Zombies and unicorns: Natural enemies?
It’s a match-up centuries in the making, one that can turn brother against brother, mother against son, and babysitter against baby. The question is, of course, which mythological creature is cooler: The zombie or the unicorn? Zombies have been experiencing a resurgence in popularity lately, a revivification, if you will, from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to Zombieland to the raised-from-the-dead career and mangled face of Mickey Rourke. (“He came back…different.”) Not to be outdone, those rainbow-pooping, ark-missing unicorns have always enjoyed a consistently strong popularity among the puffy-sticker-on-a-Lisa-Frank-folder set, as well as a brief period in the 80’s when movies like The Last Unicorn and Legend helped bring them back into the mainstream.
Well, the age-old question will finally be answered in a new book, Zombies vs. Unicorns, just announced by Simon & Schuster, which will be a collection of essays detailing the pros and cons of both the shambling undead and the horned horses. The idea for the book came from a series of blog posts between authors Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Ironside) and Justine Larbalestier (Liar, How to Ditch Your Fairy) that started in 2007 and grew from there. A number of big names from the young-adult circuit, including The Princess Diaries writer Meg Cabot, have contributed individual pieces on one of the two creatures, all of which are tied together by a running deliberative commentary from Black and Larbalestier as they argue for Team Unicorn and Team Zombie respectively. “What’s great about what the contributors are doing is that it isn’t anything typical,” says publisher Justin Chanda. “There’s definitely the standard eating-your-brains zombie, but there’s also some heartfelt zombies and funny zombies. And on the unicorn side there’s some really dark stuff going on, too.”
Anticipating a September launch for the book, Simon & Schuster has set up a website allowing people to vote and make it known where they stand in this debate. I just wonder why we can’t just compromise and agree that clearly a zombie unicorn would be coolest beast never to roam the earth. What do you guys think? Are you on Team Unicorn or Team Zombie?