There is a kind of recklessness that takes over at end of the world. I felt it, in Brooklyn, after the world shut down in March 2020. The way cars ran redlights at intersections; the way people pushed each other out of the way for toilet paper; the way people thew COVID parties, the dull thump of the bass like the sound of a heart still beating into the otherwise still and empty night.
When I was writing my debut novel, Westward Women, I was fascinated by this kind of recklessness. By the way it caused people to forget general courtesies, yes, but also by the way it caused a kind of manic joy, a feverish carpe diem that allowed people to become different versions of themselves, the version of themselves they would be if nothing was stopping them.
That kind of dual danger and freedom is what powers the women in my novel, who find themselves at risk of catching a contagion no one can explain, a contagion that gives them a kind of power at the same time as it threatens their lives. Reading books like the ones that follow helped me to craft this balance.
These novels are stories about societies on the edge in the face of contagions, stories made pulse-pounding not only because of the way they demonstrate contagion as a threat but also the way they reveal how contagion can be a catalyst for social change, a reminder of the potential reckless delights in being free of social constraint.
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Chuck Wendig, Wanderers
Like Westward Women, Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers features a biologically mysterious contagion that compels people to trek across the United States in a zombie-like fashion. Unlike in Westward Women, detaining the infected causes those very infected to explode (yes, really). The result is an unstoppable movement that inspires loved ones, called “Shepards,” to join the trek.
The reverberates of this phenomenon are widespread: the development of an AI to predict other pandemics, the formation extremist groups who see the Walkers as a threat, and the rise of a smalltown preacher who tries to take charge of the situation while under the influence of a white supremacist. The outcomes are explosive, but so is the subtler truth the contagion embodies: that sometimes we are drawn to compulsion; that despite our better judgements, sometimes we, too, wish to submit to forces beyond our control.
Stephen King, The Stand
An end-of-the-world epic, King’s now-classic novel features a super-flu that knocks out ninety-nine percent of the population. Most of the novel is about what happens to a cast of survivors and what kind of leadership (good or evil) we turn to when it’s time to rebuild.
But I’ll admit, that’s not the part of the novel that always interests me. The part that always gets me, without fail, is the beginning, the first third of the book when we watch the world crumble. King’s characters are terrified, of course, but they are also re-energized, spurred to survive by whatever means necessary. Once society does ultimately collapse, it’s clear in many of their cases that such a contagion isn’t just the end of the world; it’s a new beginning for them, too.
Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
Like The Stand, Emily St. John Mandel’s magnificent Station Eleven can be divided into the “before” and “after”: the collapse of society under the weight of a flu pandemic and the rise of something new and uncanny in its aftermath. In the “after,” a group of traveling performers try to find what pleasure there is in life beyond surviving while a terrifying extremist gains influence nearby.
But the opening to Station Eleven might be my favorite opening of any book. It begins with a production of King Lear that serves as a kind of super-spreader event. After witnessing a man die onstage, one man who was present, Jeevan, receives more advanced warning from a doctor friend, leading him to stock up on supplies for the end of the world. This sequence always catches my breath because of how real it feels.
For Jeevan, everything in the world—jobs, responsibilities, weeknight plans—all stop in a second. It is the embodiment of the most famous line from King Lear: “unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bar, forked animal as thou art. Off, off, you lendings! Come unbutton here.” Unbuttoning ourselves from the constraints of society may make us animals, but it is freeing, too.
Laurie Halse Anderson, Fever 1793
There were few things that gave me as much joy in my young life as reading a Laurie Halse Anderson book. In Fever 1793, Mattie, a fourteen-year-old girl living in eighteen-century Philadelphia, is eager to be treated like an adult by her mother, who already depends on her to run the family coffeehouse.
But it isn’t until yellow fever breaks out and her mother tries to send her away for safety that this desire comes true. It may not have been in the way she hoped, but the social constraints that once bound Mattie in her small home above the family coffeeshop are severed here, releasing her into a very adult world as she fights to survive the countryside.
Frank Herbert, The White Plague
Contagions are not the only things that can unleash a person from what once contained them. In Frank Herbert’s The White Plague, an IRA terrorist attack kills John O’Neill’s wife and child. A molecular biologist now severed from everything that kept him human, O’Neill enacts a very specific kind of revenge: custom creating a plague that kills only women and of which men are the only carriers.
While O’Neill attempts to sabotage any attempts at a cure and global governments attempt to assassinate him, the women of Ireland, England and Libya—where the plagues are centered—die out, leading to a breakdown of society and a rise in old, masculinist ways. Here, contagion and social upheaval mesh beyond recognition—a chicken and the egg situation—to remind us of how illness has long been a tool of political power because of its ability to be a catalyst for chaos.
Jim Shepherd, Phase Six
Like many of the other books on this list, Jim Shepherd’s Phase Six begins with a terrifyingly thrilling depiction of a contagion unearthed. In this case, it’s a young boy, Aleq, who triggers it by playing at a mining site that has uncovered something long encased in permafrost. While Aleq survives the initial outbreak, many in his village do not.
As the contagion continues to spread, Aleq is transferred to a CDC facility for further observation as both a survivor and a patient zero. Meanwhile, political and corporate corruption work hand-in-hand with the virus to keep society at large spinning out of control. The world around Aleq may be ending, but he finds comfort in the two researchers, Jeannine and Danice, with whom he is quarantined.
Shepherd’s novel is a cautionary tale, the one most explicitly informed by the COVID-19 pandemic on this list. It is also gentler than some of the others here. While the opening may unfold at breakneck speed, the rest of the novel is surprisingly tender, a snapshot of a boy who finds true understanding and companionship only in the face of world ending conditions. At the end of the world, there is exploitation and death. At the end of the world, there is also life.
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