Pandemic of Revenge: The White Plague by Frank Herbert

 

Let's start with the obvious: The White Plague is not Dune. But it is definitely Frank Herbert: provocative, complex, dense, and oddly compelling. And yes, there are epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter.

Instead of a galactic empire 20-some thousand years in the future, we start with Ireland circa 1980. Microbiologist John Roe O'Neill loses his wife and children in a terrorist attack. And later a virus decimates humanity, or rather, half of humanity, as it only affects women. It turns out that O'Neill designed the virus as revenge, intending it to strike Ireland, England, and Libya. Of course, viruses don't respect national boundaries and it becomes a global pandemic.

Along the way we meet a UN task force, the US President, the Pope, a woman who survives in isolation with her fiancé, a group of women and one man living in a Pagan commune, and a small band of Irishmen (including a priest, a soldier, and a mute boy) who meet a strange American named O'Donnell who may or may not be the O'Neill who unleashed the virus, but who promises to help them find a cure. Weirdly, it turns out he is the same person, or rather two persons in one (so is he really the same person? A fun philosophical question!)

If this sounds complicated, it's because it is. Actually it's a great deal more complicated than I just described. The revenge plot is a bit thin (sure, he's destroyed by the death of his family, but killing all other women seems a bit overboard, doesn't it?). Or maybe it's just that I've never cared much as revenge as a character motivation. 

But the deeper thoughts about revenge are as relevant now as they were 40 years ago: once you ignite the fires of revenge, can you keep them from consuming the world? Does revenge actually satisfy as much as it promises? Does revenge ultimately destroy the person who seeks it, or is redemption possible?

There's also the weird gender stuff that won't surprise any Frank Herbert fans. What does this novel say about gender and biology? Why did Herbert decide to have a virus that kills women? Is that supposed to be more horrific (and it is plenty horrific, especially reading it in 2023 as we hopefully are nearing the end of a real-life pandemic)? How would the novel change if it were men who were killed? And how does this impact society afterwards: are women more or less powerful being in the extreme minority around the globe? What does this tell us about Frank Herbert's ideas about gender, or our own?

I distinctly remember checking this out from the library when I was a teenager after having read Dune for the first time. I never got around to reading it back then, but I think I appreciated it much more as an adult. This is definitely the more mature style of later Frank Herbert (published 1982). Reading this was like an IOU to my teenage self 30 years ago, so I'm glad I finally cashed it in. I feel like I'm a big enough Frank Herbert fan that I need to check out more of his non-Dune work, maybe next with The Jesus Incident, The Godmakers, or The Saratoga Barrier.

See also my Goodreads review.