Dragon Virus by Laura Anne Gilman

Introduction
The Rapture Different
    Walter Jon Williams
    “Every Rapture’s different,” Laura Anne Gilman tells us
early on in her new work Dragon Virus ,
and this proves a useful tool for looking at the book as a whole. The book
depicts massive change seen through half a dozen different eyes, and whether it’s
the Rapture or the end of civilization or the next stage in human evolution
depends on which character is looking, and when.
    Another useful tool for looking at Dragon Virus is the notion embodied in the title of another novel, Soft Apocalypse , by the new writer Will
McIntosh, which reminds us that not every world ends with a bang.
    In a soft apocalypse, change isn’t necessarily violent or
sudden. It doesn’t have to be the result of alien invasion, volcanoes,
earthquakes, thermonuclear war, or advancing legions of zombies. Change can be
insidiously slow, and as crushing and inevitable as an advancing glacier.
    What Dragon Virus depicts is a slow but inescapable change in DNA, the very essence of what makes
people human. It’s a change without any obvious cause, and without a cure, and
it takes place over generations. The scientists don’t have an answer. The army
can’t fight the change, because there’s no one to fight. The politicians can’t
prevent it, because the problem isn’t political. And ordinary people are
helpless, because the problem isn’t ordinary.
    And it’s from the ranks of ordinary people that Laura Anne
Gilman draws her characters. These aren’t supermen who can battle armies of
invaders or who save the world with dazzling super-science: they’re
unexceptional people — cops, an elderly janitor, young people still in school —
whose task is to bear witness. Well-drawn and sympathetic, they’re caught in
the change without being able to alter its course. They can hope to survive;
they do their best for their loved ones; they deal with the changed
circumstances of their lives as well as they can.
    They soldier on and do their jobs. They avoid violence and
fanaticism, and seek love and companionship. These people have heart. You care
about them — and through them, you care about what is happening in Gilman’s
world.
    These characters can’t escape the bubble of change, and
their only choice is to somehow adapt. The answers they find in their
increasingly alien landscape are personal and conditional. Even those who aren’t
strictly human struggle to retain their humanity.
    Laura Anne Gilman makes you care. You care about her characters
and their choices; you care about what’s happening to their world. And that’s
the best thing you can say about any writer.

One
    You accept the
absurdity of the situation because it is said so seriously. It’s only
later, when you’re out of the scenario, when you’ve had time to cool off and
calm down, you can type up the report and get some distance from it all.
    Religious hysteria. Post-millennial delusions. Things were
easier back when it was only drugs. You just had to hold their hands, keep them
from jumping out the window until they came down.
    “Hear you had a good one.” Molly leans over the partition,
sleepy blue eyes barely visible under the brim of her gimmie cap, the trooper
logo covered with a fine layer of red grit.
    She’s been off-roading; must have been in on that
pursuit-of-suspect I heard over the radio. Nice job — money went into the
river, perp tried to off himself with a cop-induced suicide. No great loss to
the gene pool. She’s pulled the dust mask down, and it hangs around her neck,
government-issue trendy, what all the best cops are wearing.
    “Wheelies.”
    One word speaks a multitude. Wheelies aren’t the worst of
the god-needies, although I’m not fond of any of them. The RV-loaded caravans
of holy rollers — wheelies, for short —will at least pack up and go away,
eventually. Just not before they’ve riled the locals with their Bible thumping
and lamentations. Like there wasn’t enough of that