The contagion in science fiction

In early 2020, a 2011 movie,  Contagion, suddenly became a global hit due to its chilling resonance with reality. Contagion  “stars” a deadly virus carried by an apparently hale and hearty traveller from Hong Kong to Minnesota, triggering a pandemic. 

Plagues, pandemics and their outcomes occupy a large, if macabre niche, in popular culture. Think of the Bible with its personification of the “Pale Rider”, Pestilence, as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Or the Decameron, where the narrators practice social distancing during the Black Death. The Decameron even had its 19th century corollary in Edgar Allen Poe’s