ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Weston Ochse is a former intelligence officer and special operations soldier who has engaged enemy combatants, terrorists, narco smugglers, and human traffickers. His personal war stories include performing humanitarian operations over Bangladesh, being deployed to Afghanistan, and a near miss being cannibalized in Papua New Guinea. His fiction and non-fiction has been praised by USA Today, The Atlantic, The New York Post, The Financial Times of London, and Publishers Weekly. The American Library Association labeled him one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. His work has also won the Bram Stoker Award, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and won multiple New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. A writer of more than 26 books in multiple genres, his military supernatural series SEAL Team 666 has been optioned to be a movie starring Dwayne Johnson. His military sci fi series, which starts with Grunt Life, has been praised for its PTSD-positive depiction of soldiers at peace and at war. Weston likes to be called a chaotic good paladin and challenges anyone to disagree. After all, no one can really stand a goody two-shoes lawful good character. They can be so annoying. It's so much more fun to be chaotic, even when you're striving to save the world. You can argue with him about this and other things online at Living Dangerously or on Facebook at Badasswriter. All content of this blog is copywrited by Weston Ochse.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Zombies in Science Fiction - Grunt Traitor Exclusive

I was asked to write a guest blog for  Rising Shadow Dot Net. I decided it was high time to write about zombies in science fiction. After all, most of our zombies are science fiction, right? So how do you make a different zombie if so many have been done before?

Well, I did it in Grunt Traitor.

Here's a sneak peek before you go to the main article.

It all started when I read an article online in early 2013 about zombie ants. Have you heard of them? Since then, National Geographic even had a picture of one in a recent issue. The actual name for the fungus that infects the ants is Ophiocordyceps Unilateralis. It’s an entomopathogen, or insect-pathogenising fungus and totally freaking scary. Once infected, the ant leaves its normal environment, goes to the forest floor where it’s warm and humid and better for the fungus to grow, attaches itself to a leaf, then stays there for 4 – 10 days sprouting fruiting bodies the whole time until it dies and spreads its spores to infect more ants. 

Now, what if the aliens were able to take this fungus, change its cocktail of behavior-controlling chemicals to target humans, then weaponize it? How cool and devastating would that be, especially if you are a soldier who is trying to save humanity, all the while alien-zombified humans are trying to stop you?
 
 Does it make me a bad man to say I delighted in doing this to my fellow humans?

HA!


Oh, and if you have the time, check out Grunt Life and Grunt Traitor. You won't be disappointed.
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2 comments :

  1. Paul Dale AndersonJuly 30, 2015 at 12:37 PM

    Okay. You are a bad man. You convinced me to spend my hard-earned cash on another zombie book. If you weren't such a good writer, it'd pass. Bad! Bad! Bad! But the new slant on zombies is just too good to ignore.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Weston OchseJuly 30, 2015 at 2:13 PM

    HA. Thanks Paul. I think you'll really dig the parts with the zombie POV.

    ReplyDelete

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