pandemic

Why Hallowe’en? Because we love to see fear in the mirror

COVID. War. Totalitarianism. Pandemic. Climate change. Terrorism. Nuclear war. Judging from hyperbole in social media, we are out-and-out terrified of these things. Just consider the rhetoric around the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Will he? Won’t he? Should we? The job of writers of fantasy and speculative fiction is to reflect our audience’s fears back […]

The end is near

I wrote that I will never again say “things can’t get worse.” Because they did, and continue to. COVID-19 cases are increasing again in China, Japan, the U.K. and elsewhere.  And the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine grinds on.  I find this particularly affecting, as I am married to a Ukrainian-Canadian, and I wrote […]

I wonder if this is how Europeans felt in 1331

Covid-19 is far from the first pandemic the world has faced. The bubonic plague first emerged in history during the sixth century CE. Called the Plague of Justinian, it spread rapidly around the Mediterranean, the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanian Empire, killing off an estimated one-third of the population. Some estimates put the death […]