With the fears of avian bird flu starting to reach critical mass in some blogs and publications, I think public health will become a huge topic of interest and probable area of government intervention in the year to come.
Ann Benson has written three sf/mystery/historical novels that deal with biology, plagues, government reaction to mass disease. In one novel Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged receives favorable mention, as does Galt’s Gultch, the libertarian El Dorado where refugees from that novel flee the state. Thief of Souls, from 2003 is the most recent, but her two other novels, The Plague Tales and Burning Road are equally worthy, and should be read in that order.
SF Site interviewed Ann Benson back in 1997. As evidence of the web’s evanescent nature, her own web page appears down, and the plague tales web site that she created seems defunct, too.
