Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Zombies of the Gene Pool
    Unavailable
    Zombies of the Gene Pool
    Unavailable
    Zombies of the Gene Pool
    Audiobook8 hours

    Zombies of the Gene Pool

    Written by Sharyn McCrumb

    Narrated by Ruth Ann Phimister

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    New York Times best-selling author Sharyn McCrumb spices her intriguing mysteries with an insider’s eye for detail about the fringes of popular culture. In this companion to Bimbos of the Death Sun, she once again turns her attention to the strange sub-culture of science fiction fandom. Back in the 1950s, eight young men bury a time capsule with their science fiction stories, dreaming of literary immortality. When the surviving members of that group get together for a well-publicized excavation nearly four decades later, their reunion is thrown into chaos by a surprise guest--a reportedly dead writer who threatens to expose the group’s dark secrets. And when murder gets added to the agenda, it may become impossible to separate science fact from science fiction. Zombies of the Gene Pool highlights McCrumb’s wry wit and complete mastery of the puzzling mystery. Narrator Ruth Ann Phimister captures all the drama and humor of this delightful trip inside the colorful world of science fiction fans.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books Audio
    Release dateJan 1, 2001
    ISBN9781449802578
    Unavailable
    Zombies of the Gene Pool
    Author

    Sharyn McCrumb

    Sharyn McCrumb is the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Ballad novels. She has received numerous honors for her work, including the Mary Frances Hobson Prize for Southern Literature, the AWA Book of the Year, and Notable Books in both The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. She was also named a Virginia Woman of History for Achievement in Literature. She lives and writes in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, fewer than one hundred miles from where her family settled in 1790.

    More audiobooks from Sharyn Mc Crumb

    Related to Zombies of the Gene Pool

    Related audiobooks

    Christian Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      What To Read This Autumn: 2023’s Biggest New Books

      Aug 26, 2023

      Historical delightsZadie Smith’s The Fraud (Hamish Hamilton) kicks off a strong season for historical fiction. Also in September, AK Blakemore follows her acclaimed The Manningtree Witches with a darkly exuberant novel about one man’s insatiable hung

      10 min read

    • Article

      10 Best Books Of April: The Monitor's Picks

      Apr 9, 2018

      From Greek mythology to Southern cuisine to a final outing for a beloved detective, here are the 10 April books that most impressed the Monitor's book critics.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Last-minute Gifts: The 10 Best Books Of December 2020

      Dec 17, 2020

      Just in time for the holidays, it’s the Monitor’s selections for the top books of December 2020 all wrapped up and tied with a bow.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Fiction

      Dec 15, 2023

      Fiction
      4 min read

    • Article

      Best Fiction Of 2021

      Dec 4, 2021

      The most anticipated, discussed and accessorised novel of the year was Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (Faber), launched on a tide of tote bags and bucket hats. It’s a book about the accommodations of adulthood, which plays with interio

      4 min read

    • Article

      101* BEST BOOKS of 2020

      Nov 22, 2020

      101* BEST BOOKS of 2020
      13 min read

    • Article

      Creature Comforts

      Aug 27, 2021

      Creature Comforts
      5 min read

    • Article

      On The Bookshelf

      Feb 25, 2022

      by Tim Glister Published by Point Blank Price £14.99 Pages 304 ISBN 9780861541669 This intelligent, involving and gripping espionage thriller takes the reader into the Sixties, when the Cold War was at its height and spy-masters were getting ever mor

      5 min read

    • Article

      Invasion Of The Body Snatchers

      Jan 8, 2019

      Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
      2 min read

    • Article

      INTERNATIONAL BOOKS / The Best Of The Month

      Jul 14, 2019

      This is not a tale for the squeamish. Revelations about a disturbing, stomach-turning, father-daughter relationship are preceded by a gory plane crash and followed by bloody dagger fights, an especially chilling near-drowning and a wonderfully weird

      5 min read

    • Article

      Graphic Novels

      Dec 15, 2023

      Graphic Novels
      2 min read

    • Article

      3 Intriguing New Science Fiction Titles

      Feb 15, 2018

      A new year brings new voices in all the genres. But in science fiction and fantasy, much of the writing is not only new but also exploratory, pushing the boundaries set by earlier writers, breaking new imaginative ground.  And since this is science f

      2 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reads

      Dec 29, 2021

      Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney In what is arguably the most anticipated novel of the year, Sally Rooney grapples with friendship, work, sex and the cost of being a famous writer through the lens of four flawed millennial characters.  

