No Failure Of Imagination: Sabine’s Diaries

 

 

# 9302

 

When Flublogia was relatively young - eight years, and more than 9,000 blogs ago – I wrote about a couple of Pandemic Fictional Scenarios – the best known of which were the imaginings of how a pandemic might play out by CanadaSue on the old Flu Wiki (Old Yeller).

A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Peter Sandman & Dr. Jody Lanard wrote about a `failure of imagination’ regarding our current Ebola epidemic which leads officials from speculating about how this disaster might play out over the next few months or years (see Ebola: Failures of Imagination).

In that essay, Peter and Jody evoked the memory of Canada Sue’s fictional pandemic (and provide a link to her old `diaries’), when they wrote:

 

When it looked like an H5N1 pandemic might be imminent, a woman who went by the nom-de-flu “Canada Sue” wrote a wonderful extended fictional diary of the pandemic, which helped the prepper community picture what we were prepping for. Now we desperately need an Ebola Canada Sue to help us imagine what life might be like with the developing world in flames.

 

Earlier today Jody emailed to let me (and others) know that a pair of writers from Australia and New Zealand are collaborating on an updated `Ebola scenario’ diary.  While this project is young, it shows real promise, and so I’m happy to promote it here.

 

WEB: sabinesdiary.com

FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/sabines.diary

TWITTER: @sabinesdiary

 

And if this whets your appetite, you’ll probably want to traipse over to the Internet Archive’s  WayBack Machine Flu Wiki archive of Canada Sue’s Pandemic Scenario.

A Recurrent Fever

 

# 3822

 

 

 

Last July I wrote about a start-up blog/novel called American Fever: A Tale of Romance & Pestilence, (see Catching An American Fever) which was being written online by Peter Christian Hall.   At the time, only a handful of chapters – or perhaps more properly, entries – had been posted.

 

It’s an intriguing idea, and is perhaps the future of fiction publishing, although admittedly not all of the kinks are worked out at this time.

 

Yesterday in my Internet roaming (spurred on by my desktop RSS feed fetcher), I ran across a detailed and generally favorable review of Peter’s online novel, now that considerably more of the story has been written and posted. 

 

Book review: ‘American Fever,’ by Peter Christian Hall

By Court Merrigan

 

I’ve been reading along (although I confess, I’ve fallen a bit behind) in the novel, and have enjoyed it.  I need to find some time and try to catch up.  As a blogger,  I certainly understand the the blood, sweat, and tears that go into writing every day like this. 

 

So I’m happy to plug Peter’s work from time to time.   You’ll also find Peter blogging for The Huffington Post.

 

So if you are in the mood for a little pandemic fiction, then by all means check out An American Fever.

 

 

Last year, you may recall, I reviewed another pandemic novel written by  Craig DeLouie entitled The Thin White Line: A History of the 2012 Avian Flu Pandemic in Canada.   The author has now made a free version of the book available that you can read online here.

 

As an avid reader (who has distressingly little time to read for pleasure right now), I’m glad that there are still authors out there striving to write fiction. I grew up reading Heinlein, and Asimov, John D. McDonald, and Michener and I’m undoubtedly better for it.

The online generation of the future may ultimately eschew books, but it really doesn’t matter by what technology ideas and literature are presented.

 

All that really matters is that they are.