August 2022 - "Patient Zero" by Tananarive Due

[Natalie]

Our short story this month is Patient Zero by Tananarive Due. It's a rather interesting story. Let us know what you think.

It can be found here: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fi...

[Thomas]

The story was first published a year after Dan Marino retired. So the kid could reasonably have been a fan. But he does seem a bit too clueless about the disease in question.

[Tom]

Great story. Very prescient. I recently read Tananarive Due for the first time and really enjoyed her style.

[Oleksandr]

I've finished the story plus the author's interview about it that can be found at the end. I liked the style and pace but cannot say that the plot really impressed me - (view spoiler)[as people started to disappear, the future path could have been guessed (hide spoiler)] but the "voice" has been done very good. I agree with Thomas that the boy is too clueless

[Stephen]

I liked the story, and I’m glad to have read it. I was quite drawn in by the kid’s voice and his predicament. Agree about the pace being well done. The behaviour of the characters around him was credible and interesting as well.

[Ryan]

Not a fan. I don't generally like child narrators, and I felt it would have been more interesting with more explicit information about what was going on with the world outside.

[Natalie]

I'm glad many of you liked the story.
I agree Tananarive Due's pacing is good and the story interesting. I think in choosing a young protagonist, we are spared the panic an adult might feel about having a serious disease, as well as don't have to go into the gritty details of how the disease attacks the body and the havoc it has wrecked.
Having no food would be seriously panic inducing but the MC seems only slightly worried.
It is an interesting choice in the story to not let us see much of the outside world. Is everyone else dead? What happened to his parents? Is there any kind of remedy, even temporary, for the illness? We just have to guess.