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Donald decides to take the job. When he returns to his hotel, he finds a zombie sex worker in his room, and confronts
Courtney. She also has a zombie, which beats him and throws him out. The story ends with Donald thinking about the millions of working class people who will now be unable to get jobs,
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him for a company called
Koestler Biological. She reveals that Koestler has found a cheap way to produce zombies, turning them from luxury products to cheap and reliable replacements for blue-collar laborers. To convince Donald to join, she takes him to a bare-knuckle fight in which a zombie defeats
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in this scene. The paper compares the fight with the scene where Donald confronts
Courtney: her zombie is unable to consent, and when he beats Donald the chief power relations are corporate rather than personal. In their previous sexual relationship, Donald manipulated Courtney; now she is his boss
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The themes of sports, sex, and physicality have also been examined. Derek Thiess notes that while athletes are typically seen as domineeringly masculine, their consent is frequently elided, especially in the context of
American college sports. In the boxing scene, the zombie fighter’s calm is
160:'s "The Subliminal Man". It has also been described as a critique of late twentieth century capitalism and its uncaring, soulless nature, for which the dead are metaphors. Nonetheless, there may be hope for humanity. The same paper uses the story to demonstrate
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she is able to control both him and her zombie. Their situations have shifted, but the fundamental power relations are still present. Thiess states that the story extends the discourses about sexual violence, allowing readers to re-examine these discourses.
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superficially disorienting but fits the paradigm of the hegemonised athlete. On the other hand, the human fighter refuses either to surrender or to consent, instead acquiescing to the greater power. Thiess also notes a reference to the
Haitian
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described the dead as the social underclass. In interviews, Swanwick has described it as a story about capitalism, relating it to other science fiction stories inspired by
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Hamdan, Shahizah Ismail; Omar, Noritah (2010). "Sense and
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Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best
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The Year's Best
Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection
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and wondering it they will rise up against corporations.
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222:Locus Award
68:Starlight 1
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548:Jack Faust
456:"The Dead"
438:9 February
413:9 February
361:(2): 1–18.
287:9 February
259:9 February
232:References
156:, such as
22:"The Dead"
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656:Slow Life
191:, and in
177:Reception
154:Karl Marx
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616:" (1996)
614:The Dead
609:" (1985)
607:Dogfight
333:Big Echo
127:headhunt
96:The Dead
48:Genre(s)
38:Language
461:Tor.com
98:" is a
42:English
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508:Novels
170:zombie
138:Themes
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88:1996
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