"Tuberculosis bacteria join UN"

"Tuberculosis bacteria join UN" was Joan Slonczewski's second published short story. It originally appeared in Nature in the 29 June 2000 issue. It was also reprinted in David G. Hartwell's Year's Best SF 6, published by Eos in paperback in 2001.

Here's how David G. Hartwell introduced "Tuberculosis bacteria join UN":

Joan Slonczewski is a Professor of Biology at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and a first class writer of hard science fiction. She currently has her third six-figure NSF grant to investigate E. coli, and warns us to stay away from petting zoos this year, the latest vector. Her many accomplishments and biography are detailed on her Web site (http://www2.kenyon.edu/depts/biology/slonc/slonc.htm). In SF, she is best known for her second novel, A Door Into Ocean (1987), the first of her Elysium novels -- others to date include Daughter of Elysium (1993), The Children Star (1998), and Brain Plague (2000). She has published only one previous short story.

"Tuberculosis Bacteria Join UN" is a "big idea" hard SF story, cast in the form of a fake news article. The big idea is intelligent microbes, also exploited differently at at length in Brain Plague. It is another sample of the series published in Nature (see Brin, Ford, Ward, et. al.).

The Whole Story

Here's the complete text of "Tuberculosis bacteria join UN."

Last modified: June 12, 2001

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