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When I was told that I would be meeting with New York Times Bestselling author Max Brooks at this year’s New York Comic Con, I imagined I’d be gazing into the sun. I imagined being frisked and cavity-searched by hulking men in black blazers with earpieces that connected to wrist microphones who wore dark shades and permanently humorless expressions. I imagined we’d be shepherded through the inevitable catacombs beneath the Jacob Javits Convention Center that allowed celebrities like Chris Evans and Tom Hiddleston to move through the space undetected and unperturbed. This was the man that wrote World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide, Devolution, The Harlem Hellfighters, and three books for younger readers set in the world of Minecraft. This is the son of the man who literally wrote The History of the World (Part 1), and the woman who taught the deaf, dumb, and blind to read. I was convinced I was meeting royalty.
Setting up the interview prior to the convention kicking off, I learned that this year there were three separate press areas: A lounge in the River Pavilion near the Empire stage, another lounge near the Professionals Area in the Crystal Palace, and a Media Room in the River Pavilion. Using my experience from the prior year, I imagined the larger place, that being the latter Media Room, was the area laid out with multiple tables where members of the press, staff, and guests escaped the throng of the floor to relax, recharge, and regroup. As such, I decided against both lounges and suggested the media room. I didn’t discover until the day of, however, that my assessment was incorrect, and I couldn’t contact Max directly to let him know that, so I met him at the busiest room in the convention on center on Thursday, the first day of the Con.
I suggested we try to use one of the media rooms across the floor, and he agreed, so we walked and talked a bit, without harassment or bombardment. We retired to an interview lounge that wasn’t being used and spoke for perhaps nine minutes when we were ushered out. We ended up back at the large area of multiple circular tables, resuming our conversation as though nothing had happened. It quickly became evident that no one in the room knew what Max Brooks looked like, but as our conversation spiraled outward from Minecraft to his larger career, ears perked and heads turned, interest piqued.
Everyone, at least in this space, knows Max Brooks.
The thing is, Max Brooks doesn’t seem to know he’s famous. As an author, he has the benefit of being known for his words rather than his face, so he often enjoys a healthy bit of anonymity. Once someone does discover his identity, however, they’re compelled to meet the man and share their appreciation. As we talked they arrived, two by two as if toward an Ark, and politely interrupted to say how much they loved his work. At these admissions, Max often had the same response: “Thank you so much. What’s your name?”
Max wants to meet you. He doesn’t accept your compliments as roses tossed at a dictator’s feet – he wants to know you, your name, and thank you personally. He’s not concerned with collecting accolades or followers or awards. He’d rather make connections. With people. He’s a genuinely approachable and affable man. Interestingly, he genuinely seeks out the most absurd eventualities so that we, as a species, might be prepared to combat them. That is his day job, actually, as a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the War Institute at West Point.
The Modern War Institute is a military think-tank, and it “is” not West Point, it is “at” West Point. Now to us that makes no difference but in the military world that’s a huge difference. Because if it were actually associated with West Point that would make it a Federal institution and I would be a Federal employee and then everything I say would reflect the government. So, no – it is a separate independent think-tank. It is primarily regular army personnel but I’ve been invited to be part of it and they are what the title says: they study war. They study how we hurt each other, every aspect of it. Nothing is off the table. We did one conference where there was one guy who showed up… and I’ll say I’m pretty civilian; I’m a pretty civilian guy. But I looked like General Patton next to this guy. Like, what is he doing here? He stood up and gave the most amazing lecture about GRINDR, about how a Chinese company owns GRINDR and even though it’s not their government directly, they have no privacy rules, so the reason it’s relevant that a Chinese corporation owns it is that their government can break in and look at who’s on it and gather what the Russians call “Kompromat.” So that way, say, when China is ramping up to invade Taiwan, and some Senator is about to make a speech on the floor of Congress, he gets an email saying “We know about you and Miguel. You’re not gonna make that speech.” So nothing is off the table when it comes to conflict. I tend to study things that could become violent but aren’t yet. For example, I did a whole article on Monsanto and the idea that Monsanto seeds are now intellectual property. The Supreme Court decided that. They said that if you’re a farmer and you plant a field of Monsanto seeded corn and the corn ripens you can’t take a little bit of those and replant them next year. Because that would be, legally, the same as copying a DVD. So for the first time since the birth of the agricultural revolution, farmers have to go to Monsanto and buy new seeds every year instead of banking a little bit. That’s never, ever happened. They own a majority now of our corn and our soybeans. So that’s phase one.
“That’s commodifying a renewable resource.”
Yeah, that’s an essential resource. That’s not sneakers, and that’s only phase one. Phase two, they were sold to Bayer, and Bayer is a foreign company. Even though we have a security treaty with Bayer, and Germany is a NATO ally, there is nothing in the bill of sale that says that Bayer can’t just sell Monsanto to China for double the profit. Which means that China would then have intellectual and legal control over our food supply, and they might be able to do a food blackmail the way the Arabs did an oil blackmail back in the 70s when the Arab countries attacked Israel and said “either support us or we’re going to cut off your oil” and they did. Now Monsanto, and whoever owns it, could do that with us. That’s set against the backdrop of the United States as the only major power in world history that has never been vulnerable to food blackmail. Everybody else, since the dawn of time, great powers have always had somebody with a knife at your throat saying “We can cut off your food supply.” Not us. Even in our Civil War we were growing enough surplus wheat to sell to Great Britain. That’s how food rich we’ve been… and that just changed. So that’s the kind of stuff I write about.
War seems to preoccupy Max Brooks’ thoughts, which is a strange detour for a professional who started his career as a writer at Saturday Night Live. Now, war creeps into seemingly everything Max writes, whether it’s historically accurate or the conjecture of a zombie apocalypse or a Sasquatch attack or even the fiction of terrorist organization COBRA from G.I. Joe. So how did Max Brooks pivot from war to children’s books… then back to war? We discussed that, along with playing in the sandbox of established IP, being the old guy in the room, and the infamous film “adaptation” of his breakout 2006 book that resembled his work in name, only.