"I thought you might be able to help him." I tried to keep the tremble out of my voice. "Maybe reverse the aging process. You're an alien and all."

Zombies aren't charming, and they don't have personalities. They're walking corpses with no higher functions. They certainly aren't romantic. What they represent in zombie fiction is a constant and universal threat that is implacable and unbearable. That kind of threat puts all of the characters under pressure, and from a storytelling point of view, characters under pressure are the only interesting ones to write about.

Seeing Christopher Nolan's movie Inception got me reflecting on his previous summer blockbuster, The Dark Knight , a film I vehemently disliked when I first saw it in the theatre . . .

I wandered the asphodel stars