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    The Genius Plague
    Unavailable
    The Genius Plague
    Unavailable
    The Genius Plague
    Ebook455 pages7 hours

    The Genius Plague

    By David Walton

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    WINNER of the 2018 Campbell Award for Best Novel A WALL STREET JOURNAL Best Science Fiction Book of 2017 In this science fiction thriller, brothers are pitted against each other as a pandemic threatens to destabilize world governments by exerting a subtle mind control over survivors. Neil Johns has just started his dream job as a code breaker in the NSA when his brother, Paul, a mycologist, goes missing on a trip to collect samples in the Amazon jungle. Paul returns with a gap in his memory and a fungal infection that almost kills him. But once he recuperates, he has enhanced communication, memory, and pattern recognition. Meanwhile, something is happening in South America; others, like Paul, have also fallen ill and recovered with abilities they didn't have before. But that's not the only pattern--the survivors, from entire remote Brazilian tribes to American tourists, all seem to be working toward a common, and deadly, goal. Neil soon uncovers a secret and unexplained alliance between governments that have traditionally been enemies. Meanwhile Paul becomes increasingly secretive and erratic. Paul sees the fungus as the next stage of human evolution, while Neil is convinced that it is driving its human hosts to destruction. Brother must oppose brother on an increasingly fraught international stage, with the stakes: the free will of every human on earth. Can humanity use this force for good, or are we becoming the pawns of an utterly alien intelligence?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPyr
    Release dateOct 3, 2017
    ISBN9781633883444
    Unavailable
    The Genius Plague
    Author

    David Walton

    DAVID WALTON won the 2008 Philip K. Dick Award for his debut novel, Terminal Mind. He is also the author of Quintessence. He lives near Philadelphia.

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    Reviews for The Genius Plague

    3.5/5

    38 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Following the M.R. Carey/Mira Grant path, Walton posits a fungal infection that gives humans greater intelligence and perception, but also seems to turn them towards appalling violence. In thriller form, the hero just happens to work for the NSA and have a mycologist brother who’s at the center of the happenings. It’s a page-turner, but I’d honestly forgotten what it was like to read such a dude-centric book. The protagonist isn’t sexist as such, but the women are there to relate to him as help, mom (real or surrogate), or potential girlfriend, even when they also have jobs of their own.
    • 1/5
      This is one of those books that I regret finishing... It's yet another "mediocre white dude inadvertently saves the world, largely because of a series of implausible coincidences, and gets the girl who is way more competent than him" story. In this case, the reason the world needs saving is that a mind-controlling fungus has taken over most of humanity. I thought it might be interesting because fungi are pretty fascinating, but there's no plausible science here at all. So, all in all, the story is predictable, the characters are forgettable, and you can't think too hard about the story because there are plot holes and it relies way too heavily on implausible coincidences.
    • 3/5
      This book had a few interesting ideas but there were some flaws in the execution that made it just ok for me (including being about 50 pages too long). Paul Jones is a young mycologist who is infected by a dangerous fungus while in the Amazon. The illness can prove fatal, but if you recover one of the attributes of the disease is that it's victims emerge with greater cognitive abilities than they had before. Another attribute is that it causes the victims to be linked to both the fungus and to each other in a giant web with a single purpose - protect the fungus. Paul's younger brother Neil has just started work at the National Security Agency where he joins a team that cracks encrypted messages. One of my major problems with the book is that Neil is perfection personified to an annoying extent. At 21 he can do no wrong. Despite the fact that he doesn't have a college degree, any relevant training or experience it somehow falls on him to save the world when the plague spreads. Although the book is titled "The Genius Plague", little is made of this side effect. In addition to the creation of geniuses, the book also touches on the symbiotic relationship between fungi and humans and the potential for "solar powered" humans, but these ideas aren't explored very deeply. Since fungi can't think, the author had to explain how they managed to formulate plans for their preservation. I didn't find the author's explanation for this very convincing or consistently applied. There is a lot of discussion of encryption and decoding in the beginning of the book, which bored me, and a lot of military maneuvering at the end when there is an attempt to combat the spread of the plague. The resolution of the crisis just sort of fizzled out at the end of the book. I kept reading but this wasn't wonderful. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.