Three consecutive fictions I read had retrovirus as a key element of the plot. Seriously!?! I did not know before I started them.
In Inferno, the genius villain used the retrovirus to render a third of the human population infertile.
In Atlantis Genes, the ingenuity is the way the virus spreads. It lies dormant until the host receives a specific radiation exposure. Two things happen next: the host dies from the virus infection in a nasty way; the host also beams out the same radiation pattern that activate the genes nearby. Clearly the host is infectious even after death. In this way, the disease would spread extremely quickly and across all containment barriers.
The book is the first of a two-book series. The second book is Atlantis Plague. The plot is really too complex, borderline confusing. Clearly, we human beings were being bred, genetically over the past several hundreds of thousands of years to become warriors for another species far far away. The harvesting time comes when they activate the genes that were long ago embedded in everyone of us. Those who survive, roughly 10% of us, are the fruits of this breeding program and will multiply further.
In Forbidden, the founding fathers introduced retrovirus to rid human kind of all emotions, except for fear.
All other emotions: love, passion, sorrow, regret, joy, etc. were deemed evil and causes for human self-destruction. If this species, homo sapiens, is to survive, there shall be no emotions, except for fear, used to govern and control orderly behaviors. The new is the era of Order and the old was Chaos.
But someone had 5 doses of “cure” that can restore 5 people’s full emotions. Also, someone, after 500 years, will be born with a natural immunity to the viral genes. And the story begins…
It is the first of a 3-book series. The second one is Mortal and third Sovereign.
This seems to be a trend. SciFi is no longer about life forms, but genes. I probably should just get used to this.