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Novels Have It: September Sparkles With Literary Gems

      Sep 15, 2021

      September marks the return of the literary novel, with sublime fiction from authors such as Colson Whitehead and Anthony Doerr.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Books Of The Month

      Jan 7, 2022

      A round-up of the best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror by Neal Stephenson Stephenson opens about 10 years in the future, on a day when the air in Houston is too hot to support planes. This means the private jet flown by the queen of the Ne

      2 min read

    • Article

      Also On The Bookshelf

      Jan 23, 2020

      A gifted orator and statesman who escaped slavery to become a national leader of the US abolitionist movement, Frederick Douglass became famous in the 19th century as a result of his speeches and writing. This Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, newly

      2 min read

    • Article

      Fiction

      Dec 16, 2022

      Fiction
      3 min read

    • Article

      Books Of The Month

      May 20, 2022

      By Alastair Reynolds Reynolds is best known as an author of hard science-based space operas, yet his latest novel begins on board a ship sailing up the coastline of Norway in the early 19th century. The mystery deepens as the same group of people, on

      2 min read

    • Article

      Your Telly Pick Of The Week

      May 13, 2021

      Your Telly Pick Of The Week
      2 min read

    • Article

      Science Fiction And Fantasy

      Feb 25, 2021

      Will Maclean William Heinemann 2020 Hb, 406pp, £14.99, ISBN 9781785152375 We all know that Fortean Times is inspirational – and it’s inspired three very different novels. First, directly influenced by Bob Fischer’s article “The Haunted Generation” (F

      4 min read

    • Article

      Better Books

      Nov 10, 2021

      Chris Hadfield (Hachette, $32.99) 1973: a final, top-secret mission to the Moon. Three astronauts in a tiny module, a quarter of a million miles from home. As Russian and American crews sprint for a secret bounty hidden away on the lunar surface, old

      2 min read

    • Article

      March Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

      Feb 28, 2023

      We wouldn’t dream of abandoning our vast biannual Most Anticipated Book Previews, but we thought a monthly reminder would be helpful (and give us a chance to note titles we missed the first time around). Here’s what we’re looking out for in March: Ma

      8 min read

    • Article

      New Year, New Books

      Jan 11, 2021

      New Year, New Books
      5 min read

    • Article

      Primordial

      Jan 26, 2022

      RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher Image Comics Writer Jeff Lemire Artist Andrea Sorrentino ISSUES 1-4 Bringing to mind Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s We3, but in space, this six-parter is one of Jeff Lemire’s two concurrent collaborations with Andrea S

      1 min read

    • Article

      Catch Up On The Best Of 2020

      Nov 13, 2020

      Catch Up On The Best Of 2020
      5 min read

    Reviews for Zombies of the Gene Pool

    3.5/5

    160 ratings8 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 1/5
      Bored me to TEARS.
    • 3/5
      A group of science fiction fans who lived and wrote together for a brief period in the 1950s reunites to dig up a time capsule that's been buried underwater for decades. Since some of them have since become big name writers, the unpublished manuscripts inside the capsule are expected to be worth a lot of money. But then someone unexpected shows up at the reunion, and a murder soon follows.Years ago I read McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun, a light-hearted murder mystery set at a science fiction convention, and was less than thrilled with it, as I found her treatment of fans a bit mean-spirited. Others seemed to find it funny rather than offensive, though, leading me to think that perhaps I was being a bit oversensitive. So when a free copy of her follow-up novel fell into my lap, I figured I'd give her another chance.Well, this one did bug me somewhat less on that score. She definitely shows something of a dark side to fandom, but it's not an entirely unbalanced one, and if the characters are all a bit loser-ish, they are at least loser-ish in varied and reasonably realistic ways. And her depiction of 1950s SF fandom seems really pretty clueful. (Or at least, it does to me; admittedly, that was a fair bit before my time.) Unfortunately, though, the story itself was dull. It takes half the book for anything at all to happen, and the murder doesn't even take place until three quarters of the way through. It's not terribly compelling once it does, either, and it's wrapped up ridiculously quickly with some ridiculously implausible revelations. I was at least surprised by who dunnit, but that's about all I can say for the plot.The title really doesn't do the book any favors, either, as it seems to promise a deliberately cheesy comic romp when, despite a few moments of variably successful humor, it's really not any of those things.
    • 2/5
      I read this after Bimbos of the Death Sun; unfortunately, this shows many of the flaws of Bimbos and few of the good traits. The mystery aspect of the story is if anything weaker; from the discovery of the murder to the end of the book is 26 pages, and they're 26 pages from a novelist, not a short story writer. There's an aspect of forensics that's a bit absurd; if the autopsy would have revealed what it did (and that's a big "if" provided they weren't looking for it), they certainly wouldn't have found it in twelve hours. Judging this story by other elements, the setting is less dynamic and interesting than the science fiction convention, and instead the honest if obnoxious fans of Bimbos, you get a lot of vitriol tossed at science fiction, and a cast full of nasty and sometimes self-loathing characters.I was looking for a nice fun read combined with a decent mystery, and I didn't find either here. If the darker characters are more to your taste, and you aren't worried about the mystery, then you may enjoy it more.
    • 4/5
      After Bimbos of the Death Sun became a hit among science fiction fans, Sharyn McCrumb had the opportunity to attend SF conventions and pick up lore from the fannish past. Zombies of the Gene Pool weaves diverse threads together. Aficionados will recognize bits of the Futurians, LASFS, the Slan Shack, Francis Towner Laney, Claude Degler et al. The characters are more interesting, and more sympathetically treated, than in Bimbos, and the murder motive is clever. The murderer's modus operandi is unfeasible, but that hardly makes this mystery unique.
    • 4/5
      This mystery novel is not about the mystery, really.

