“In its initial stages, Shen Fever is difficult to detect. Early symptoms include memory lapse, headaches, disorientation, shortness of breath, and fatigue. Because these symptoms are often mistaken for the common cold, patients are often unaware they have contracted Shen Fever. They may appear functional and are still able to execute rote, everyday tasks. However, these initial symptoms will worsen.”
The entire story revolves around a pandemic. The construction of memories and how they relate to identity and daily existence is foregrounded in this symptom of the contagion. Also important, however, is the follow-up described here in which the symptoms are not immediately and obviously connected, leading to confusion with the symptoms of the common cold. At one level the book is an ironic commentary on the familiar complaint about how science can do things like allow humans to step foot on the moon but has yet to cure a common cold. The upshot of the irony is that there is really nothing “common” about any viral infection and that is why there has never really been a “cure” for any of them since they all still exist. This particular contagion proves to be exceptionally uncommon as it stimulates extreme cases of nostalgia to the point of engineering an almost zombie-like existence in which people latch upon recreating their past to the detriment of their present. This becomes a metaphorical commentary on various zombifying aspects of modern society.
“The future is more exponentially exploding rents. The future is more condo buildings, more luxury housing bought by shell companies of the global wealthy elite. The future is more Whole Foods, aisles of refrigerated cut fruit packaged in plastic containers. The future is more Urban Outfitters, more Sephoras, more Chipotles. The future just wants more consumers.”
Jonathan is the father of the protagonist’s baby, a writer, and a dedicated Thorsteinian futurist who sees the world developing ever more toward one in which people are certain to lose their humanity to consumerism. One of the aspects of modern society which has effectively made people more zombie-like is, of course, the trend toward consumerism. The author has admitted she was highly influenced by the “… of the Dead” series of films made by George Romero, the second of which clearly fostered the influence most heavily. This prediction of a coming dystopic future for humanity sounds like something which could come straight from that film and, indeed, the thematic thrust of the entire novel is one in which the zombified state of those suffering from Shen Fever is symbolic at least as much as it is a literal illness.
“One zombie can be easily killed, but a hundred zombies is another issue. Only amassed do they really pose a threat. This narrative, then, is not about any individual entity, per se, but about an abstract force: the force of the mob, of mob mentality. Perhaps it’s better known these days as the hive mind. You can’t see it. You can’t forecast it. It strikes at any time, whenever, wherever, like a natural disaster, a hurricane, an earthquake.”
The zombie has always been a useful metaphorical trope precisely for the reasons that Bob is explaining here. Consider that a single vampire can potentially infect an entire small village, but a single zombie (in the cinematic sense, not the historical voodoo sense) is capable of inspiring almost no terror at all beyond a single victim. So, in addition to exploring themes related to nostalgia and consumerism, the story is intended to raise the issue of what can be done when herd mentality gets out of control. This is a novel that definitely was published at the right time as the years since it arrived only served to cement the necessity of developing a response to this very issue. Of course, the analogy is not perfect since, after all, a thousand vampires can hypothetically cause far greater harm than a thousand zombies, but the point is that sometimes it is easy to overlook the potential danger of the viral idea of infecting a few until it has infected so many that it is no longer as easy to contain. Bob’s observations about the unexpected quality of herd mentality would have seemed absolutely prescient if this book were published in 2010, but even as late as January 5, 2021, it was just another warning shot not being taken seriously.
