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Joe Hill Sets The World On Fire In Apocalyptic Tale ‘The Fireman’

By Nick Younker
Published on: 09:15 PST, May 22, 2016

Joe Hill, who is perhaps one of the most prolific modern horror authors of the day, is now setting the world on fire with his new apocalyptic novel, The Fireman. Of course, it has some echoes of his father, Stephen King’s, infamous novel, The Stand.

There is much to be said about Joe Hill’s latest horror novel, which seems to be more of a survival tale for a woman that is vulnerable to disease and virus due to her pregnancy, as reported by NPR. But in the grand scheme of this gigantic, 752-page novel, The Fireman is about a world that is falling apart, and there might not be anyone around to help her when it comes time to deliver her baby.

At the core of the story is a virus that is known by the fictional populace as Dragonscale. It is highly contagious, and it is blazing a trail of tears across the nation and the world. But being infected does not seem to be an instant death curse, at least not for the book’s young heroine.

Joe Hill seems to do a fantastic job of keeping his readers firmly embedded within the story from chapter to chapter. There are many things at stake and in many moments, it seems as though all hope could be lost for the young woman, who is named Harper.

Harper is a school nurse who becomes infected with the virus and at the same time, she finds out she is pregnant. But here is the thing. Being infected is usually signified by black and gold marks that appear on the person’s body. It might be a slow burn, but eventually, the infection will cause the host to burst into flames, leading to a horrifying, painful death.

For Joe Hill, the core of The Fireman novel is that Harper has accepted her fate, but she will not let it take her too soon. What she is most committed to is the survival of her baby. In her mind, she only needs to make it nine months so that the baby can be delivered healthy and prosperous. So each page becomes a nail biter with the chronicles of her pregnancy in a world that is already burning in flames, person by person.

Although the premise of a virus taking over the world and forcing it into an apocalypse could have so many different angles applied to it, Joe Hill opted to focus on the one character whose pregnancy seems to really raises the stakes at every turn. But when asked why he chose to opt for this way of telling the story in The Fireman, Hill had something in mind before he even came up with the apocalyptic story.

“I know I wanted to write about pregnancy. I do think it’s kind of interesting, the idea of a life forming inside you and hijacking your body’s biology to serve its own ends,” Hill told NPR. “And when I began to think about the Dragonscale as this sort of living organism painted on your skin, that’s making use of your biology, I saw a connection to that.”

As a matter of fact, Joe Hill also wanted to let his fans know that his own father’s (Stephen King) story, The Stand, was a major influence for The Fireman.

“My book does carry a lot of echoes of The Stand, which is a novel that I adored, and you know, I sometimes joked that the book (The Fireman) is The Stand if it was soaked in gasoline and set on fire,” Joe Hill told NPR.

The Fireman by Joe Hill was released on May 17 and has already hit the best sellers list.

[Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images]

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