by Ken Stark
My dive into the undead pool began with questions. I spent a lot of years studying the sciences, so even though I’ve loved zombies since forever, I’ve had my problems with them too.
Why don’t zombies’ eyes dry out? With no peristalsis and no active salivary glands, how do they swallow their food? For that matter, how do they digest it? And if they can somehow manage that impossibility, how do dead cells and a nonfunctioning circulatory system deliver those chemical nutrients around the body?
The whole thing always seemed a little far-fetched, so I decided to create a scientifically-plausible zombie, certain to turn the genre on its ear and have the whole world talking about this new breed of zombies that might actually be possible. I wrote for the better part of a year and finally finished the book, and you know what? That book stunk. And why? Because those scientifically-plausible zombies were boring as hell. They didn’t growl, they didn’t bite and they didn’t eat people. All they did was fumble around like lost sock-puppets.
And that’s when I remembered what I’d already learned as a kid, reading comic books and sci-fi, and watching movies about space aliens and giant reptiles smashing Tokyo to dust. What I’d learned is that reality doesn’t matter. Not one tiny little bit. A writer can create whatever world he wants and if he does it right, he can make it entirely believable, as long as the laws of that particular universe are obeyed. Zombies don’t have to make any more sense than a man from Krypton being able to fly, or a radioactive spider bestowing superpowers rather than a cancerous boil. All that really matters is the story.
But here’s the cool thing about creating an impossible universe. According to the current thinking in Physics, we inhabit just one of an infinite number of universes born out of the Big Bang, and with an infinite number of universes, not only is everything you can imagine possible, it is all but guaranteed. This means that every single scenario laid out by every single writer across all of time exists somewhere in that theoretical multiverse.
Think about that. Every single world you can dream up as a writer already exists. Somewhere, an alien is bursting out a chest, right now. Somewhere else, a mad doctor is stitching bodies together and hoisting it to the rafters. And on at least a few of those worlds, dead people are currently reanimating and feeding on human flesh.
But wait, it gets better. If the number of universes truly is infinite, a certain percentage of those worlds will be home to someone who looks suspiciously like you, thinks like you, reacts like you, and bears your name and your memories. So in essence, you might have actually battled the Predator and won.You might have survived a lab accident to become a superhero. You might be struggling to survive a zombie apocalypse, even as we speak. You might even be going toe-to-toe with my boring as hell, scientifically-plausible zombies.
But if this last is true, I wouldn’t worry. It’s not that hard to evade a sock puppet.
Check out Stage 3: Alpha or begin with the first book now.
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Great blog.