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The Nightmare Factor
As the number of deaths from what appears to be a virulent strain of flu continues to mount, the possibility grows that the epidemic is the first stage in germ warfare
- GenresThriller
335 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1978
3 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
About the author
Thomas N. Scortia
54 books12 followersThomas Nicholas Scortia was a science fiction author. He worked in the American aerospace industry until the late 1960s/early 1970s. He collaborated on several works with fellow author Frank M. Robinson. He sometimes used the pseudonyms Scott Nichols, Gerald MacDow, and Arthur R. Kurtz.
Scortia was born in Alton, Illinois. He attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned a degree in chemistry in 1949. He worked for a number of aerospace companies during the 1950s and 1960s, and held a patent for the fuel used by one of the Jupiter fly-by missions.
Scortia had been writing in his spare time while still working in the aerospace field. When the industry began to see increased unemployment in the early 1970s, Scortia decided to try his hand at full-time writing. His first novel, The Glass Inferno (in collaboration with Frank M. Robinson) was the inspiration for the 1974 film The Towering Inferno. Scortia also collaborated with Dalton Trumbo on the novel The Endangered Species.
Scortia died of leukemia in La Verne, California on April 29, 1986.
Scortia was born in Alton, Illinois. He attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned a degree in chemistry in 1949. He worked for a number of aerospace companies during the 1950s and 1960s, and held a patent for the fuel used by one of the Jupiter fly-by missions.
Scortia had been writing in his spare time while still working in the aerospace field. When the industry began to see increased unemployment in the early 1970s, Scortia decided to try his hand at full-time writing. His first novel, The Glass Inferno (in collaboration with Frank M. Robinson) was the inspiration for the 1974 film The Towering Inferno. Scortia also collaborated with Dalton Trumbo on the novel The Endangered Species.
Scortia died of leukemia in La Verne, California on April 29, 1986.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 21, 2016
We are now well into the 21st Century. Many of the "terrifying" and "blood-curdling" scenarios predicted by novelists in the 1960's and 1970's have come about.......more or less. The Africanized Killer Bees are in the United States, the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign is bizarre and surrealistic, AIDS, Ebola, approximately eight billion Humans crowd this tiny planet, nuclear power plants have experienced disasters (Chernobyl, Japan), there is war in the Middle East that now involves American troops, large scale (and small scale) terrorist acts are taking place in the United States on a monthly and weekly basis, digital manipulation of imagery is now an everyday fact, remote controlled aerial drones are toys and marijuana is becoming legal. Heck 9/11 exceeded most novelists and screenwriters imaginations and yet life goes on as we adjust to the "new normal". Actually it could be that we're like the frog that doesn't realize the water temperature is increasing and eventually we're just cooked though ,evidently, modern research shows that the frog will jump out as the temperature increases. Whoops I'm digressing again sorry about that.
Anyway my point is the future is now. Many of the novels that were about the "unthinkable" are now passé. Luckily we haven't yet experienced a nuclear war, a mass die off courtesy of a meteor strike/ genetically engineered virus and ,as of 2016, the dead have not risen to eat our brains. Whew. So this summer I decided to read of few of the old apocalyptic themed novels to see how they compare to the real thing.
"The Nightmare Factor" was written by Thomas N. Scortia. During the seventies and early eighties Mr. Scortia and his writing partner Frank M. Robinson enjoyed some success writing disaster and apocalyptic themed novels. Mr. Scortia was an engineer who had worked for NASA (until losing his job to the budget cuts of the post Apollo days) and Mr. Robinson was a science fiction writer and U.S. Navy veteran (WWII & Korea). Robinson had two degrees in the disparate fields of journalism and physics and real-world political experience; he was Harvey Milk's speech writer believe it or not. The two men definitely had more than a passing familiarity with technology/engineering, Human nature, government, the military and the red tape that those organizations generate.
"The Nightmare Factor" is about a weaponized bacteria that is released at a convention of veterans in San Francisco. The bacteria is designed to target only certain members of the population and once it's targets are dead ceases to kill. Much of the novel focuses on the investigation and is obviously inspired by the outbreak of what is now known as "Legionnaires Disease" (see 1976 Philadelphia Legionnaires' disease outbreak). Throughout the novel there is a focus on governmental bureaucracy and how self-serving politicians and bureaucrats hinder things and do not have the best interests of the populace at heart. There is also a low grade anti-military sentiment that runs throughout many of the books written by Scortia and Robinson. Naturally some aspects of the novel are dated. Newspapers are a major player and the government has an easier time controlling the flow of information. The investigation takes place with very little media oversight and there is no mass panic for our heroes to deal with. Good luck writing about such an event now without including a healthy dose of anarchy to accompany the tale. Eventually the villain is revealed and the book ends with a warning. An uneasy ending at best.
