SO WHAT’S IN A TITLE?
SALES, FOR ONE THING…
By Buzz Bernard
Lately, I’ve been asked a lot if
the ongoing Ebola crisis–tentacles of which have slithered into our
homeland–have done much for the sales of Plague. In short,
no.
I suspect the reason for that is
that people don’t know the novel is about Ebola. It’s certainly not
obvious from its title. If you don’t know, Plague is about
bioterrorism, specifically weaponized Ebola.
My other books, Eyewall,
Supercell and
Blizzard,
leave little doubt about the theme of the book. Well, little doubt
if you’re at all attuned to the weather. One of my friends, without
knowing any other details, thought Supercell might be a medical drama.
Anyhow, in an effort to keep the
title of my books to one word (easy to remember), my publisher and I struggled
with the title of Plague. The working title of the novel was The
Koltsovo Legacy. That was too long, didn’t convey what the
book was about, and might have led people to think the novel was set in Russia. (The
Koltsovo Institute of Molecular Biology in Russia was once a factory of death,
a center for bioweapons research.)
We finally settled on Plague,
and I don’t think anyone was happy with that, but it was the best we could come
up with. That was over two years ago, long before Ebola became a
household word in America. In retrospect, from a purely commercial
standpoint, i. e., sales, we should have just named the thing Ebola
and let it be done. Of course, not many people knew what
Ebola was then, and we certainly had no idea it would become headline news in
the U. S.
So what about Ebola as a bioweapon? It’s
certainly possible, but not in the way I envisioned it: a bioengineered virus. It’s
much simpler than that. There’s talk now of “Ebola bombers” from
ISIS or other of our Middle Eastern friends targeting Europe and North America.
I guess if people are willing to
strap on a vest filled with C-4 and shrapnel, and fragment themselves and
whoever else is nearby, it’s not much of a stretch to envision individuals so
warped or brainwashed they load themselves up with a deadly virus and walk
among us.
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