On a book and a TV show
From The Wall Street Journal (there tend to be a lot of book-review collections at the end of the calendar year):
“If sci-fi mirrors the present instead of imagining the future, then 2021 should have seen a wave of pandemic stories. It didn’t happen, perhaps because authors are so aware of all their many predecessors, back to Jack London and his “The Scarlet Plague,” in 1912. How to find a new angle?
‘The End of Men’ by Christina Sweeney-Baird
Christina Sweeney-Baird’s “The End of Men” offers the threat of a gender-specific disease. Only men get it, and it’s 90% fatal, way worse than Covid-19. The question is, what would the social effects be? A lot of retraining for women, really serious quarantining for baby boys, and a complete power shift politically. Food for uncomfortable thought.”
This brief book review brought to mind an episode from the latest The Twilight Zone TV series (2019) called “Not All Men” about a meteor shower that appears to make most men crazy, violent, and immoral. It turns out at the end that the men may not have contracted a crazy-making virus from the meteors but just used the incident as an excuse for bad behavior, as at least one man’s behavior does not change. He just says he makes ethical choices.
I think it is an interesting story in this time of virus. It is also interesting in the context of literary feminism (which admittedly I don’t know well). Many feminists seem to want to destroy patriarchy for its wars, brutality, and economic injustice. But it is not always clear what they want to replace it.