The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 - the worst widespread outbreak in recorded history - claimed an estimated 100 million lives globally. Yet only in recent decades has it captured the attention of historians, scientists and fiction writers. This study surveys influenza research over the last century in original scientific and historical documents, and establishes a critical paradigm for the appreciation of influenza fiction.

Through close readings of 15 imaginative works the author elucidates the contents of and the interaction between the medical and the fictional. Responses to the 1918 pandemic are grouped in five overlapping periods: Discovery (1890-1940), Recovery (1921-1946), Recursion (2005-2006), Characterization (1998-2005), and the Novelistic or avian virus period (1997-2014).

Coverage extends from Pfeiffer’s 1892 bacillus theory, to the multidisciplinary effort to isolate the virus (1919-1933), to the reconstruction of the H1N1 viral genome from archival and exhumed RNA (1995-2005), to the emergence of H5N1 and H7N9 avian viruses (1997-2014).

This book demonstrates that pandemic fiction has been more than a therapeutic medium for survivors. A prodigious resource for the history of medicine, it is also a forum for ethical, social, legal, national defense and public health issues.