Two recent books take very different approaches to the narrative of bacteria and viruses, prions and protists that humanity has known for centuries and the brand new bugs that, by opportunistic accident, hop between species and start a new evolutionary tussle.
Like a computer file corrupted by a virus, their life narrative has been invaded.
Personally, I found it a little disappointing that one of the celebrity-bred viruses being marketed in the narrative wasn't AIDS.
The borderline hysterical media reaction to the Ebola epidemic – much of it spurred by the unlikely incursion of the virus into the US and UK – can be explained because it dovetails with this familiar narrative.
Works like Mourning Sickness, created nearly three decades after the first reported cases of AIDS, help to construct new narratives that explore how HIV/AIDS affect the identities of those who live with the virus currently.
Short, emotionally charged narratives — story fragments, of a certain kind — can travel through a population faster than any virus and alter behavior on a dime, they say.
But here love, marriage and family are invested with as much narrative currency as finding food supplies, developing windmill power and getting vaccines for horrible new viruses.
The narrative follows a hacker called Hiro Protagonist who investigates a potent drug, Snow Crash, which also operates as a computer virus that infects users' minds.
