by Rebekah Aura Nemethy

Created on: October 21, 2009

Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead is a genre-bending book. There is a bit of mystery, science fiction, and some adventure to be had.

Laura Byrd reluctantly travels to Antarctica on a research expedition for her employer. After all methods of communication to the outside world fail, two of her teammates take off for help and supplies and she is left alone for weeks until she's forced to set out on her own. Brockmeier conjures up Laura's solitary journey through her memories as well as the path of her thoughts as she plays a word association game with herself during her struggle for survival.

A parallel storyline follows the lives of the dead, they are wandering through a city that is linked solely to the memories of the living. It's a small town with a one-man newspaper and a general store. The citizens eat, play, and work, yet their hearts have ceased to beat. Each character has a story about how they passed between lives; dreamlike passings. The people are aware of their past lives and of the next death that awaits them. When the last living person who remembers them dies, they disappear from the city.

Suddenly, the population bursts in the city and Luka, the reporter, interviews countless newcomers that vanish only hours after they've arrived. It becomes apparent that a bioengineered virus, nicknamed 'the blinks,' has spread across the living population. Meanwhile, the city of the dead is harboring a small population that exists only because Laura has crossed paths with each person in it. These people watch as pieces of the city begin to vanish as quickly as the masses of new arrivals.

Laura becomes a god, allegorically, as the mere thousands of people left in the city share a universal truth: they have all known Laura and their lives are in her unknowing hands as she is the sole-survivor of a world disaster. She begins to think of them: family, friends, professors, classmates, co-workers, general store clerks, anyone she can remember.

Brockmeier blends these two plotlines seamlessly. He writes about one of the most popular science fiction and horror themes, those of human extinction, from a completely fresh point of view. We've seen enough war movies and zombie movies to let our imaginations fill in the disaster that is occurring simultaneously on Earth. The author successfully avoids the clichs that are normally apparent in world disaster stories. There are no descriptions of death in the normal fashion; no dead bodies or scenes of stagnant cities with cars frozen in traffic and snow filled television screens. Yet the story revolves around that age-old fear by addressing it with the sentimental characteristic of one human under a microscope.

A special on the History channel, Life After People, comes to mind. The documentary suggests that, inevitably, every hint of human life will be reduced to buried landscapes in only hundreds of years. Only plastic will remain for millions of years, our garbage will be discovered if anyone ever uncovers our existence. No records, whether paper or digital, will survive the trial of time. Our ultimate fate will come when history is lost, when memory can no longer be preserved.

People of the past are lost every day, insignificant people disappear faster: bums, taxi drivers, real estate agents, and businessmen. Celebrities live longer, as do artists, writers, and politicians that have managed to influence enough people. Memory is existence, when someone is remembered they are immortal.

Brockmeier made my mind spin with idea that the frailty of thought can be so powerful.

Learn more about this author, Rebekah Aura Nemethy.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.