28 November 2001

Richard Preston - Smallpox This is deeply troubling stuff. Until his most recent book, Richard Preston, has been a non fiction author. His book about astronomers, 'First Light', won the American Institute of Physics Award. He then moved on to 'The Hot Zone', a horrifying real life account of an outbreak of Ebola near Washington D.C. Then he really hit his stride. The result of three years further research, 'The Cobra Event' is "based on the same kind of reporting I do for my non-fiction books, but in fact there hasn't been a major bio-terror event in this country yet, and so I had to imagine one--which wasn't too hard, since my sources think that one could occur at any moment, and they are preparing for it." There's a short interview here on the publisher Random House's website for the book. You can read an excerpt from the first chapter on the same site. It's truly appalling. He wrote a long article for the New Yorker in '99, 'The Demon in the Freezer', a gripping compelling read: "I don't think there is any higher biological threat to this nation than smallpox," Jahrling said to me, in his office, a windowless retreat jammed with paper. His voice was croaking. "I was over in Geneva for a meeting on smallpox, and I came back with some flu strain," he said hoarsely. The flu strain had swept through the world's smallpox experts. "Shows how fast a virus can move. If we have some kind of bioterror emergency with smallpox, there will be no time to start stroking our beards. We'd better have vaccine pre-positioned on pallets and ready to go." There's also a fascinating but rambling interview here on The Thresher. SJ: I found Cobra Event fairly hard to take.. disgusting. Horrible things happen to your characters. It feels like you have that Stephen King sadism - as if you're gloating, "let's see, what disgusting things can I do to my characters this chapter.." But you seem like a non-sadistic sort of guy. Why is this book so... RP: Over the top? Yes, Cobra Event is like a horror novel. Biological weapons are ultimately horrible. And for years the science community has been telling us that bioweapons are nothing to worry about. Hey, they don't work. And countries around the world have not been violating the treaties. And genetic engineering is perfectly safe. Nothing here for the public to worry about, move along, folks. What I did is draw the real picture of biological weapons, make it clear to readers how horrible they are. Talk about disgusting.. Experts - people who know the weapons - were calling me while I was writing Cobra, and one of them gave me photographs of smallpox. People think that smallpox is a bad case of chickenpox.. Whew.. It isn't anything like that. In this last interview he talks about how the book captured Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich's attention. Still waiting for those stocks of hundreds of millions of vaccinations though... 12:22:08 PM