The n-Body Problem

By Tony Burgess

In the end, the zombie apocalypse was nothing more than a waste disposal problem. Burn them in giant ovens? Bad optics. Bury them in landfill sites? The first attempt created acres of twitching, roiling mud. The acceptable answer is to jettison the millions of immortal automatons into orbit. Soon earth’s near space is a mesh of bodies interfering with the sunlight and having an effect on our minds that we never saw coming. Aggressive hypochondria, rampant depressive disorders, irresistible suicidal thoughtresulting in teenage suicide cults, who want nothing more than to orbit the earth as living dead. Life on earth has slowly become not worth living. And death is no longer an escape.

Praise for The n-Body Problem

Horror can be a hard thing to recommend. What might be standard fare for one reader is far beyond the boundaries of another, and The n-Body Problem gleefully probes and pulls apart whatever comfort zones it encounters. With a fresh take on the undead genre and excellent executionhorror delivered with all the craft of literary fictionthe book is a finely wrought and exciting work, but one that has the capacity to disarm, disgust and profoundly distress. For a test of literary hard limits, and an exploration of the darker aspects of the human imagination, The n-Body Problem excels. Just as the post-cataclysmic world Burgess builds creates a crucible in which the human mind is melted down, the reading experience is similarly harrowing. It’s a novel that’s inflicted upon the reader. National Post

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781771481649

Reviews for The n-Body Problem

[tldegray-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

TRIGGER WARNINGS: RAPE, NECROPHILIA, GORE, MURDER, VIOLENCE, BODILY MUTILATION

Something happens and people stop dying. They cease, but their bodies (and body parts) continue to move. Once the public realizes the dead aren't attacking them, this stops being a zombie problem and starts being a waste disposal problem. Uncomfortable with earthly methods of disposing of the dead it was decided to dispose of them in space where they'd slowly re-enter the atmosphere and burn up.

For reasons I do not understand and that were never explained, the dead blocked the light and because of that people began to get sick. Really sick. Overnight tumors. Instant MS. Then there was the year of rapes and what the author refers to as "rape babies" and the gendered insults about their mothers.

Then it gets really gross and full of gore with killing and mutilation and necrophilia and yuck. This book was so not for me. I don't like the kind of edginess that comes from shock factor.

An interesting idea to make the post-zombie apocalypse into a waste disposal problem but the execution failed for me.

(Provided by publisher)