Short Science Fiction Story Review Adam Roberts Trademark Bugs A Legal History

Tweet

In the anthology, A Practical Guide To The Resurrected (edited by Miller & McFarlane). 2017 Shoreline Of Infinity. Spoiler alerts A chilling legal and medical look at the near future. With virtually every disease conquered, the big pharmaceutical companies face a crisis in which they could go out of business until they start releasing genetically generated minor diseases, like the common cold, tailored and trademarked to their own cures and vaccines. In effect, people have to pay for immunity and cures, and these being trade-marked and encoded to the companies releasing the diseases, no cures issued by the competitors will work. The story is set out as records of various ethical legal battles to promote and protest such business. Various people taking sick try to sue the corporation as do businesses losing money through time off by staff. The principle is that medical corporations are about money, not health and happiness. If you catch an illness you can’t or won’t pay for you just have to put up with it and in effect serve the businesses by spreading them to others. The conclusion indicates that major diseases like cancers might also be released again on such corporate principles. The legalese which the story is written in is sometimes distracting and hard to follow without re-reading, but this is scary stuff. The collection was the best entries in a science fiction writing competition run from Scotland for stories with a future-medicine theme. The winning story and runner-up stories are included and this contribution is from the writer who judged the entries, and is certainly as worthy as the high standard competition luminaries too. Arthur Chappell