AIDS in SF

AIDS has had an enormous impact on SF, in plot, characterization, world-building, and theme. Below listing some works and how they treat AIDS. Aspects of AIDS that have affected SF include:

• the sex- and blood-based transmission of AIDS;
• the often fearful and homophobic reactions of the public and state, especially in the early years;
• the ubiquity of loss in some communities, and the sense of deep grief over such a rapidly sweeping and great loss;
• the difficulty in identifying the disease, and finding a cure;

Even when AIDS is not, itself, the disease, its influence can be seen in the fictional plagues that sweep the pages of SF.

Significance in plot and world-building

Numerous stories have revolved around AIDS or AIDS-like diseases, or premised their story of state tyranny, sexual repression, or social breakdown on state (over)-reactions to AIDS or mutations of AIDS.

• Barrus, Tim. Genocide: The Anthology (1989) (an aids-like plauge has destroyed civilization)
• Bryan, Jed A. A Cry in the Desert (1987) - (the beginning AIDS crisis allows opportunists to target queers ... )
• Buck, Charles H. The Master Cure (1989) (a genetically engineered AIDS-like virus targets racial minorities)
• Claiborne, Sybil. In the Garden of Dead Cars - (post-plague US is anti-sex ...)
• Crozier, Ouida. Shadows After Dark (1993, Rising Tide Press) (Extra-dimensional vampires are getting AIDS.)
• Donovan, Rita. The Plague Saint - (post-plague Canada ...)
• Douglas, Lauren Wright. In the Blood. (1989, Naiad) (future US divided by aids-like plague; blood is stolen from healthy people; lesbian sf adventure)
• Hickman, Tracy. The Immortals (1996) - (AIDS spin-off; queers but also straights are targets of a conservative backlash sending people to concentration camps)
• Spinrad, Norman. Journals of the Plague Years (1988) - (AIDS has mutated & spun off into many other rapidly mutating plagues. Out of the future America, with Quarantine Zones, Armies of the Living Dead, and "interface" sex replacing "meat sex", arise a new cult, dedicated to forcing the rapid mutating of the virus(es) through massive infection.)
• Stewart, Jean. the Isis series. (takes place in a United States fragmented by an AIDS spin-off plague, AGH (AIDS/Genital Herpes). Lesbians were extra-immune, and then later the Freeland developed vaccines.)

• Oberndorf, Charles. Sheltered Lives (1992) (people with "hives" are sent to concentration camps to die; "hives" are not AIDS but are clearly inspired in part by proposals to deal with AIDS. This was just one piece of an overall theme of state control and supervision of human life.)

Thematic and metaphoric treatments

Numerous works have treated AIDS metaphorically, layering new complexity and awareness of disease transmission into stories of lycanthropy or vampirism, or examining the tragedy of AIDS in light of older motifs and plots.

• Kerr, Peg. The Wild Swans (1999) - (AIDS story & retelling of the old fairy tale.)
• Merliss, Mark. An Arrow's Flight (1998). (Fascinating retelling of the Trojan War, entwined with the gay 70s & 80s & the oncoming, also seemingly interminable, war with AIDS ...)

Use in characterization

Characters that have AIDS, much like characters with tuberculosis (consumption) in literature about or from the 19th century. Creates sympathy, sense of doom, etc.