Paul is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion
Ever hear an idea that sounds so moronic on the surface that you feel like you’ve no choice but to check it out? That is the response when one hears the book title Paul is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion, which postulates that the Beatles were… .well, zombies.
“I said at the beginning that this was not about the music, it’s about the men” offers author Andrew Goldsher, whose effort, which has just been optioned for a feature film, will hit book stores this June.
His inspiration for Paul is Undead came from the success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which he thought was a wonderful concept that caused him to wonder why he hadn’t come up with it first. Deciding to jump on the bandwagon and to have a little fun with the idea, he turned to one of the things he knows best: the Beatles.
“I don’t know anything about Jane Austin,” he admits, “but the Beatles offer something contemporary with a great mythology about it. The story of the Beatles has an arc; there are all of these weird twists and turns in it. So much so that it’s almost easy to add a supernatural element to it.
“For instance,” Goldsher continues, “they were off in Germany for a time, which would have been the perfect opportunity for them to kill all sorts of fans and worshippers. Paul and John fought all the time, so I turned that into big gruesome battles with dismemberments. And then there was that whole Stones vs. Beatles things, which proved to be a very obvious way to get Mick Jagger into this. So Mick Jagger in the book is a zombie hunter who hates zombies for reasons unknown, although it’s suspected that his mother was killed by them.”
Paul is Undead starts with a history of Liverpool zombies and how the first of their kind turned John into a zombie while he was still an infant. “Because of that,” says the author, “he’s that much stronger and could have all the talent he proved to have. He would be able to turn Paul, George and Ringo into zombies as well. These zombies have different powers from your typical zombies, and being English, they’re very polite. They have the ability to detach and reattach their limbs; they have the ability to hypnotize and they have a very clever way of zombifying other people.”
The novel is presented as an oral history, so Goldsher himself is a character that is pursuing the Beatles and trying to convince John to talk to him. Upwards of 50 well-known people from Beatles history, including engineer Geoff Emerick and producer George Martin, are characters in the book.
“The story goes until they break up,” he closes. “It starts when Lennon is born in 1940 and the story ends in 1970, but then there’s an epilogue where the Beatles get back together, which you’ll have to read to get the specifics of that. I can tell you that the reason they did get back together was that all of a sudden zombies are in fashion; they’re in vogue now. The zombie Beatles believe they are a viable entity and they’ve got their own motivations for getting back together.”
Look for Paul is Undead this June. You can order a copy below.
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EdGross
5/9/2010
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