I don't know if I can even articulate exactly why my imagination is so fired by these disaster situations. my sort of main interest and real subject is ordinary people, and looking at the ways that ordinary people, either they do or don't change when faced with these extreme situations. In a way a conspiracy theory is comforting, because it's more comforting to think that it's all an evil plot by one person, or a group of people, because then in theory it is something less chaotic about it - even though it's scary, the real kind of unsettling thing, which I think is truer, is kind of just the chaos of a human life. If they aren't there, they wouldn't believe it, and they would be looking for the conspiracy theory angle. And so it just seemed like an element of realism, that if a new sickness like this appeared in an American city, inevitably, just as we've seen with all kinds of other disasters, there would be some faction of people who wouldn't believe it. And so part of that was trying to learn from, you know, I'm learning all the time, about American society and human nature by the things that are unfolding in the news.

TED Radio Hour What's The Difference Between Rational and Irrational Fears?Įven though the book has this kind of other worldly type of sickness at its center, I really wanted it to feel realistic, and as if it was taking place more or less in contemporary America.

The dreamers karen walker