfinished graphic novel that’s on hold while I do this writing gig. But I hope to post new Xombies-related artwork on my website as the books are released—that’s www.waltergreatshell.com. Thanks!
Thanks again to Walter Greatshell for taking the time out of his busy shedule, especially during the Holiday Season, to answer some of the Burning Questions in the hearts of his many fans around the world! Be sure to check out Walter’s website for more on his art, books, and xombies!
