History Literature / Newsflesh

In the summer of 2014, three men tried to help the world, and nearly ended it instead. In Colorado, Dr. Daniel Wells worked on a genetically engineered virus designed to cure cancer, finally achieving a breakthrough with teenager Amanda Amberlee. In Virginia, Dr. Alexander Kellis worked on a similar program to wipe out the common cold. And in Pennsylvania, Brandon Majors led a group of college students to break into Dr. Kellis's lab, setting free the experimental and incompletely tested virus.

In an attempt to prevent mass panic, [[ApocalypticGagOrder the government decided to lie]] to the public; newscasters were given scripts indicating that it was either [[PretendWereDead a zombie walk]], or a variation of [=H1N1=] making people [[NotAZombie act aggressively and violently]]. However, one brave doctor from the [=CDC=] leaked the real story, even as bloggers and geeks had already guessed the truth and started spreading the word.

Once the worst was over (for some values of "worst"), humanity researched the situation and quickly learned just how screwed they were: ''every mammal on the planet'' was infected with Kellis-Amberlee; ''any mammal'' large enough (about 40 pounds) would reanimate as a zombie upon death. A few would simply convert directly into zombies ''without dying''. There was no cure.

** ''Coming to You Live'', a post Feed-trilogy story in which Shaun encounters a threat to his happy ending he can't shoot or hit,

In addition, the short story ''Everglades'' was published in the anthology ''Living Dead 2'' in 2010. (The chronological order of events is ''Countdown'', ''San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats'', then ''Everglades'', ''ATPLH'', then ''TDTDCTSAT'', then ''FEED'' and ''FEEDBACK'', ''Deadline'' and ''Blackout'', followed by ''HGTLHBTS'', then ''PDNTTO'', and ''CTYL''. Ms. Grant won the 2010 John W. Campbell award for best new writer for this series.

* AllThereInTheManual: Links from the website for ''Feed'' show...
** ...what the web and social media are like in the post-Rising world, right down to Twitter conversations during which the typist goes into amplification.

* BigRedButton: A lot of Buffy's tech has this, to accommodate less tech-savvy users. It's also unnerving for the other characters, since most people in this universe are very much averse to the color red, which befits her PlayfulHacker trait.

** Elle is the target of these by her hetero male fanbase. This is why the showrunners jeep a tight lid on the fact that Elle has a girlfriend.

** The Brainpan, whose members are The Monkey, The Cat, and The Fox. The Fox's real name is Elaine, and The Cat used to be called Jane. As for the Monkey, when Shaun addresses him as "Mr. Monkey," he simply replies that [[SarcasmMode "Mr. Monkey" was his father.]]

*** WordOfGod from the author's Website/{{Twitter}} account [[http://twitter.com/seananmcguire/statuses/13144204022 confirms this]].

* [[DruggedLipstick Drugged Makeup]]: Several cases in ''Feedback'' [[spoiler: A bunch of clowns had their pancake spiked with live state Kellis Amberlee]], and [[spoiler: one of Mat's eyeshadow boxes was likewise spiked -- uncertain whether it was to target Mat or to target Wagman]].

** One possible interpretation of what Shaun describes as "sour sounding Spanish" uttered by Maggie in Blackout .

* ItCanThink: [[ZigzaggedTrope Zigzagged]] with the zombies. Alone, they're savages. Put them together and they start showing a fiendish, tactical cunning when hunting and killing.

* LandDownunder: ''How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea'' covers how the Rising went down in Australia. [[AwesomeAussie Australians]] tend to regard to walking dead as just one more bit of dangerous wildlife: take reasonable precautions and go armed, no worries mate.

* SyntheticPlague: Marburg-Amberlee was a benevolent man-made virus. [=Alpha-RC007=] was a benevolent man-made virus. They met. They fell in love. They co-mutated into Kellis-Amberlee, and began attacking other benevolent man-made virii... among other things.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: The Mayday Army. A bunch of well-meaning college age people who, incited by a news article, believed that Kellis's cure for the common cold was going to be sold only to the wealthy, leaving the poor to suffer. So they broke into Kellis's lab and released it before it was tested, and helped cause the Rising.

* ShotgunsAreJustBetter: Weapons for dealing with zombies have also advanced a step in 2040. During the training mission for Alaric that went south, Becks was able to clear out a large batch of zombies when she discovers a belt-fed fully automatic shotgun in Shaun's jeep.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/newsflesh3_5819.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350: The Masons take their news so seriously they're willing to ''die'' to bring you the truth.]]

* EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods: Dr. Abbey has several octopuses, most notably Barney, the Great Pacific octopus who enjoys sticking to the ceiling and grabbing faces. And Dr. Abbey apparently threw him at Shaun once.

* TechnicallyLivingZombie: The amplification process that turns people into zombies doesn’t necessarily have to kill the host, as the stories show converting people going from carrying out their business, to a fully symptomatic carrier of KA within the snap of a finger. William Matras also mentions in his broadcast telling the public about KA and its hazards that headshots are most advised because the infected take longer to bleed out, which means that they’re at least functionally alive enough to bleed to death.