      Sure, there's a murder. Off-screen. The edition I read is 274 pages long; the body is found on page 181 and it's only know to be a murder on page 242. But don't get me wrong, there IS a mystery, but it's really all about the protagonist(s) exploring and exposing the deep past of fantasy/sci fi fandom and exposing the truths.

      Yep, this is another great book, if you might enjoy reading about a one-time science fiction writer who would rather be an engineering prof, and the love of his life, the English prof who grew up a fangirl, but has (mostly) matured.

      The first book in this series took place at a science fiction convention, as they existed in the 80s/early90s. And it also focused more around the environment and characters you'd get in such a setting. This book has a group of Industry pros/pro-fans from the 50s who get together to open a time capsule they'd buried way back when. Then a supposedly-dead member of their group turns up and hints at his intent to dig up long-buried secrets, alongside the capsule.

      A fun read. McCrumb has, both times, transported me to a situation I'll never be able to participate in. Fun, relaxing... a get-away read, for me.
    • 4/5
      Just as enjoyable as Bimbos of the Death Sun. McCrumb has a great sense of humor, and the interweaving of fandom, nostalgia, sci-fi is pretty impressive. It never really took off for me, but I think I wasn't paying attention properly to each individual character. If anything, I wanted the book to be longer which is always a good sign!
    • 4/5
      TadAD recommended this to me because I enjoyed Bimbos of the Death Sun earlier this month and this is the sequel. Once again we get some glimpses of science fiction fandom but this time the focus is more on the authors than the fans. Years ago a group of young sci-fi fans with aspirations to become famous authors lived together on a small farm in Tennessee. They decided to bury a time capsule commemorating their time together and including a short story from each author. Unfortunately a few years after they had gone their separate ways the TVA built a dam (I remember the controversy about that project!) and the entire area became covered by the huge lake that resulted. The story takes place many years later when the lake was drained to do repairs on the dam and the opportunity to dig up the capsule arises. Since some of the authors became famous the event becomes a national media story. I actually enjoyed this one more that the first. The characters were very interesting and the “quasi-profound discussions” of early science fiction I were entertaining. The descriptions of the area that had been flooded by the lake were interesting and felt like they had been thoroughly researched. That was one of my favorite aspects. Another enjoyable feature was all the literary phrases from famous works that are used in conversation—and McCrumb didn’t require me to try to dredge up from my murky memory where the quotes came from—that was also included in the conversations. All in all, this was a very entertaining way to spend a free afternoon. Oh, yes, there is also a mystery and this one was not as obvious as the one in Bimbos. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      A group of 1950’s era science fiction writers and fans gather for a reunion. The farm they lived on years ago was covered over by a lake and the lake is being drained. They have buried a time capsule there containing short stories that could make them a fortune. A mysterious man from their past shows up to ruin the festivities and is promptly murdered. Who is the murderer? Which one has a secret that they are willing to kill to protect? This book is not as good as its predecessor. The first book “Bimbos of The Death Sun” is a hilarious look at fans and science fiction conventions. This book is less humorous and more of a look at the other side of fandom, the lives of the authors that fans idolize