Recent Stories with tag Steven Schlozman

When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth; or the Seattle Center grounds, at least.

The first ZomBcon took place in the Emerald City over Halloween weekend, and for a good-sized crowd of horror fans, obsessives, and curiosity seekers it was manna from heaven.

ZomBcon shared the same basic make-up as your typical fan con--celebrity guests; panels of authors, actors, and directors; and merchandise booths stocked to the max with apropos tchotchkes. And Seattle's already played host to some well-attended horror conventions in the last couple of years, thanks to local organizers at Crypticon. But the singularity of focus--and the quality of guests--made this one pretty unique.

Undead flesheaters have hit honest-to-God pop-culture zeitgeist status over the last few years, what with the popularity of recent reimaginings of the zombie sub-genre on film (the not-quite-a-zombie-flick 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead), in video games (the Resident Evil series and Left 4 Dead), and in various print incarnations (Max Brooks' World War Z and the timely spoof Pride and Prejudice and Zombies).

It turns out zombie fans in general (and ZomBcon's organizers in particular) take their walking dead seriously. In addition to seminars with the architects of fictional zombie lore, ZomBcon's crew brought along several medical experts to disseminate potential zombie outbreaks and zombie physiology in hard-line scientific fashion. Yeah, on one level it's pretty silly to hear Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Steven Schlozman wax intellectual on the mechanics of the zombie brain, but on another level, it's pretty damned cool (check out Schlozman's thoughtful thesis on said topic if you don't believe me).... (more)