Eight top pandemic thrillers

Born, raised, and still residing in Vancouver, Daniel Kalla spends his days (and sometimes nights) working as an Emergency Room Physician in a major teaching hospital. In his ‘off’ time, he writes and manages a dual career. He is the author of numerous books, which have been translated into eleven languages to date, and his Shanghai trilogy has been optioned for feature films.

The idea for his first medical thriller, Pandemic, sprang from his clinical experience in facing the SARS crisis of 2003.

Kalla's new novel is The Last High.

At The Strand Magazine, he tagged eight favorite pandemic thrillers, including:

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (1969)

I wonder if I would even be an author, at least a published one, were it not for the inspiration of my literary hero, Michael Crichton, who’s sadly no longer with us. I’ve always been awed by his ability to take huge scientific topics—from cloning dinosaurs to time travel—and deconstruct them in a non-condescending way, while still thrilling readers with original storylines and relatable characters. His skill of simultaneously educating and entertaining is on full display in his debut novel, The Andromeda Strain, which tells the story of an alien microorganism that inadvertently falls to earth and threatens to launch a pandemic.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Andromeda Strain is among Jim Al-Khalili's ten top end-of-the-world novels, Lydia Kang's nine great medical thrillers, Jeff Somer's' nine science fiction novels that imagine the future, Neil deGrasse Tyson's six favorite books, and Joel Cunningham's 11 fictional maladies that will keep you up at night.

--Marshal Zeringue