The Wrack

by John Bierce

  I also have a Patreon, which can be found at patreon.com/johnbierce. There, I post monthly short stories set in the worlds of my books, as well as occasional previews of upcoming books.

  Cover art and design of The Wrack by Amir Zand.

  Edited by Paul Martin of Dominion Editorial, who does amazing work. Any remaining issues with the book are entirely my fault.

  Special thanks to my beta readers Eliot Moss, Sarah Lin, Sundeep Agarwal, Travis Riddle, F James Blair, Berkeley Franklin, Kyle Becker, and Kayla Kurin. (Also to Gregory Gleason, who got a little overwhelmed with work and parenting during a pandemic— definitely no worries!)

  Special thanks also to my epidemiological beta readers Margaret Davies and Jeremy Phillips, who made sure I didn’t mangle the science too badly. Any mistakes in The Wrack are mine and mine alone. And yet more special thanks to Kelly Gillespie, who wanted to beta read the Wrack, but had to bow out because she was working at a health department and was overwhelmed with dealing with COVID-19. You rock.

  (You ALL rock.)

  Not to mention still more special thanks to my Patreon backers Josh Fink, Andrew Alves, Andrew Cogan, Cortney Railsback, Jeff Chang, Jeff Petkau, Stephen Neville, Paolo Ruiz, Jacob William Perkins, Mikal Hofstad, Jeremy Miller, Andreas F. Sørensen, Kyle Matthews, James Titterton, Andy Barnett, Ruediger Pakmor, Ryan Campbell, Daniel Williams, Joseph Lee, Leonard Bukowski, Branden Rudolph, Cory Leigh Rahman, Scott C. Adams, Diallo Bennett, Christian, and Adam Milne.

  (And yes, you all rock too.)

  Further Reading

  If you enjoyed this book, here are a few suggestions for other works of epidemiological fiction you might enjoy.

  —Balam, Spring, by Travis Riddle: A slice-of-life epidemiological fantasy novel set in the town of Balam. (Amir Zand did the covers for both Balam, Spring and The Wrack, and full disclosure, Travis beta-read The Wrack- I asked him if he’d do so because of Balam, Spring.) The world Balam is set in is heavily Final Fantasy inspired.

  —The Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis: A time-traveler is stranded in the fourteenth century when an epidemic breaks out in her own time. It’s a bittersweet, depressing, wonderful book. Rightfully won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

  —Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn: Aliens crash land near a medieval village during the Black Death, and establish friendly relations with the villagers— but Earth’s food provides them no nutrition, and the plague creeps closer every day. Wonderful, heartwrenching book.

  —Feed, by Mira Grant: Yep, zombie novels totally count as epidemiological novels. Most of them do pretty badly at the epidemiology aspect, but Feed is definitely the exception. It’s an absolutely brilliant take on zombies, I can’t recommend it enough. (The rest of the Newsflesh trilogy is great too.)

  —The Traitor Baru Cormorant, by Seth Dickinson: The first book in the Masquerade series, following the brilliant and ruthless Baru Cormorant as she infiltrates the titular empire of the Masquerade in an effort to overthrow them from the inside. The Masquerade is a true imperialistic nightmare, where all the evils of imperialism and colonialism are taken as a guidebook and not a warning, and they prefer to start their conquests by wrecking their targets’ economies and introducing multiple deadly diseases to weaken the population. Exploration of the role of disease in empire is a major theme of the series.

  —The Plague, by Albert Camus: Like depressing, dry as hell existentialist French Algerian literature? Then you should read this one. If you’re not already a Camus fan, though, read The Stranger first.

  -The Masque of the Red Death, by Edgar Allen Poe: This short story is as brilliant of any of Poe’s other works, and its influence on The Wrack was a major one.

  -The Strand, by Steven King: Giant doorstopper of a novel. Deals more with the aftermath of a civilization ending disease than the disease itself, but I highly recommend it. It’s one of Steven King’s best novels. (Fun fact: Steven King’s novel Misery was what first made me become a writer. Kinda ironic, since it’s about an author getting kidnapped and tortured, but it was the first time I ever encountered someone describe writing fiction in-depth, and it made me realize I wanted to do that for a living.)

  -The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton: Even though later in life Crichton turned into a crazy climate change denier, a lot of his early novels are seriously top-notch. The Andromeda Strain follows a series of scientists studying an extraterrestrial virus that kills off a small town in Arizona. A bit dated in some regards, but an excellent read.

  And, if you’re interested in learning more about epidemiology in the real world, here’s some nonfiction you can check out as well. (All of these influenced The Wrack. It’s not the whole list by any means, but many of the other nonfiction works I used for research are rather more… dry.)

  —The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic- and How it Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World, by Steven Johnson: A short, engaging nonfiction read about the 1854 London cholera outbreak. (Which, while admittedly terrifying, was far from being London’s most terrifying epidemic ever.)

  —Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen: A brilliant book on zoonotic diseases by one of my favorite nonfiction writers. Most of the plagues throughout history have been zoonotic diseases, including Ebola, the bubonic plage, the common cold, and more.

  —The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon’s Greatest Army, by Stephen Talty: Honestly, the title is pretty self-explanatory on this one: Typhus was the single biggest cause of death during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.

  -The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, by Sonia Shaw: Likewise, pretty self-explanatory. Malaria is a huge deal when it comes to the its effect on human history.

  -The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, The Most Devastating Plague of All Time, by John Kelley: …Look, a lot of epidemiological fiction is just has really self-explanatory titles, alright? They’re definitely worthwhile, though.

  —Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed The World, by Laura Spinney: …You get the idea. Despite being the most recent major global pandemic, the poorly named Spanish Flu is one of the least studied and understood major pandemics in history— despite it being the single biggest cause of death of any event in the 20th century. (It definitely killed more people than either World War, and some experts believe it might have killed more than both combined, by quite a large margin.)