It was only a 20-second fill before the top of the hour during NPR’s Morning Edition today, but I laughed so hard I nearly plowed into the bus that had suddenly stopped in front of me.

Here was what host Ari Shapiro said: “Author Jane Austen might be rolling over in her grave. A book called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies promises ‘all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action.’ And there’s the film: Pride and Predator. The New York Times says it will ‘Juxtapose brooding aristocrats with a brutal alien that lands in 1800s-era Britain, attacking residents and leaving them with neither sense nor sensibility.’

A quick search later in the morning revealed that, yes, there is a whole industry that marries literary classics with aliens or the undead.

Mashups of seemingly disparate concepts are nothing new, just look at what Harry Turtledove has done with historical fiction and his classic “Guns of the South.”

And now, they are part of the backbone of most user-generated content on the internet. I wonder, though, is the world is really ready to see what happens when Lizzie Bennett meets the living dead?

— Jonathan

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