The Thin White Line
A very good friend of mine, Craig DiLouie, recently published a book of speculative fiction titled The Thin White Line: A History of the 2012 Avian Flu Pandemic in Canada. As the subtitle pretty much spells it out, this book describes what might happen in Canada if bird flu crossed over to humans and triggered a pandemic.
The book is written so that it reads as if it were a non-fiction history book from the future about a pandemic that has already occurred some years before, complete with realistic photos, tables, and graphs. It combines written history — names, dates, events, etc. — with oral accounts of people who survived the 2012 tragedy, and the “heroes” of the story are average people like you and me, doing the best they can in a terrible situation.
This story-telling technique is similar to that used by one of my favorite novels from 2006, Max Brooks’ World War Z, which assumes the pretense that a zombie epidemic has occurred many years before the writing of the book. So if you liked that one, odds are, you’ll like this one too.
For much more information about the book, about the author, to read some sample chapters, and for ordering information, just visit www.pandemicbook.com.