Deft
prose, in-your-face ideas, cut to the punch mentality—Norman Spinrad is one of
the more contentious voices in the field, if not one of the most welcome for
it. The poet Alicia Ostriker calling all
good art a dance with the devil, Spinrad knows how to tango, challenging the
reader with the forthrightness of his conceptions. Exemplifying these attributes to a socially
relevant T is his 1988 novella “Journals of the Plague Years”. Tackling HIV/AIDS concerns arising at the
time, the story cuts to the bone of social, political, and commercial
involvement with the disease.
“Journals”
and “Years” plural (as opposed to the singularity of Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year), the
novella is divided between four perspectives: a soldier, a researcher, a
senator, and a teenage girl. Not rotated
strictly on waltz rhythm, Spinrad leapfrogs amongst them in developing the
overarching story. HIV exploding in the
US population through rampant sexual activity, massive quarantine zones and
health cards are implemented by the paranoid Christian senator Walter T.
Bigelow in an attempt to keep the virus under control. His program an initial success, the spread of
the disease falters, giving Richard Bruno a chance, deep in his laboratory, to
effect a cure. A cure he does find, but
soon enough the virus mutates, and he’s back at square one. The disease continuing to creep through the
population, Linda Lewin learns, at the tender young age of sixteen, that she’s
Got It. Her parents aghast, she runs
away to find a new life in the San Francisco quarantine zone and there do what
she can before her time is over. But all hell breaks loose when the concerns of
Bruno’s laboratory and the interests of the population at large come to
loggerheads. Infected soldier John Davis
conscripted in his dying days to perform one last mission, the fate of HIV in
the US hangs in the balance.
