Mass Hysteria by Michael Patrick HicksMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Review: MASS HYSTERIA by Michael Patrick Hicks
Over decades, humanity has worried about an apocalypse, constructing disparate possibilities: nuclear war, comets, asteroids, meteors, extraterrestrial invasions, even eclipses (as earlier generations feared). In the last several decades, we've also learned to fear chemical and biological warfare, and genetically engineered or naturally occurring pandemics. Don't forget our Sun's delivery of solar flares, electromagnetic pulses, and coronal mass ejections. It's enough to make a thinking person hide.
MASS HYSTERIA very neatly ties several possibilities into one implacable package, delivering the horror straight to Earth in a tide of meteor impacts. You can run, but not very far and not very fast. I say "implacable" and that is exactly the definition of this one-size-fits-all pandemic: first animals, next humans (who prove to be another species of animal after all--there is no human "high moral ground" here. Kindness, compassion, even family feeling, are eradicated in an instant, virulently and graphically so.)
MASS HYSTERIA (the title proves literally true, of many species) is contemporary science fiction coupled with extreme horror. It is not-not-NOT for the faint of heart. It is not for the easily-offended. If you are an animal lover, watch out. The world as we know it has become a massively ugly mess, and survival means strength, swiftness, and base instincts; even then, survival is not guaranteed. Every single living being is pitted against all others.
That said, I was tremendously excited for the opportunity to review MASS HYSTERIA. That excitement continued throughout the book and on to the ("Oh my! I can't believe it devolved to this!") end. The plotting stayed consistent throughout. So yes, I shouldn't have been startled at the ending. Author Michael Patrick Hicks transported me to a world where the old phrase "dog-eat-dog" can't begin to do justice. He made this new situation unending and plausible. May it never come to pass.
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