The Great Novel of Coronavirus

Novel coronavirus.  COVID-19.

Let's turn this around.  Coronavirus novel.

One day, someone will write the great novel that will explain the time of our almost worldwide shutdown, the Great Drifttime (I made that up), the great shift in reality, when humanity shut itself away in an effort to stem the rapid rise in contagion.  I won't be that author, but we've all been in this.  Not together (I hate those "we are all in this together" ads because it's not true - our experiences and circumstances all differ) but we are all in this.

Some were able to work from home, or were of retirement age, or were in positions of power.

For many others, though, this time has been horror, be it due to health problems, exposure to domestic abuse, unemployment, loneliness, or an essential worker plunged into a situation where they could be exposed.

Who will write the Great Coronavirus novel that will express our feelings our experiences? It seems like it would probably need to be written by someone who has experienced COVID-19 firsthand.

Not yet.  But it will happen.  We will get that novel.

It appears pandemics do influence literature, but in ways we may not realize. 

There is something else I have been wondering about.

In my teenaged and 20's, I was a reader of a lot of SF (Science Fiction).  The best SF supposes "what if X happens?" and proceeds to answer it.  What if there is a plague that eliminates women?  Or eliminates men?  Or affects our ability to reproduce?  Or what if there was a pandemic that put civilization on hold?

I got to wondering if any SF had supposed a society where people voluntarily lived alone.  I remembered such a series from my long ago years of SF - the Spacer culture, as imagined by the late, great author Isaac Asimov.

The Spacers (actually, a term for several cultures of humanity who had colonized other planets) lived alone not because of a pandemic, but for other reasons.  They had chosen to live apart of others and it became part of their culture.  The Spacers did last for a few hundred years, but their culture was not sustainable.

We will have to find a way through an illness that is being fought in ways contrary to our very natures as a social creature. 

So - the great Coronavirus novel.  Who do you think might write it?