Flipping the traditional contamination plot on its head, the book tells a singular, exciting story through graphic novel, prose, visual art and science writing, inviting readers to question if we are all but a contagion.

The book will interweave a science fiction story with scientific essays, prompting the reader to think about questions reflected in the story, enhancing their understanding of the science of the story and priming them to interpret the narrative in specific ways. The structure of the book, the elegant mix of story and pure science is designed to build tension and bounce one element off the other, creating a super-narrative beyond just the fiction. Immersing in the science will allow readers to see the fiction in a deeper way, and the fictional aspects, in turn, will set up expectations to be confirmed or destroyed by the scientific writing. For example, the first essay on epidemiology will largely be focused on disease and will prompt the reader to be thinking negatively about the epidemic just introduced in the first chapter of the narrative. Later we will learn that this epidemic is positive and illustrates emerging scientific paradigms. Similarly, the visuals of epidemic spreading from different scientific models will be presented in the middle of the book in connection with characters whose personalities represent the corresponding behavior, but not until the essay on “beneficial epidemics” will these dynamics be explained.