Who Has It Right

I'm sure you've all heard the saying, 'The victor writes the history', and I'm sure it's 100% true. No victor wants to be seen as a bully, so such actions will be expunged from the records in favor of much more glorious stories.

However, even after the histories have been written, after those who might remember the truth have been long dead, who is to say which side was right?

While books dealing with the undead or zombies (whatever you want to call them) is not my general cup of tea, I happen to be about half way through this book which takes place many years after The Great Zombie wars. The victors did indeed write the histories totally in their favor. The unusual part about this book is that the victors are what you and I would call the zombies.

In this book, other than being dead, they are just like the living. They work. They eat. They make decisions based upon their teachings and beliefs. They even fall in love, marry, and reproduce. In this world, like in our world, after a fashion, the police force hunts down the criminals; the criminals in this world are of course the living, called zombies, those who have 'turned', or found life.

So in the backdrop of this world the 'existance-span' of the average citizen has gone from around seventy years to little more than fifty years, if they were careful. The much abused Earth has started producing crystals that entice the most vulnerable of their children, the ten-year-olds, those who are most impressionable. If these children find these crystals and manage to actually touch them, they turn living, and if discovered, they must be put to death right away.

So herein lies my question. Who decided which side is right? In this case, is there a right side? The living can argue they are right because they are living. The dead can argue they are right because they exist. To each side, the words might be different but the meaning is the same. What are other differences? Imagination is a big one. For the dead, they've all been taught that it was imagination that brought about the living's loss of the war, therefore it has been outlawed. Even something as simple as writing a poem is cause for the death sentence.

So this is the question that goes through my mind as I read this book. And that is, I suppose, a good thing. Not many of us can incite such an all-encompassing question. Do you have races opposed to each other in your book? Which one is right - really, bare bones, right? Not which one do you plan to win. Not which one will be best. Which one is right; which one has the right to exist over and above the other? I haven't found that answer yet.

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