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?
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
7 comments:
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Asimov was a genius, but I never read Spacers.
ReplyDeleteRight now life feels like a Dan Brown story gone bad, almost like a Stephen King book.
I thought exactly that after I read the comment you left on my blog yesterday - that someone would eventually write about this just as they did the Black Death and the Spanish Flu. The problem if it is not written by someone who lived through it is that they would have to rely on what the media is putting out. Stories about Emperor Nero were written long after his death by writers who were not alive at his time and evidence now shows they were all wrong.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing there will be many books written about this time and the lessons learned (or not). I'm guessing historians like Michael Beschloss and Doris Kearns Goodwin will be among those chronicling this time. Who might write fiction based on the virus? That could be interesting to see.
ReplyDeleteI'd vote for Sir Terry Pratchett. Then it would be entertaining as well as intelligent and insightful...
ReplyDeleteRIP, Sir Terry.
I don't think there will be one Rona novel. There will be many. Mine will mirror my actual life, but I just haven't found a plot to hang on it, yet.
ReplyDeleteBeen written already. Albert Camus, The Plague.https://www.amazon.com/Plague-Albert-Camus/dp/0679720219
ReplyDeleteUnknown who will write novel for Covid 19. But my blogger friends seem to be covering it quite well.
ReplyDelete