Just Finished Reading: The White Plague by Frank Herbert
When John Roe O’Neill visited Ireland to attend a conference on Micro-biology he had no idea how it would change his life and the lives of billions of others around the world. His wife and two young children happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and are killed by an IRA car bomb. After the funeral John vows revenge – not only against the perpetrators of the attack but of the system that produced them and the world that allowed them to exist. Using his skill as a micro-biologist John develops a virus that specifically targets women. Any woman who encounters it dies within days and every man who comes into contact with it becomes a carrier. As the bomb deprived him of his wife so he intends to deprive everyone of their wives, mothers and daughters. So begins the end of the world and the collapse of human civilisation.
At 628 pages this book was at least 200 pages too long. The premise was an interesting one – that a single individual with enough knowledge and moderate resources could produce a very powerful weapon indeed. The White Plague goes far beyond the cheap mans nuclear weapon however by unravelling the very fabric of human existence. The examination of the political fallout and military response to the plague was by far the best part of the book and was, in my opinion, handled pretty much as I would expect a real outbreak to be handled – with harsh quarantines and the ruthless response to any outbreak. The realpolitik was very believable but the longest, dullest and most unrealistic part of the book centred on O’Neill’s return to Ireland to see for himself the results of his handy work. Not only were the Irish characters – to a man and woman – totally unrealistic in my mind but the whole feel of the place was dead wrong. It jarred so much that I really couldn’t get beyond it and simply enjoy the story. It was actually rather disappointing that someone who could write Dune could also write this. Sadly not recommended.
6 comments:
Do you think the location of Ireland was changed and perhaps it was supposed to be someplace else and for who knows what reason, they decided to change the name of the location? It's hard to imagine him getting the Irish character and feel wrong, unless it was originally written in as another location. Just a thought.
Very interesting. I loved Dune, but I cared less and less for each subsequent sequel. I never finished book 4, I think.
I always wondered if he had anything else in him.
V V said: It's hard to imagine him getting the Irish character and feel wrong, unless it was originally written in as another location. Just a thought.
Hard to say. It just felt *wrong* to me. The Irish characters where cardboard - barely 2 dimensional. The American characters were much more rounded and nuanced.
Wunelle said: I always wondered if he had anything else in him.
Oh he's written some good stuff apart from Dune (I've read the first three in the series - many years ago).
I can recommend:
The Jesus Incident
The Lazarus Effect
The Eyes of Heisenberg &
The Priests of Psi
I've read every single Frank Herbert book, including this one. It's been 25 years since I've read White Plague. I can't remember exactly what I thought of it at the time. I do know that I liked just about everything Herbert wrote. He was able to incorporate environment and ecology into his books more so than any other sci-fi author of the time.
I agree with your other Frank Herbert recommended books.
I would have to say that we might be a little bit too critical of the character development and setting. You have to look at it a bit from the frame of reference of when it was written. In 1982, Ireland was still smack dab in the middle of IRA bombings. And not being in the internet age at that time, American authors were certainly not as well-versed in the nuances of Ireland. CK, you were obviously a little closer to the action and heard news on a daily basis.
dbackdad said: I would have to say that we might be a little bit too critical of the character development and setting. You have to look at it a bit from the frame of reference of when it was written.
It was strange that his characterisation was much better when he dealt with American subjects. I just felt that his attention to detail and the basic motivation of his Irish (and indeed his English) characters were more like caricatures.
I appreciate that he may not have been up on the detail of Northern Irish politics but he didn't really need to be for this novel. I was just very surprised at how shallow (and sometimes honestly just strange) his characterisation was sometimes. After being blown away by Dune - admittedly 30 years ago - I was understandably disapointed with this effort.
The 1980's were certainly dangerous times in England. I missed being involved in a bombing twice. Once by 20 minutes and 100 feet. The other time by a mere 3 hours and I would have been right on top of it. It *really* paid to be super alert back then and not a little paranoid.
CK -- I'm sure you are right. I can't remember what I had for dinner last night, let alone a book that I read a quarter century ago. :-)
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