Plague from Space

There are bits of this that haven't aged too well (especially the treatment of the female characters - in sum total, 3: the quickly damseled love interest, a rape victim, and a hysterical farmer's wife). Others still work really nicely, though: it basically feels like a potboiler rewrite of Arrival with a pandemic added on top, and with some nice 20-minutes-into-the-future touches (Pakistani UN soldiers snarking at NYC cops that they wouldn't find their way around in Karachi either). Great read for when you're sufferieng from a really bad cold, too.

1978 printing, so presumably the original and shorter version of this novel, which has apparently been published at two different lengths and under several titles. First published in 1965, and thus dated in odd little ways -- not least being the lack of some 1990s-level consumer technology in a story set in a then near future where we have the technology to send a manned mission to Jupiter.

The story opens with that manned mission's return to earth in dramatic fashion, with an emergency landing right on top of Kennedy Airport in New York, one which wreaks havoc on the airport. Young emergency room doctor Sam Bertolli is part of one of the first ambulance teams on the scene, and is directed to the ship itself. Thus he is the first to show more encounter the sole survivor -- who dies within a few minutes of a deadly disease brought back from Jupiter.

There follows a medical mystery drama, as the city medical services follow standard quarantine procedures, and the situation escalates. Harrison does an excellent job of showing the hard decisions that need to be made and the human reactions -- the people desperate to protect their beloved animals from a vital culling programme, the people trying to cover their own backs in the political games being played, the conflicting priorities in the battle to prevent the disease from spreading beyond the city. There's a lot of good world-building detail about what the medical teams actually *do* in such a situation, rather than simple hand-waving. Unfortunately the mismatch between extrapolated technology levels and what we really ended up with can break suspension of disbelief for current audiences, in part because Harrison did such a good and careful job with this. But for all that it's dated in places, it's a good read, with a strongly drawn near-future world, some great characters, and a deadly serious task for them to do. show less

Den kompetente og handlekraftige ambulancelæge og skadestuelæge Sam Bertolli bliver kastet ud i en pludseligt opstået ulykke ved Kennedy Airport. Et af historiens problemer er at den fortæller detaljeret om lægearbejdet og dermed er fastlåst i en virkelighed, der aldrig rigtig opstod. Fx er mange af ambulancefolkene jo nu særligt trænede paramedicinere, så lægerne kan arbejde i akutmodtagelsen i stedet for at køre rundt på vejene. Og der er klart en rolle som akutlæge, men ikke så man skifter hele tiden.
Et rumskib 'Pericles' har været omkring Jupiter, men var ansat for at være gået tabt, da det pludseligt dukker op og lander noget skødesløst og uanmeldt i en lufthavn, hvor det forårsager store tab af menneskeliv. show more Desuden ser det ud til at det eneste overlevende har noget, der ligner byldepest og smitten breder sig selv om myndighederne gør alt det rigtige.

???

Historien er fra 1965 og dette er et genoptryk fra 1991. Det virker helt forkert at der ikke er en katastrofeplan for Kennedy Airport og at en Jupiterraket pludseligt dukker op og lander uden at der er slået alarm. show less

Dr. Sam Bertolli attempts to uncover the cause of a deadly plague brought back from Jupiter by the Pericles' crew.

When a spaceship returns with only one crew member from a mysterious disease, and the survivor, Commander Rand, is hideously disfigured and dying, Dr. Bertolli must race to find a cure and expose the truth behind the cover-up.

Short, but good enough for a quick read.

aka The Jupiter Legacy