Fire (Rodgers novel)

Fire is an apocalyptic science fiction/horror novel by Alan Rodgers, published in 1990 as an original paperback from Bantam Books. It was reprinted by specialty publisher Wildside Press in 2000.

Plot summary

A fundamentalist Christian US President, Paul Green, is unhinged by the accidental death of his wife while she is vacationing in the Soviet Union, and attempts to provoke a nuclear war and thus usher in Armageddon and the Rapture. The expected nuclear holocaust doesn't occur, due to massive malfunctioning in both US and Soviet arsenals, and the US Armed Forces mostly refusing to obey his commands. One bomb goes off in Kansas City. Meanwhile, a genetic engineering research facility has developed a strain of bacteria that can reanimate fossilized tissues from remaining DNA. Due to a bomb explosion at the facility, the bacteria is spread in the area around the facility, animating a dead dog. This occurs while ashes from a fossil trilobite that had been reanimated, then incinerated, by the head researcher, are also loose. He had left the facility with the vial containing the ashes, and died in a fire, with the ashes, having been poured on his body by an angry drug addict (mistaking the vial for drugs), spreading the bacterial infection from a second epicenter. The bacteria turns out to be immune to fire.

Reception

Graham Masterton and J. Michael Straczynski both praised the book at the time of publication, with Straczynski describing it as a mix of "Biblical prophecies, high-tech, and ancient horrors".^[1]

References

• Fire, Alan Rodgers. Bantam Books, 1990. ISBN 0-553-28777-X

External links

• Fire title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database