#760 The Evening and the Morning and the Night- Octavia Butler
A portion of society is stricken with Duryea-Gode Disease, a genetically transferred condition that devolves into animalistic violence and cannibalism. It is supposed to be a cross between Huntington’s Disease, Phenylketonuria disorder and Lesch-Nyhan disease, but sounds to me like it turns people into flesh eating zombies.
The people that have the gene are aware of it and know that as some point they will “drift” into a spiral ending in murder, self destruction or imprisonment in centers designed to house them. It’s a horrible death sentence that causes those with the gene to commit suicide, or at the very least not have children to pass it along. But human nature as it is, some still have children.
Lynn and Alan live in an apartment together with 4 other DGDers. They find comfort in each other. Eventually they decide to visit Alan’s mother who is in a high end facility for those who have already drifted. What they find there is both a revelation and somewhat hard to handle. The decisions they will have to make about their future gets more and more complicated.
Notable Passage: “If you work hard enough at something that doesn’t matter, you can forget for a while the things that do.”
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