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JL3
René Barjavel, The Immortals
An airborne virus that stops the aging process and confers immunity to all other diseases, including cancer, renders the inhabitants of a remote island who contract it effectively immortal.
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NEURODERM
Walter M. Miller Jr., “Dark Benediction”
An extraterrestrial pathogen gives its human hosts gray skin, superior intelligence, and an irresistible urge to hunt down and forcibly infect other people by touching them.
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WHITE SICKNESS
José Saramago, Blindness
The complete loss of vision caused by this disease turns out to be reversible, unlike the violence civilians commit against one another as society crumbles into mayhem.
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GRAYSCALE
George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire
The disfiguring skin infection is rarely fatal in children, but for adults the only hope for survival is immediate amputation of any limb exhibiting a cold, tingling rash.
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SHEN FEVER
Ling Ma, Severance
Named for Shenzhen, the global economic center where cases are first detected, the fungal disease initially acts like a cold but soon attacks the brain, turning victims into harmless zombies who slowly starve to death.
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WATERLESS FLOOD
Margaret Atwood, MaddAddam Trilogy
After wiping out most of humanity, an alarming Ebola-like illness turns out to be not a contagious disease but a pharmaceutical bioweapon disguised as a popular sex-enhancement drug.
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RED DEATH
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the Red Death”
“No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous,” Poe writes of the inescapable plague that causes death by “profuse bleeding at the pores” a half hour after infection.
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ANDROMEDA STRAIN
Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain
Just as scientists believe they’ve learned how to defeat an alien pathogen that solidifies victims’ blood, a series of mutations leaves it capable of dissolving entire spacecrafts.
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