Review: Corrupted Classics by Corrupted Classics Team

Guest post by Kieran Colfer.

Zombie books these days are a lot like zombies themselves: at first you can just make out a single figure lurching towards you, then suddenly you're confronted by a mob. Most of the time you can easily bypass them and never have to think of them again, but occasionally, one will come along that ends up chewing on your brain....

This collection of short stories follows in the footsteps of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by taking some favourite classics and zombifying them. Here, we get a taste of what would happen if such well-known figures as Alice in Wonderland (or just "Ali" here), Robin Hood and Peter Pan were to find themselves confronted by the Walking Dead. Shakespeare gets a look-in here too, as do some ancient Greek heroes, with a modern version of the Swiss Family Robinson rounding out the collection.

I say "a taste" here, because unfortunately that's what these stories feel like: a taster menu of what a fuller book would/could contain. The stories are very short, and only three of the six have what could be thought of as a conclusion - the others feel like the first chapter in what should be a longer story. The whole book took only around half an hour to read, and while the stories were well written enough and interesting enough, there's a feeling of disappointment at the end that they couldn't have been "fleshed out" a bit more.

So to go back to my original metaphor, these stories are the zombies that manage to grab hold of your arm (in that you find yourself wondering what happened next after the story stopped), but to be a proper brain-muncher, Corrupted Classics would need to be expanded with maybe more stories, and a fuller treatment on the stories there are.

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Kieran Colfer is a member of the AH Weekly Update Review Team.

Preview: Corrupted Classics

In early 2012 HarperCollinsPublishers Publishing Director, Shona Martyn, and Head of Digital, Mark Higginson, gathered together a small but intrepid group of staff from various departments and issued a challenge: to go where no traditional, book-loving trade publisher had gone before — into the land of the digital unknown.

Staff were separated into teams, given a small budget and asked to produce an original digital publication or product to release into the market. Each team was asked to create, research, cost and produce their product. The winning team would be the one that generated the most revenue for the business. After months of surreptitious meetings, brainstorms, setbacks and small victories — the Corrupted Classics team is the first of these Project Flash Pub groups to release a product into the market.

Corrupted Classics is a collection of very short stories that will make you shudder in fear and wriggle with gruesome glee. See history’s best-loved book characters face a fate more cataclysmic than academic obscurity. These are the classics as you have never seen them before: alive and well in the realm of the undead. Head of Digital Mark Higginson said: ‘As digital reading platforms continue to gain traction with consumers, so too does the opportunity for experimentation and connecting readers with the written word. Corrupted Classics is a wonderful example of how digital publishing is able to quickly respond to market demands and reinvent traditional narratives for the modern reader.’

The Corrupted Classics Facebook page has had over 1200 likes, and is attracting zombie-loving e-book fiends by the minute. Corrupted Classics is ready to take the e-book market by storm, even if it has to raise the dead to do it. View the trailer here.

Three other Project Flash Pub projects are still in development. Shona Martyn said: ‘In the world of digital, we need our publishers, editors and other creative team members to think about creating book products in a totally original way. Rather than attending seminars, reading articles about the future of digital or simply transforming existing books into e-books, we thought it would be fun to get staff to become the authors and the creators themselves so they could truly explore the medium — and test the results by actually putting them on sale. I am thrilled by the outcome. This has been empowering, a learning experience, has strengthened inter-departmental bonding and, hey, now we are selling the first product!’

Tim Miller, the Marketing Executive at HarperCollins Australia, was kind enough to send Weekly Update a copy of Corrupted Classics which will be read and reviewed by Kieran Colfer, the first member of the new AH Weekly Update Review Team. Those interested in joining the team should check out this post. In the meantime, stay tuned for Kieran's review.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update, a volunteer editor for Alt Hist and a contributor to Just Below the Law. His fiction can be found at Echelon Press, Jake's Monthly and his own writing blog. When not writing he works as an attorney and enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana.