Thriller author eerily predicted global pandemic response

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

WASHINGTON — A virus emanating from Asia sweeps through the world and infects millions. Panic spreads through American cities as business shut down, hospitals are flooded and authorities scramble to find ventilators and other badly needed supplies. The country’s social order seems on the verge of collapse as conspiracy theories fueled by Russian bots flourish.

That is the eerily prophetic plotline of “The End of October,” a new novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright. The medical thriller is out this week but was written over the course of the last three years and finished in July of last year — before anybody had ever heard of COVID-19.

How did Wright foresee the bleak scenario when so many at the highest levels of the U.S. government didn’t?

“I listened,” Wright said in an interview with Yahoo News’ podcast “Skullduggery,” describing his exhaustive research that included talking to the country’s top epidemiologists.

https://news.yahoo.com/skullduggery-coronavirus-lawrence-wright-end-october-162546761.html

[Frustratedlady]

1. Whoever reads it first, let us know how it comes out.

Maybe you could read from the ending - forward?

[zentrum]

2. Far more prescient was Mary Shelley

...who wrote "The Last Man", about a world-wide pandemic which she predicted would happen in 21st Century.

She wrote it in 1826.

She was about age 29. Produced it as a sequel to "Frankenstein".

Remarkable.

[exboyfil]

3. The first modern science fiction writer

She doesn't get enough credit since she is usually classified more as a horror writer.

Wish she left the romances behind and wrote more SF. She could have advanced the popularity of SF by 40 years.

[zentrum]

4. Agreed.