* TechnicallyLivingZombie: The amplification process that turns people into zombies doesn’t necessarily have to kill the host, as the stories show converting people going from begging for others to get away from him, to lunging and biting within a heartbeat.

* OneOfUs: The author mentions in an interview near the end of ''Feed'' that she enjoyed writing it because it let her binge on zombie movies as 'research'.
** And in an in-universe case: Elle is a fan turned actress turned fan-fave as the star of ''Space Crime Continuum'', who has to struggle with people who don't really believe she's a genuine geek.

* ''[[http://thefeedbook.com Feed]]'' (May 2010) - 2011 UsefulNotes/HugoAward nominee for Best Novel and optioned for a motion picture.

* UniquenessValue: Georgia II [spoiler:struggles with this, but ultimately decides that she is as close to the "real" George as they're ever going to get. When she destroys the CDC lab, she makes sure that her two "sisters" are the first things to go.]]

*** [[spoiler:Rebecca; once discovering the garage is full of infected, she locks the door into the Convention Center so they can't get in.]]

*

* CloningBlues: Georgia II, or "[[YouAreNumberSix Subject 7C]]", if you must. [[spoiler: The long-term goal, apparently, was for the CDC to prove that they could cheat death through human cloning. The short-term goal was to rid themselves of that pesky blogger, Shaun Mason. They failed miserably at both.]]

* CloningBlues: Georgia II, or "[[YouAreNumberSix Subject 7C]]", if you must. [[spoiler: The long-term goal, apparently, was to prove that they could cheat death through human cloning. The short-term goal was to rid themselves of that pesky blogger, Shaun Mason. They failed miserably at both.]]

* CloningBlues: Georgia II, or "[[YouAreNumberSix Subject 7C]]", if you must.

*** {{Newsies}} (Georgia, Rick, Mahir and Olivia) do just the facts with no opinion if at all possible.

--> '''Seanan [=McGuire=]:''' The first time I called the CDC, I said that I wanted to talk to someone about possibly designing a zombie virus. ...So every time I came up with a new iteration of Kellis-Amberlee, I would call back and say, "If I did this, this, this, this, this and this, could I raise the dead?" And every single time they would say, "No." And I’d say, "OK," hang up, and go back to working. After about the 17th time, I called and said, "If I did this, this, this, this, this, this and this, could I raise the dead?" And got, "Don’t . . . don’t do that." At that point, I knew I had a viable virus.

* HideYourGays: Subverted. There's a government representative who is married to another woman, and Dr. Alexander Kellis' husband John is mentioned in ''Countdown'', all done normally like there's nothing special to it.

** ManipulativeEditing: Stalnaker, in ''Countdown'', creatively interpreted the facts about Kellis' cold/flu cure, and the way he phrased the story, incited the Mayday Army to break in and release it.

*** At the CDC after they receive Dr. Kellis' research info.

* PatientZero: Inverted. Because there were a fair number of Marburg patients and Kellis' virus had been released into the atmosphere, there was ''no'' patient zero. Instead, when Marburg and Kellis' viruses were done mutating, the Rising began happening spontaneously and simultaneously all over the world. Some people converted on the spot; others were killed and got back up.

** In ''Countdown'': Stalnaker rewinds and replays Dr. Kellis' mention of "distribution channels" as it occurs to him how to spin an article about the Kellis cure.

* TooDumbToLive: People Georgia classifies as "Darwin Was Right" - those who venture into zombie infested hot zones without preparation or training.
** The Mayday Army, a bunch of pothead laypeople who released Dr. Kellis' untested virus, thinking they were freeing the world from Big Pharma.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: The Mayday Army. A bunch of well meaning college age people who, incited by a news article, believed that Kellis' cure for the common cold was going to be sold only to the wealthy, leaving the poor to suffer. So they broke into Kellis's lab and released it before it was tested, and helped cause the Rising.

In 2014, Drs. Kellis and Wells, pursued their good work trying to cure the common cold and cancer, respectively. Stalnaker the journalist, was going for a sensational angle to present Kellis' work. The method he chose riled up a group of would-be activists who broke into Kellis' lab and released his cold cure. In California, as the Rising began, the Masons heard the rumors and took them to heart as true; and two babies were orphaned during the disastrous period before the Rising was under control.

In the summer of 2014, three men tried to help the world, and nearly ended it instead. In Colorado, Dr. Daniel Wells worked on a genetically engineered virus designed to cure cancer, finally achieving a breakthrough with teenager Amanda Amberlee. In Virginia, Dr. Alexander Kellis worked on a similar program to wipe out the common cold. And in Pennsylvania, Brandon Majors led a group of college students to break into Dr. Kellis' lab, setting free the experimental and incompletely tested virus.

''[=Newsflesh=]'' is a series of ZombieApocalypse medical political thrillers written by Creator/MiraGrant (aka Creator/SeananMcGuire]).

''[=Newsflesh=]'' is a series of ZombieApocalypse medical political thrillers written by Creator/MiraGrant (aka Creator/Seanan[=McGuire=]).

''[=Newsflesh=]'' is a series of ZombieApocalypse medical political thrillers written by Creator/MiraGrant (aka Seanan [=McGuire=]).