The Culling

October 21, 2013
Two horrible threats—one general, the other specific—provide the background for Johnson’s polemical first novel, a bio-ecological thriller. The first concerns global warming, overpopulation, extinction of endangered species, and humankind’s race to oblivion, which is summed up in the innocent-sounding phrase “the momentum of folly.” The second involves a plan to reduce, or cull, great numbers of people to “save” the world. Dr. Bronwyn Galloway, the head of one of the infectious-disease divisions of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, dispatches virologist Dr. Carl Sims to Guangdong Province, China, on a flu recon. From Guangdong, Sims travels to Laos, to investigate a virulent flu outbreak. Gradually, Sims becomes aware of suspicious anomalies, and finds himself an unwitting participant in a nefarious plot. Johnson (Thirteen Moons: A Year in the Wilderness) knows his science, but weak characterizations lessen the impact of his frightening scenario.