The White Plague

By: Frank Herbert

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 19 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

A warm day in Dublin, a crowded street corner. Suddenly, a car-bomb explodes, killing and injuring scores of innocent people. From the second-floor window of a building across the street, a visiting American watches, helpless, as his beloved wife and children are sacrificed in the heat and fire of someone else's cause.

From this shocking beginning, the author of the phenomenal Dune series has created a masterpiece. The White Plague is a marvelous and terrifyingly plausible blend of fiction and visionary theme. It tells of one man's revenge, of the man watching from the window who is pushed over the edge of sanity by the senseless murder of his family and who, reappearing several months later as the so-called Madman, unleashes a terrible vengeance upon the human race.

John Roe O'Neill is a molecular biologist who has the knowledge, and now the motivation, to devise and disseminate a genetically carried plague - a plague to which, like those that scourged mankind centuries ago, there is no antidote, but one that zeroes in, unerringly and fatally, on women.

As the world slowly recognizes the reality of peril, as its politicians and scientists strive desperately to save themselves and their society from the prospect of human extinction, so does Frank Herbert grapple with one of the great themes of contemporary life: the enormous dangers that lurk at the dark edges of science. The White Plague is a prophetic, believable, and utterly compelling novel.

©2007 Frank Herbert (P)2008 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A tale of awesome revenge." ( The Cincinnati Enquirer)
"A speculative intellect with few rivals in modern SF." ( The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction)

Excellent

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This book has many applications in the current world scene

Who was the most memorable character of The White Plague and why?

His wife and the twins

Any additional comments?

Read the book. it's a keeper! I bought a copy for all my friends, and one is Microbiologist.

It's too darn plausable!

It's just too darn plausable! We have all been there in our dreams; now we are there when we are awake... you don't know who to defeat and there is no where to hide. So what do you do now??? Read.

Good sci-fi, plausible and believable

something I don't like about many sci-fi novels is that they are so implausible you have people acting in ways that they would not ever really act but this story involves people behaving the way they would normally behave it involved scientific premises that I could believe and accept as possible

Terrible Narrator

The book maybe good but it was very hars to tell due to the terrible narration. This was like an entire one sentence book with no pauses, easy to follow introduction to a new character, chapter, etc. Needless to say it was difficult to follow the story line and get into the story. Maybe it was a good book , too bad the narrator completely killed it. An absolute waste of time and money.

Interesting main character

I enjoyed the various accents. The story is frightening because after Covid, it seems more plausible today, although it’s set in the 1980’s.

Confounded

The storyline is OK but suffers from the confusion and stop/start noted by other reviewers. The real whammy however is Mr Brick's Irish accent. It is terrible and can only be equated with Owen Meanie's voice. Terrible - please Scott, restrict yourself to narrating in 'American'!!!

Better Left in the Archives

Written in 1983, The White Plague reveals its decade and biases throughout.

Its primary flaws are that Herbert, in 1983, could not imagine a 1996 with women in charge of their own lives, a world without IRA bombers and what the world would become with a bio terrorist on the loose.

His one woman character is cardboard while the men are all fully-realized. The world where there are 10,000 men to one woman should have more women leaders. Instead, the women are content to marry leaders and produce babies for them. The main character is profoundly religious in the beginning but by the end is happy to take on many "husbands" so that she could "do her duty" to repopulate the world. Where is her, or any other woman's, desire for power, for women would have a lot of power in such a world.

His lack of imagination of a world without the IRA kept me from suspending my disbelief. And Herbert's poorly imagined world response to a bio terrorist that targeted women kept me skeptical.

The White Plague is better left in 1983, where it belongs.

Very long and boring

I tried and tried but could not even make it midway through. Parts of the story were very interesting, but some parts were sleep inducing. Maybe an abridged version would be better.

No Likable Characters; Boring

If you're a fan of Irish history and their hatred of the British (and each other); or of scientific technobable about molecular biology; or of politicians & world leaders eager to destroy each other, you MIGHT like this book. But there is not a single character that's likable or one to root for. Between few and far between interesting passages, there are unbearably long DULL passages. I'm about half-way through and have asked myself "Why am I listening to this?" several times. It's not the least bit entertaining. If it doesn't get better on my next commute-listen, I'm giving up, deleting it, and moving on to the next Monster Hunter International book. THOSE are entertaining! :-)

Great concept; horrible execution.

What about Scott Brick’s performance did you like?

Great voice and passable acting. He can't quite pull off female characters but his narration is top notch.

Any additional comments?

Only the very beginning and the very end were compelling. Everything in between was as if the author decided to follow irrelevant portions of the storylines of the relevant characters. It would be as if I told you the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf but focused mainly on the construction of their houses and glossed over that whole