5) The Stand by Stephen King (1978)

From the beloved contemporary horror master, Stephen King, this novel is a post-apocalyptic dark fantasy that centers on a pandemic of a weaponized strain of influenza, resistant to vaccines and antibodies, that wipes out most of the world’s population. The remaining survivors live in packs and establish social orders that operate under the norm of survival of the fittest. They engage in battles and confrontation with other groups. King admits the challenge of penning this novel was largely due to the immense number of characters and storylines. Marvel Comics even adapted this book into a series of six five-issue comic book series.

6) The Child Garden by Geoff Ryman (1989)

This thought-provoking science fiction masterpiece deals about a futuristic semitropical England where cancer has been cured but life expectancy has been halved as viruses are used as a tool to control and educate the human population. We enter a world terra-formed by global warming and where most life forms are genetically engineered. Only one woman has immunity against the viruses used to educate people and a hive collective looks to her as the only hope.

7) Ammonite by Nicola Griffith (1992)

An outstanding debut novel, it is the story of Marghe Taishan, an anthropologist who works for the Settlement and Education Councils (SEC) whom she represents to the planet Jeep. She studies native cultures and is testing a potential vaccine for a virus endemic to Jeep. Griffith uses an epidemic to explore pressing issues about gender and society, and this tale succeeds in helping us gain a broader knowledge of the message it conveys.

8) Beauty Salon by Mario Bellatin (1994)

This is set in a world where a pandemic takes its toll on the male population as the government remains unable to do anything. The first person narrator runs a beauty salon which becomes a hospice for afflicted men who are rejected by family and friends. As the narrator witnesses his guests languish and die one by one, his sense of isolation increases. This book is a reflection on sexual excess where AIDS is the unnamed plague.

9) Blindness by José Saramago (1995)

One of Saramago’s famous novels, it deals with a mass epidemic of blindness that afflicts everyone in an unnamed city leading to social breakdown. This book follows the tragedy of different characters under the epidemic and at some point were thrown together by chance. With the popularity of this novel, Saramago even wrote a sequel titled Seeing, which takes place in the same unnamed country that features some of the same characters.

10) The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (2002)

An alternate history novel, it illustrates how world history could have been different if the Black Death plague had swept 99% of Europe’s population instead of just a third of its portion. This is a stark look at what history could have been as the stretch of this plague impact the events of history. Robinson probes on the what-ifs and delivers answers that only he can give.