Recommend your favorite pandemic fiction

[vanmyers86]

A little surprised that no one has already started a thread for epidemic/pandemic fiction recommendations, so I'll do it. What are your favorite stories, either here or in book form? (Please provide a link to Literotica stories.)

The Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis. It takes time to get rolling, but it is fantastic. Plot: a 21st century time traveler accidentally ends up in middle of the Black Death in 1300s England.
Moreta, by Anne McCaffrey. Plot: Sci-fi/fantasy about a new strain of flu devastating an agrarian planet unprepared for it. Part of her Dragonriders of Pern series.
The Stand, by Stephen King. Plot: Bioengineered virus with 90+ percent mortality rate gets loose in 20th century America, unleashing forces of good and evil.

All three of these made me cry the first time I read them.

 

[eroticstoryspinner]

Both by John Ringo, first the Last Centurion, which is almost this exact situation.

The Black Tide Rising series, 4 mainline books, 2 anthologies, and the River of Night cycle by John and Mike Massa. In the series you catch the flu you turn into a zombie. A scientifically plausible zombie that you can suspend disbelief to read about.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I wrote one, had it posted here, but deleted it.

I liked it but I think I was in the minority

 

[TarnishedPenny]

The Last Canadian by William Heine. 1970s, Canada-centric. Not a bad read.

The Plague by Albert Camus, of course.

 

[yukonnights]

Wouldn't it make more sense to read more positive themed stories in the middle of a pandemic

The one I'm currently writing is my typical 'filled with hope' kind of vibe. But I've been accused of being too sappy too.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Wouldn't it make more sense to read more positive themed stories in the middle of a pandemic

The one I'm currently writing is my typical 'filled with hope' kind of vibe. But I've been accused of being too sappy too.

"I Caught a Cold," by Cabin Fever.

I'm wondering what these fun times would have been like thirty or forty years ago with no internet to fuel the excitement. Just a slightly worse colds and flu season, I reckon - but I would like to see some comparative stats to get a frame of reference against the annual flu cycle. This thing seems to be entirely self-referential. I can't believe viruses jumping from one species to another is an unusual or unprecedented thing.

As an economy buster, it's huge. Still, think of the lowered carbon emissions, with all the passenger planes grounded and people not moving around. Perhaps it's Gaia, keeping the natural balance. I dunno. "Panic slowly" has always worked for me.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe. I've been reminded lately of how timeless this one is - you could so easily tell the same story in the 21st century, maybe at a Florida resort or a New Zealand bunker.

Angels in America, Tony Kushner: a gay couple in 1980s Manhattan, and those connected to them, dealing with HIV.

I hear good things about the Newsflesh series, beginning with Feed (Seanan McGuire, writing as Mira Grant). Haven't got to it yet, but I've never been disappointed by her work.

The Strain (Del Toro/Hogan): a vampire outbreak in New York, presented as a disease. I had mixed feelings about this - it didn't seem to be quite sure whether it wanted to be SF or supernatural horror, and it didn't grab me enough to read the sequels, but it was a decent way to while away a long night in the ER waiting room.

As discussed elsewhere, Boccaccio's Decameron is a classic, though the version I read didn't grab me.

 

[litfan10]

Masque of the Red Death absolutely.

I also highly recommend Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

A little surprised that no one has already started a thread for epidemic/pandemic fiction recommendations, so I'll do it. What are your favorite stories, either here or in book form? (Please provide a link to Literotica stories.)

I have two beloved stories that I always think of as pandemic stories. La Dame aux Camélias by Dumas, fils, and likewise, Verdi's opera La Traviata, based on the stage play of the novel. The story is a semi-autobiographical memoir of Dumas' affair with a famous courtesan who is dying of tuberculosis. Perfect timing: it's on tonight on the Met Opera HD Broadcasts if you're interested in watching it

The other is Anne of the Island. Anne Shirley returns home to Avonlea and discovers her school friend, Ruby, is dying of tuberculosis. While not the focal point of the story, it's an important and moving story arc.

Wouldn't it make more sense to read more positive themed stories in the middle of a pandemic

Can't we do both?

