See this book is why I love science fiction so much. A collection of short stories edited by Lou Aronica and Shawna McCarthy, this book includes so many great stories it’s unreal. I could not put it down. The stories are a true trip, ranging from fantasy to hard science to political to futuristic. It was published in ’88 so it might be hard to find a copy, I got this one at a used bookstore way in the stacks.

It’s hard to choose a favorite story as they were all so good, but my favorite is ‘Journals of the Plague Years’ by Norman Spinrad. This story details a time of an AIDS-like disease gone out of control to the point where there are entire cities cordoned off and filled only with infected people, where people engage in sex with machines to avoid contact with each other, where a police force is assigned to solely check and screen people’s health ID card which must be updated every few months or so. If you come up infected, you get booted into the quarantined areas.

The story is beautifully written and Spinrad did an amazing job showing the story from 4 main points of view and then bringing all those characters together. What really got me about this story was that I could totally see it happening, especially the part where the doctor/scientist, frustrated with his wife’s fear and frigid attitude toward sex, goes out and hooks up with a prostitute who has a fake healthy ID…of course she has the disease and gives it to him. Knowing his card is going to come up infected at the next blood update he rushes his research, comes up with a cure, injects himself, and is cured. Takes the info to the big pharmaceutical company he works for and they destroy the evidence because it would mean a loss of profits to them (how can you sell a cure that is spread, like the disease, through sex?). They even talk about killing him but he promises to keep his mouth shut in exchange for big money. They do not know he carries the cure within his body.

Horrifying as such greed is, I can see this happening, can’t you? People can be so evil and greedy, for sure there are pharmaceutical companies and governments that would suppress a cure. There are countries right now that are suppressing info about how to prevent HIV infection, even though the epidemic is killing off huge chunks of the adult population and crippling their economy. I have a hard time understanding how people can be so willfully ignorant and uncaring…I sometimes think that the rulers of these countries are being paid off in some manner to keep their people uninformed.

I digress. I loved this book and this story totally rocked. It ends with the good guys winning, with truth and beauty shining through to bring an end to the plague years.

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