Contagious

Scott Sigler

Hodder & Stoughton 2009

Hachette (Australia)

Science Fiction

This novel is Sigler’s followup to his successful INFECTED, reviewed earlier in this magazine. To recap the story, a tiny satellite from … somewhere … is orbiting the earth. It is launching canisters of spores tailored to take over human minds and bodies as hosts. When they hatch, the small octopoid hatchlings will build a “gateway” through which an invading force can arrive on earth. They live off their hosts’ bodies while doing this.

Only one man, Perry Dawsey, a redneck ex-football star, has so far survived the spores. He carved out the infections from his body before they completed their job, and although he is physically and psychologically scarred he is the Government’s only weapon against the invaders. The spores had partly developed inside him, and he can now hear their thoughts and the instructions the satellite is broadcasting to them. Thus he can locate their nests and “help” the hosts – by slaughtering them.

The Government team needs his help to locate new gateways, but first they must earn his respect. They must get him to follow orders and help the Army locate the nests and destroy them before a gateway is completed. If an infected host can be taken alive, their laboratory may be able to come up with a cure - if they can stop Dawsey from killing the victims first. The satellite is aware of Dawsey and it must deal with him, too. It has a limited ability to redesign its spores, and it uses this in one of its final attempts to build a new spore that is contagious and windborne. It also uses one of its hosts to make contact with Dawsey and try to bring him under control. Dawsey will not be an easy conquest for either side. He well remembers the incredible pain of being taken over by the spores. He genuinely believes the best way he can help infected people is by killing them to save them that sort of pain.

This time the hosts are better organized. They take over the Army unit sent to destroy them and use it for their defence. With one of the hosts controlling the rest, the satellite can concentrate on blocking Dawsey’s reception. With Dawsey partly neutralized, the Army detachment missing, and the hosts moving into a bigger city where they can spread the disease faster, there is going to be huge loss of life before one side prevails.

Once again Sigler tells the story from the point of view of each of the protagonists, including the satellite. You couldn’t say that a satellite has a personality, but Sigler manages to almost give it one – purpose-driven, calculating, and completely devoid of emotion as it goes about its work. It is the non-human touch that singles this book out – there is a tremendous sense of menace in fighting a war against an opponent driven by a program, one that is so small you can’t find it and whose side effects are so lethal and fast that medical scientists can’t even study it before the victim dies and dissolves.

Scott Sigler has a number of books to his credit. His earlier ones were in podcast format, which encouraged many people to look at his work. Alternate publishing methods still do not reach a big audience, so it is good to see that he is now being published in conventional media. This will expose his work to a bigger audience.

As a sign that his work has achieved success, movie rights have been sold to Rogue Pictures, and a brief teaser clip is available on YouTube at http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=gQpM4apJNPQ

If you find you like the sound of the book, but missed INFECTIOUS, it can be downloaded in chapters from Sigler’s website at www.scottsigler.com.

This review will appear in Volume 2:1 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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