We are currently living through some very trying times with the quickly spreading Coronavirus infecting increasing numbers of people in countries across the globe. Coronavirus or Covid-19 has now been classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation and some countries have gone on lockdown to prevent or slow the spread.
Amongst the sometimes-confusing array of information and articles currently being circulated about the virus at the moment, is the theory that fiction might have predicted this pandemic. But what we as readers are asking is, that’s just the dystopian fiction we’ve been reading for years, right?
Many articles have suggested that Dean Koontz’s The Eye of Darkness might have made an eerie prediction when the author wrote about a killer virus called ‘Wuhan-400’ which matches the location in China where Covid-19 first emerged this year. Unlike Koontz’s novel though, Covid-19 is not a biological weapon produced in a lab with a kill-rate of 100%, unless you’ve been reading some scary conspiracy theories in which case it might be time to step away from social media and read a good book instead.
Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, which it has recently been announced will soon be adapted for screens, has also been picked up as a novel that might have predicted Coronavirus. Unlike Koontz’s novel, in Station Eleven the deadly virus impacts North America and in true dystopian novel style, it examines what might happen if civilisation as we know it were to completely disappear.
Meanwhile, Stephen King, the author of countless horror, science fiction and post-apocalyptic novels took to Twitter to insist that his 1978 book, The Stand, is not like the Coronavirus after James Marsden, a star of the book’s most recent adaptation suggested it was comparable. King tweeted, “No, coronavirus is NOT like THE STAND. It’s not anywhere near as serious. It’s eminently survivable. Keep calm and take all reasonable precautions.”
To which one Twitter user replied, “And how the hell would you know?! Did you even read that book?” We’re hoping this particular response was a sarcastic comment, although if it isn’t, it wouldn’t be the first time someone criticised an author’s commentary about their own books, J.K. Rowling can certainly attest to that.
In a Guardian article, the news outlet also made reference to Joanna Russ’ 1975 feminist masterpiece The Female Man, in which a gender-specific virus called ‘whileaway’ targets the men wiping them out and leaving a female utopia behind. Which makes a change from the hardships women usually face in dystopian fiction such as Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale.
What is clear from all these examples is that dystopian fiction will probably always be linked to a pandemic or shift in societal norms because of its very nature. From wiping out whole civilisations to a flip in the power dynamics as seen in Naomi Alderman’s The Power, authors of dystopian and speculative fiction are always thinking of new and exciting ways to shock their readers and/or make a social commentary.
If you’re still worried we might actually be living in a dystopian novel, we suggest taking advice from Douglas Addams’ comedy science fiction, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Don’t Panic. Oh, and don’t forget to wash your hands.
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.Atwood predicted exactly what’s happening now in her Oryx and Crake trilogy. The second book is called The Year of the Flood. The flood being a world wide pandemic which basically destroys life on earth. The third book in the trilogy is about the few survivors and their efforts to make a new world for themselves. Written in 2013!!