Zombie Spaceship Wasteland Review

                                                               By: Giovanni Ferrari

The title of my book is Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, a title which referrs to the autor, Patton Oswalt´s, views on people. Although these views aren´t of vital importance, they are still one of the most memorable and symbolic parts of the book.

This memoir is about the life and career of comedian Patton Oswalt, born in 1969. He started his career between the 1980´s or 90´s. He was heavily influenced by the flood of information from the boom of the television industry, and all the new information and programs.

It was organized in a first person perspective, as an adult looking back at past events. Patton arranges it in the following manner: Long story segments, which reveal and explain important events in his life. There are then short stories, which show a bit less of his character, in small bits. There are a few joke segments in the book, him being a comedian.

The memoirist realized a good deal of things in what he wrote. He realized he did not want to stay in one place his whole life, and wanted to travel the world. He realized a good deal of things when he was working in a movie theatre, which is what the first long segment entails.

At some point he came up with his particular opinion on people, Zombie Spaceship Wasteland. People are classified into these three groups. Reading the book is required for full understanding. Included is only half of Patton´s explanation.

Zombies:   ´´You see them everywhere- rolling their eyes outside a rock club at how lame the band was, shaking their heads over a newspaper in a coffee shop, resentful under office lighting.´´

Spaceships:  ´´Spaceships leave. A chunk of my peers became spaceships, maneuvering through their own lives. Deflector shields up. ´´Laser Cannons`` take the place of conversation, ´´deflector shields`` are emotional nuance, and ´´warp drive`` is story exposition.``

Wastelands:  ´´Wastelands destroy. They´re confused but fascinated by the world.´´ ´´Wasteland. Post-nuke, post-apocalyptic, or simply a million years into the future- that´s the perfect environment for the Wastelands imagination to gallop through. A wasteland is inhabited by people or, for variety, mutants.´´ ´´Variations of the human species grown amok-isn´t that how some teenage outcasts already feel?``

Patton identifies himself and most other comedians as Wastelands later on in the chapter.

I thought the book was interesting, but what most drew me in, was the unconventionality. It wasn´t clearly set up from Ch.1 to the end. Patton was descriptive, was able to make uncommon situations easy to relate to, and was humorous as well.

´´As I read it, I kept drifting out of the book, out of the booth, and coasting on the green crest of the song, to the momentary idea that any point on Earth was mine for the visiting, that I´d lucked out in the reality I was in. And I also got the feeling that I was souring and damaging that luck by enjoying contentment of pulling the shades on the sun, and shutting out my fellow employees and the world, and folding myself up in the construct of a brilliant novel like The Man in The High Castle, that all the reading I´d been doing up to this point hadn´t enhanced my life, but rather had replaced and delayed it.´´

I liked this particular paragraph, above similar ones like it, because it really makes any person think, even the most close-minded one, about their own beliefs, and if they were utilizing their life to its fullest potential.