Biohacker

by Leonard Carpenter

Fans of Outbreak and Contagion will love Biohacker!

Biohacker is a near-future medical thriller about a designer plague. The anonymous computer and gene hacker, a physician/stalker obsessed with reducing Earth's population, announces his intent in highly personal emails to journalists Will and Eva Warner. They soon realize that the plague's creator, this self-styled Biohacker, must be one of the medical team they've been helping to fight the Blackpox epidemic. But which one?

Settings are international, from highrise LA towers to hospitals to third world slums in over-stressed 2037. Future hi-tech includes freeway rail lanes, crowded urban skylanes, and flying air terminals known as Skyports. The characters are diverse and at their own risk, become romantically involved. The troubled and delusional antagonist is in treatment with an AI computer talking-head named Dr. Ergo, but he has difficulty keeping the therapy sessions offline and secret.

From a violent, sinister buildup as the contagion is released, the mystery deepens. Events accelerate to a final chase and confrontation that will settle the fate of the world and its human occupants.

This highly-charged novel may spark controversy, or even social movements, but it will certainly grip the reader. The story delivers a tense, mind-bending conclusion as the investigators, or those who survive, learn the diabolical secret of the biohacker.

Is the world ready for Biohacker?
Not always a fun read, but it may save the planet.
A pain-free solution to pop-pollution.
A medical mystery set in Earth’s VERY near future.
A millennial tragedy about love.
A mad biohacker, a designer virus, and a happy outcome – but for whom?

307 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 29, 2011

About the author

Leonard Paul Carpenter (born 1948) is an American technical writer and author of fantasy, historical and futurist fiction. He began by selling horror/fantasy tales and Conan the Barbarian sequels, eleven novels totaling a million words. This is more of the Conan saga than any other author living or dead, including Conan's inspired creator Robert E. Howard in the 1930's. Now Carpenter breaks out of sci-fantasy with his mainstream historical opus Lusitania Lost, a wartime epic of the sinking of the luxury liner in 1915 by a German U-boat, which ultimately caused the US to enter WWI. This is the first novelization of an event more dramatic and significant than the Titanic tragedy 3 years earlier. Carpenter has also written the screenplay adaptation of this book. Another novel of his, the future-history thriller Biohacker, is available on Amazon Kindle. Carpenter is the widowed survivor of a 50-year courtship and marriage, proud father of 3, and owner of a superstar Frisbee dog, Lizzie. He spends his time traveling and writing about a Cuban fantasy quest and real-life engagement in his just-published novel, Tropic of Cuba, now serialized on Kindle Vella at Amazon (first chapters free!)

Reviews

[Paul Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biohacker by Leonard Carpenter (2011) is a science-fictionish thriller set in the near future. Global warming’s impact, compounded by the population explosion and advances in medicine and technology, has created a world of haves and have-nots. As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, strange new diseases develop, many merely mutations of older pathogens; but some diseases are deliberately bio-engineered to cull the herd.
A madman, calling himself Jack (after his hero Jack the Ripper) and in love with Willis Warner’s wife Eva, infects Willis and half the world with a deadly virus. Can Will and Eva determine Jack’s true identity and stop him in time? Great story and believable characters.

[Bruce Biggin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was okay. I didn't like the protagonist and that makes it hard to like the novel. He was a preachy save the world from itself kind of guy and he cheated on his wife. I wanted to know more about Eva and what actually happened in the fertility clinic and have more of the mystery explained behind Jack/Biohacker/Malkin. Too much time spent on Jack's psychiatric sessions when in the end it turns out that all of that was just in Malkin's mind. I enjoyed the air travel sections and some of the imagination put into what things will be like in 15 or 20 years. Long technical passages about a variety of topics that made it hard to keep the momentum of the book. In the end it felt like I was being preached at, for the several hours it took to read the book. I would recommend it to someone who is passionate about saving the planet. Thanks to Katrina for the free Kindle copy.

[Brandi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Biohacker is a suspenseful, action packed sci-fi thriller. This book was written well before today’s current events, however, it can very much be a story about what the world is currently experiencing. Biohacker involves a man made bioweapon that is unleashed unbeknownst to the world. Once it is released, individuals all over the world become sick, regardless of race, ethnicity, social class, etc. Anyone and everyone can fall victim to this virus! We do not find out until the end of Biohacker, the true identity of the antagonist and his true reason for unleashing the virus. What is the fallout? How is humanity affected? If you enjoy reading sci-fi and viruses, Biohacker is a great read!

[Dave Condie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been my pleasure to just finish "Biohacker". Great conceit, edge of chair intensity and twists that keep you guessing. Population pressure, pandemics, infidelity, and psychopathic medical researchers are all in the mix. Not afraid to take readers out of their comfort zone. Takes today's issues head on and keeps you engaged. No easy trick.