BLACK SWAN IMPACT

A troubled married couple works to save the world from a plague in Vettori’s science fiction novel.

The year is 2113. World War III nearly wiped out civilization, but humans have managed to claw their way back to a high standard of living, and countries have reconstituted along the same familiar power axes, including the United States, the European Union, and China. Dr. Syia Case serves as the Director of Epidemiology at the National Institutes of Health. She’s recently separated from her husband Paul, the current White House Chief of Staff, due to the fallout from their inability to conceive a child. One day, Syia gets an alarming message from a colleague in China that suggests the Chinese are performing studies on a virus that’s been making bats hyper-aggressive. Soon after, that colleague is killed when the disease jumps to humans. Worried about a potential global spread, Syia passes the information on to Paul, who warns the president, entrepreneur-turned-politician Daniel Piper. (Daniel happens to be Paul’s best friend and former partner in their interstellar mining business as well as Syia’s high school sweetheart.) Daniel is reluctant to take the threat seriously, leaving Syia and Paul to do whatever they can to prepare for the inevitable pandemic. When the virus reaches American shores, the couple finds that they aren’t just dealing with a deadly pathogen, but also an increasingly tyrannical president. Vettori’s technical knowledge has allowed her to craft a virus of terrifying verisimilitude, and the symptoms are quite a bit grizzlier than those of Covid-19. The author is less adept when it comes to her characters, particularly their dialogue: “I tried to talk to you about geopolitical issues when I first started the job, but you weren’t interested,” Paul shouts at Syia, who responds, slightly ham-fistedly, “And you wouldn’t discuss the pain of not having a child!” A number of characters and their actions will remind readers of our own time, but the future setting provides a welcome level of distance and fantasy.

A scientifically grounded SF thriller about a global pandemic.