Night of the Living Trekkies (spoilers likely)

Cafe Society
1

Published by Quirk Fiction, 2010. Written by Anderson and Stall.

Picked this up at the library and found it enjoyable. Plot is about what you’d expect: an outbreak of a wildly infectious disease that causes people to reanimate as cannibals occurs at a Star Trek convention. Seeing how both zombies and Star Trek are popular with Dopers, I thought I’d post a mini-review.

It’s a quick read, weighing in at 253 pages. It has a cute gimmick for the chapter names, like chapter 2 is “The Balance of Terror” and 4 is “The Cage”, and so on. The main character is suitably pulpy, a former army squad commander who burned out in Afghanistan. His name, of course, him being the leader, is Jim.

The whole book is like that. I got a little sick of what I felt was the authors checking things off a list (“Have we used Takei being gay yet? Can we work that into this paragraph?”) but it picked up when the poop finally struck the fan. Possibly that’s because I’m not really a Trek fan. I also thought it could’ve easily been more satirical.

One thing I really liked was how the extremely appropriate, sci-fi explanation for the outbreak. I admired how quickly the main character put two and two together and came up with zombies.

I’m sure there’s plenty of Dopers who have read it, and Google shows it’s been mentioned in “Whatcha Reading”, but given the subject manner I’m hoping it can support its own thread.

2

I never read it because I thought it could never live up to the trailer.

3

The book has a better cast. Doesn’t have the Borg guy, though.

4

Surprisingly, it’s under consideration for the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature. However, this may be more to do with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies being unfairly overlooked a couple years ago than the book’s own merits. I understand it’s not really fancied to make the short-list of twenty-odd candidates in April.

5

OMG that’s so awesome. Have you read it?

6

Sorry, Alka Seltzer bad…

7

Kindled it awhile back. Enjoyable from what I remember of it.

8

I enjoyed it for what it was, made laugh several times. My favorite character was the lead female; whose name I cannot remember. For those who haven’t read the book, she is the token Star Wars inspired character.