Contagious diseases — both in fiction and in real life — remind us that the social and cultural boundaries we use to structure society are fragile and porous, not stable and impermeable.

Although these works of literature cannot prophecize an imminent post-apocalyptic future, they can speak to our present.

So if reading a book about a pandemic appeals to you, go for it — but don’t use it as an instructional manual for an outbreak. Instead, that work of fiction can help you better understand and manage how the virus amplifies complex, diverse and multi-faceted fears about change in our communities and our world.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I can't believe viruses jumping from one species to another is an unusual or unprecedented thing.

It's not unusual and definitely not unprecedented, just dangerous. This is how we got HIV, measles, rabies, Spanish 'flu, Ebola, probably smallpox, and many other diseases, which is why it's a major worry for epidemiologists.

 

[SimonDoom]

The Stand, of course. I read that decades ago when it came out. I liked the pandemic part more than the part about Randall Flagg. Much of the book was entertaining but it violated my "too much magic" guideline -- i.e., the author should be careful not to imbue the book with too much magic to ensure the reader can suspend disbelief.

World War Z is about a worldwide zombie epidemic that's told like an oral history of a virus epidemic. It's very different from the movie. It's interesting.

A Distant Mirror is a history by Barbara Tuchman of the 14th Century, with extensive discussion of the Black Death. She's a great writer -- one of the most engaging writers of history I know. I recommend it.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Yeah, Tuchman did her usual superlative job. Amazing writer. Not quite ‘fiction’, of course.

 

[ChloeTzang]

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. Nonfiction and really really scary.

Origins and incidents of viral hemorrhagic diseases like Ebola and the Marburg viruses. The stuff of real nightmares. I’m in awe of the people that work on these things.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The Stand, of course. I read that decades ago when it came out. I liked the pandemic part more than the part about Randall Flagg. Much of the book was entertaining but it violated my "too much magic" guideline -- i.e., the author should be careful not to imbue the book with too much magic to ensure the reader can suspend disbelief..

Great scenes with the mad bastard crawling out of the desert with the nuce, though; that was my favourite part.

 

[ElectricBlue]

A Canticle for Leibowitz is pretty good.

A post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. Electrical schematics and blueprints are the holy relics.

 

[SimonDoom]

Yeah, Tuchman did her usual superlative job. Amazing writer. Not quite ‘fiction’, of course.

No, that's true. But the 14th Century was an example of truth being weirder than fiction.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. Nonfiction and really really scary.

Origins and incidents of viral hemorrhagic diseases like Ebola and the Marburg viruses. The stuff of real nightmares. I’m in awe of the people that work on these things.

From some of the expert commentary on THZ, I get the impression "semi-fiction" would be accurate - the diseases he's talking about are real, but Preston gets a bit sensationalistic in exaggerating symptoms. This is fairly typical of what I've seen from people who work in the area: https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-the-hot-zone-created-the-worst-myths-about-ebola-1649384576?IR=T

A Canticle for Leibowitz is pretty good.

Was there a pandemic in that one? I remember nukes, but not a pandemic.

 

[Polranny]

La Peste - Albert Camus

 

[Polranny]

La Peste - Albert Camus

 

[AlinaX]

Agree with all the comments above about The Stand. Loved it, read it twice, watched it...

 

[LexxRuthless]

The White Plague by Frank Herbert?

 

[Handley_Page]

A little surprised that no one has already started a thread for epidemic/pandemic fiction recommendations, so I'll do it. What are your favorite stories, either here or in book form? (Please provide a link to Literotica stories.)
Moreta, by Anne McCaffrey. Sci-fi/fantasy about a new strain of flu devastating an agrarian planet unprepared for it. Part of her Dragonriders of Pern series.

Her "the Crystal singer" and subsequent books is brilliant.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Was there a pandemic in that one? I remember nukes, but not a pandemic.

You're right, no pandemic. Post apocalyptic.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Not quite pandemic novels, but “The Day of the Triffids” and “The Death of Grass” by John Wyndham. Day of the Triffids had a plague that followed the initial comet strike that blinded most people.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

The White Plague by Frank Herbert?

Of course!