Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy

Don't turn around - there's probably one behind you right now. Vampires and zombies are just everywhere. Bram Stoker had no idea what he was starting when he published his vampire novel Dracula in 1897, incidentally digging up and re-animating the word ''undead. Whether it's Twilight, Let the Right One In, True Blood, or the comic book series Thirty Days of Night, vampire stories seem to experience an eternal cycle of death and resurrection, growing more potent, if not more rosy-cheeked, with each successive manifestation. While vampires are suave, sexy, sophisticated, stay up all night, generally have good hair, and often deliver witty one-liners, zombies are just the opposite. Zombies have poor complexions, missing body parts, few social graces, and are conversationally challenged. Yet public fascination with zombies keeps proliferating, along with the popularity of vampires. There are more zombie books, zombie movies, and zombie games than ever before. About the only things vampires and zombies share is that they want to bite us and we are at risk of becoming like them. However, they both confront us with moral and metaphysical issues of life and death. In Zombies, Vampires, and Philosophy, an expanded edition of The Undead and Philosophy, twenty-two of our leading thinkers teach us the lessons we can absorb from the various forms of Undeath. ''This is a book worth buying just for the final chapter, which gives us the sensational and hitherto suppressed correspondence of tienne Lavec and Paulie Dori Williams. At long last we have a vital perspective that has been sadly lacking; authentic vampire reactions to the way vampires are depicted in popular culture.