Call it a lockdown, a quarantine, a shelter-in-place, a stay-at-home order...what it comes down to is that we're all going to be spending a lot more time at home for the foreseeable future. One of the things I like to do when I have a large chuck of time is to sit down with a good book. Now, I know that for many people, reading is a type of escape that works best when they avoid anything topical. If that's you, I regret that the bulk of this blog post is not for you. If, on the other hand, a novel about a global pandemic sounds like just the thing right now, I have a handful of suggestions.
THE STAND, by Stephen King
King is the master of horror, and what's more horrifying—especially right now—than a widespread and deadly disease? One of his best-known books, The Stand is about a plague that wipes out 99% of the world's population. The first half of the book details the world's descent from normalcy to cataclysm. It then moves onto the aftermath, in which survivors mystically divide into two new societies for an apocalyptic battle between good and evil, with all the toys of modern society (the 1990 version of it, at least) ripe for the picking.
This is one of my favorite books of all time, and as I think of all the things I want to say about it, I realize that it may merit a post of its own at some point, say after my next re-read. As it relates specifically to current events, King himself has tweeted that the coronavirus is nowhere near as serious as "Captain Trips" in The Stand, and the math bears that out (also, the plague in the novel was man-made, whereas this one is not).Still, some of the parallels are a little unnerving to someone who's read the book as many times as I have.
The miniseries they made of the book in 1994 is cheesy, but I hold a fondness for it just the same. If nothing else, the music is haunting, including the score itself, as well as "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House and "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult, which I referenced yesterday. A new version is coming to CBS All Access, supposedly sometime this year. What timing! It'll be interesting to see if that happens, and how people react to it if so.
THE FIREMAN, by Joe Hill
The obligatory intro: Yes, Joe Hill is Stephen King's kid. He is possibly a better writer than his old man, which is high praise coming from me; I revere King's books, but Joe's prose tends to be just a little leaner, which appeals to me. The illness in this one isn't a virus but a spore that causes the infected to develop gold and black markings on their skin, known as Dragonscale. If that were all, it wouldn't be so bad, but it also has the unfortunate tendency to cause spontaneous combustion, particularly under high stress. The eponymous Fireman is an enigmatic character who has learned to control the Dragonscale and, as it turns out, sort of lean into it for his own purposes. That comes into play as the telltale markings make survivors easy targets for those among the non-infected that hate and fear them.
With books by father and son both about the apocalypse, it's no surprise that there are some parallels between The Stand and The Fireman. Instead of shying away, Hill has some fun with it instead.
It may be tough to get your hands on books right now, so allow me to mention that The Fireman is available through hoopla in both eBook and audiobook format. If your local library offers hoopla, you can check either format (or both!) out for free and read or listen on your phone, tablet, or computer.
LOCK IN and HEAD ON, by John Scalzi
Unlike the other books mentioned here, which detail to varying extents the events of the pandemics themselves, in Lock In, we dive right into the aftermath (although there is a novella, Unlocked, which goes into the history of the disease). The long and short of it is an illness called Haden's syndrome causes a small percentage of the population to be "locked into" their bodies, awake and aware but unable to respond or move in any way. A virtual world has been created for those locked in, as well as technology that allows them to transfer their minds into robotic "Threeps" or, in certain circumstances, human "Integrators" that give up control of their own bodies for a limited time. Lock In is a murder mystery in which the primary suspect is an Integrator and one of the investigators is a Haden. More sci-fi than the King and the Hill, and dealing with events following a pandemic rather than the pandemic itself, this might be your best bet if you're looking for escape.
WANDERERS, by Chuck Wendig
And if escape is what you're looking for, this one might be a tough read right now. It just came out last summer, and the echoes of today's reality are kind of eerie. It seems innocuous at its core: a small group of people start sleepwalking (for want of a better term) across the United States and can't be woken or stopped. Where it gets scary is everything that comes with it: an ineffective government response, social media spreading panic and conspiracy theories, fringe groups exploiting the situation to advance their own agendas, etc. This is a good book and I definitely recommend it, but if you feel like now isn't the time, you won't get any argument from me. Just remember to come back to it at some point later.
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