The Zombie Autopsies

February 28, 2011
Presented as the journal kept by a neuroscientist investigating the medical causes of zombiism, Schlozman's clever debut shows that there's still life left in the overworked horror theme of the living dead. Dr. Stanley Blum is already infected (as is two-thirds of humankind) with ataxic neurodegenerative satiety deficiency syndrome (ANSD)—the virus that makes flesh-eating zombies lurch and lunch—when he decamps to Bassas da India, an island overseen by the U.N., to vivisect captive zombies in the hope of isolating the pathogen before he succumbs to it. Schlozman makes the science both accessible and plausible. In lieu of a meaty plot, he provides a grim vision of zombie apocalypse and a surprise explanation for the virus's origin. Printed as a handwritten diary and illustrated in gory glory with clinical drawings by Andrea Sparacio, this book is sure to be scarfed up by ravenous zombiephiles.

December 15, 2010

A neurodevelopmental biologist with the Centers for Disease Control gets down with the sickness when he's tasked to investigate the roots of a zombie apocalypse.

Lately in pop culture, coverage of zombies has shifted toward the burlesque with movies like Zombieland and novels like S.G. Browne's Breathers. But usually, authors chase the Max Brooks money, aping his innovative oral history World War Z. Here, Schlozman (Psychiatry/Harvard Univ.) marries his interest in science and the undead to a gruesome but convincing relic from a humanity-killing plague. The book purports to be a copy of the handwritten notes of Dr. Stanley Blum, a scientist tasked to study zombie biology. By this point, the world has been decimated by a new virus—Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome, or ANSD for short. Blum is sent, along with Sarah Johnson, a Scottish specialist in brain infections, and Jose Martinez, the chief forensic pathologist for New York City, to a creepy lab dubbed "the Crypt," on a small island in the Indian Ocean, in order to dissect the walking dead and record the findings. At first, Blue is chillingly clinical in his notes. "We need to study the hypothalamus, especially as it relates to the rest of the brain structures," he writes. "This is a primitive region of the brain that, among other things, tells us whether we've eaten enough. Zombies never seem to have eaten enough." But as the horror escalates, even Blum starts to grasp the situation. "We're dissecting crocodiles...crocodiles that used to be human. We're dissecting monsters." It's a slim volume, but Schlozman weaves a frightening scenario, and horror fans will admire illustrator Sparacio's grisly drawings of the disease's progress.

A superfluous but entertaining sideline to the current zombie craze that nicely complements Max Brooks' The Zombie Survival Guide. 

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 15, 2011
With the recent successes of films like Zombieland and the TV series The Walking Dead, zombies have never been trendier. In this fictional secret notebook describing a zombie research project, Harvard-trained physician and avowed horror fan Schlozman capitalizes on the undead craze with an inventively framed apocalyptic tale embellished with black humor. Embedded within the recovered journals of zombie expert Dr. Stanley Blum is the story of a viral research team quarantined on a remote island with specimens from a future worldwide plague dubbed Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Disorder, otherwise known as zombiism. Alas, the team inevitably succumbs to the illness themselves but not without, apparently, finding the cure. Hence, the World Health Organizations urgent release of the notebooks, complete with illustrations of zombie anatomy and graphic descriptions of toothsome mayhem. While medical professionals may reap a few laughs from Schlozmans meticulous faux scientific research, the target audience is comprised of horror fans and zombie enthusiasts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)