Comparing The Hot Zone And World War Z By Max Brooks

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Science fiction can be an incredible genre that authors can develop their works in various ways. From reading the books The Hot Zone by Richard Preston and World War Z by Max Brooks along with watching The Walking Dead I was able to truly identify how different authors develop science fiction pieces and what techniques are essential to creating a science fiction piece. While studying World War Z I learned exactly how Max Brooks used literary elements to develop his piece. This story follows the adventure of Jesika Hendricks and her family went through while traveling up north in the effort to escape the zombie apocalypse only to find that up north there is not nearly as much food compered to where they were originally positioned. This causes …show more content…

The Hot Zone is deals with Ebola and Marburg: in what ways these viruses affect people, how people have contracted these diseases, and how scientists have studied and researched this virus in the effort to find a cure or vaccine. Richard Preston (1994), author of The Hot Zone does a fine job of keeping the characters of the book believable and convincing, “ ‘Son of a *****!’ she thought, ‘they’ll put me in the slammer’ ”(p.89) This quote reflects how when somebody makes a mistake their minds can’t help but to race and jump to conclusions to what will happen to them. The Hot Zone also depended on theme to develop the storyline and contribute to the scientific element in the story. Preston carried this out by providing scientific information and facts, “Having destroyed its host, the hot agent is now coming out of orifice, and is ‘trying’ to find a new”(Preston, 1994, p.24). While this quote isn’t loaded with statistics it gives information on this very real disease that can ravage a body while simultaneously labeling the disease as a villain. “In taking the veterinarian’s oath, she had pledged herself to a code of honor that bound her to the care of animals but also bound her to the saving of human lives through medicine. At times in her work, those two ideals clashed,” Preston also shone light on some controversial sides of science using the scene with Nancy Jaax and her work (Preston, 1994,