Well that's the plot. The book itself is something of a yawner. There is no real suspense, no feeling that things are teetering on the brink of Doomsday, and that's not a good thing for a novel that is supposed to be thrilling and disturbing. Since the disease is engineered to kill specific targets, and then cease to be a threat, it's more akin to a cruise missile than Captain Trips. The protagonist spends almost as much time having sex with another female doctor ,and worrying about their relationship, as he does actually working the case (while being hindered by idiot and spineless bureaucrats and a nasty Army officer) which results in a suspense novel that is boring and uninvolving (notice how long it took me to get through it). Perhaps because we have lived through so many events (see above), that were once the property of novelists, there is no way an imagined event is going to seem that impressive. Maybe the authors were worried that if the book was too technical they would lose the readers attention (a criticism directed at "The Andromeda Strain") or ,maybe, they didn't want to write an apocalyptic novel so they went to far in the other direction. Well, whatever their motivation, they turned out an unengrossing novel. Who would have thought that such a scenario would be a yawn.
Anyway my point is the future is now. Many of the novels that were about the "unthinkable" are now passé. Luckily we haven't yet experienced a nuclear war, a mass die off courtesy of a meteor strike/ genetically engineered virus and ,as of 2016, the dead have not risen to eat our brains. Whew. So this summer I decided to read of few of the old apocalyptic themed novels to see how they compare to the real thing.
"The Nightmare Factor" was written by Thomas N. Scortia. During the seventies and early eighties Mr. Scortia and his writing partner Frank M. Robinson enjoyed some success writing disaster and apocalyptic themed novels. Mr. Scortia was an engineer who had worked for NASA (until losing his job to the budget cuts of the post Apollo days) and Mr. Robinson was a science fiction writer and U.S. Navy veteran (WWII & Korea). Robinson had two degrees in the disparate fields of journalism and physics and real-world political experience; he was Harvey Milk's speech writer believe it or not. The two men definitely had more than a passing familiarity with technology/engineering, Human nature, government, the military and the red tape that those organizations generate.
"The Nightmare Factor" is about a weaponized bacteria that is released at a convention of veterans in San Francisco. The bacteria is designed to target only certain members of the population and once it's targets are dead ceases to kill. Much of the novel focuses on the investigation and is obviously inspired by the outbreak of what is now known as "Legionnaires Disease" (see 1976 Philadelphia Legionnaires' disease outbreak). Throughout the novel there is a focus on governmental bureaucracy and how self-serving politicians and bureaucrats hinder things and do not have the best interests of the populace at heart. There is also a low grade anti-military sentiment that runs throughout many of the books written by Scortia and Robinson. Naturally some aspects of the novel are dated. Newspapers are a major player and the government has an easier time controlling the flow of information. The investigation takes place with very little media oversight and there is no mass panic for our heroes to deal with. Good luck writing about such an event now without including a healthy dose of anarchy to accompany the tale. Eventually the villain is revealed and the book ends with a warning. An uneasy ending at best.
Well that's the plot. The book itself is something of a yawner. There is no real suspense, no feeling that things are teetering on the brink of Doomsday, and that's not a good thing for a novel that is supposed to be thrilling and disturbing. Since the disease is engineered to kill specific targets, and then cease to be a threat, it's more akin to a cruise missile than Captain Trips. The protagonist spends almost as much time having sex with another female doctor ,and worrying about their relationship, as he does actually working the case (while being hindered by idiot and spineless bureaucrats and a nasty Army officer) which results in a suspense novel that is boring and uninvolving (notice how long it took me to get through it). Perhaps because we have lived through so many events (see above), that were once the property of novelists, there is no way an imagined event is going to seem that impressive. Maybe the authors were worried that if the book was too technical they would lose the readers attention (a criticism directed at "The Andromeda Strain") or ,maybe, they didn't want to write an apocalyptic novel so they went to far in the other direction. Well, whatever their motivation, they turned out an unengrossing novel. Who would have thought that such a scenario would be a yawn.
October 7, 2019
If you’ve read this book, you’re probably wondering why I even gave this book two stars. It probably doesn't even deserve a one star. I finished reading this book about a week ago for a high school project and now, we have to make a book review and before I go any farther, this wasn’t a very good book… at all. Anyways, I was looking at how people reviewed this book, and people seem to agree that it wasn’t a very good book too. Maybe if there was more suspense, it just maybe may have been better.
This book in some ways is more realistic than you probably think though. For example, controlling a virus is very much possible but not in the way this book interprets it. In the book you had to be exposed to the virus twice then be exposed to Vanadium. In reality, you would only have to be exposed to the virus once. But to have to be exposed to an outside material is also possible. If the U.S. wanted to, it could launch a virus into any place it wants to, and vice versa for other countries.
This book is more or less a mediocrity. While reading this book, I didn't feel pulled into it. It was in no way interesting at all and there were no suspenseful moments were the world might come to an end in one move. The closet we got to suspenseful was towards the end when Dr.Doohan confronted one of enemies, but even that ended in three pages. Don’t even get me started on the actual plot, if you can even call it a plot. The book starts off in a police chase that isn’t too relevant to the story. Then most of the book is just Doohan and the general running around like a chicken that just got their heads chopped off, oh… and Doohan’s relationship with another doctor named Suzanne. Is this a pitiful semi-romantic or a mediocrity. The ending might have been worse than the book itself, Doohan and the general get into a gun fight which ends in half a page, and the virus factory blows up, that ended in two pages. Anyways I don’t want to ruin the entire ending if anyone even bothers reading the book.
September 1, 2022
Just interesting enough to finish but kind of lacking in thrills. It's well-written but is a let down in the actual tension of the story. It's more of a spy story than anything with the disease part a mystery instead of an immediate threat, we're just figuring out what it is and who set it up. Fits very well into the 70's conspiracy paranoia and of course parallels to the 70's Invasion of the Body Snatchers set in SF which one of the masterworks of paranoia. The actual big danger of the virus is completely in the telling how it could be used. The lead example of it used was just to kick off the investigation. I also found it pretty confusing because they figure out one way to use it and then another way near the end. Somehow the authors fumbled the most important explanation a bit. Also didn't understand the plan of the bad guys, either they care or they don't. It seems they cared or not just for plot reasons. Doohan seems like an easy target that they somehow keep missing and he somehow keeps putting himself in stupid situations just to have an actual plot. It gets a bit tiresome. It's got a great 70's aesthetic to it, many mentions of conversation pits and a pale green bathtub.
February 22, 2023
When the World Health Organization’s Dr. Calvin Doohan is called in to investigate a spate of virulent pneumonia cases he suspects an accidental release from a laboratory, but as the mortality rate climbs to 100% and there are still no secondary infections from the original outbreak at a convention, his suspicions turn to darker possibilities. When the military start to take over the investigation the officious Major Hanson shuts Doohan out of the loop and Cal must use his friendship with a virologist, Dr. Paul French, to keep apprised. Together they sniff out a scenario which the evidence points to - a tailored virus designed as a bioweapon. The unknown perpetrators are sanguine enough about killing 75 test subjects that Doohan and French must entertain fears for their lives. When people involved in the original research and also investigators start turning up dead Doohan must make an uneasy alliance with MI6 agents who have their own agendas. When the startling mortality rate proves to be totally unplanned the purpose of the virus must be re-evaluated, and both its source and its intended outcomes are shocking. A very good techno-thriller from Thomas N. Scortia & Frank M. Robinson, despite the events and objects which date it to about 1980. The recent Covid pandemic has taken some of the sting from this book but it is still a cautionary tale worth reading.
September 24, 2020
Surprisingly not really about a pandemic, more like a single-shot biological weapon. The vast majority of the book follows the main character trying to figure out who developed the weapon and why. An interesting read, although very 70s (so watch out for some dodgy opinions about women and foreigners).
April 7, 2022
I can't imagine anyone Scottish being delighted at reading the line 'he was a Scotsman and by extension an Englishman.'
The author also thinks that English, Scottish and British are interchangeable. They're not.
The author also thinks that English, Scottish and British are interchangeable. They're not.
June 19, 2024
Interesting read!
March 24, 2014
Ok so why the high mark I hear you say .....? Ok the reason for such high praise is not the fact that it's well written, well researched or frighteningly plausible but the fact it was all these and was written in the 70s. Medical dramas are not new look at Robin Cook but the idea of biological epidemics, bioterrorism and generally Mother Nature being used as weapon feel like a product of the modern age not something from the age of flares and Dirty Harry
Apart from a few references to models of cars the book could be set in any age and be just as chilling. That to me is the sign of a great book
Apart from a few references to models of cars the book could be set in any age and be just as chilling. That to me is the sign of a great book
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews