Diagnosis: Terminal - Softcover

3.84

86 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812550889 ISBN 13: 9780812550887

Publisher: Tor Books, 1997

From alternative medicine to murder, F.Paul Wilson's Diagnosis: Terminal reveals terrors surgical, psychological, and institutional. In stark, operating-room light these fourteen writers take scalpel and pen to the body and soul of humanity as it lies stretched out on the stainless-steel page. Rendered in laser-sharp detail, these incisive narrative reveal our needs, our hurts, our desires, and our fears.

This unsettling anthology submerges us in the near-witchcraft methods of a nineteenth abortionist and awes us with a post-apocalypse future where autistic mutants telepathically remove pain. But more than anything, it gives us frightening real glimpses of ourselves and a nightmarish medical future that may be here in five minutes--if it's not already.

Featuring stories by F. Paul Wilson, Bill Pronzini, Chet Williamson, Matthew Costello, Billie Sue Mosiman, Steve Spruill, Richard Lee Byers, Thomas F. Monteleone, Tina L.Jens, Ridley Pearson, Jack Nimersheim, Brunch H. Rogers, Ed Gorman, and Karl Edward Wagner.

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About the Author:

F. Paul Wilson, a New York Times bestselling author of horror, adventure, medical thrillers, science fiction, and virtually everything in between, is a practicing physician who resides in Wall, New Jersey.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Fourteen gripping stories on medical themes edited by horror-novelist Wilson (The Select, 1994, etc.), himself a practicing physician in New Jersey. Though the opening tale, Bill Pronzini's ``Angel of Mercy,'' about a postCivil War lady herbalist who travels about by wagon and dispenses fatal mixes for girls needing abortions, is quite weak, the collection overall has many strong tales and is not the mixed bag one might fear. Chet Williamson's ``Doctor Joe,'' about a general practitioner (now 90) who apparently hangs himself out of remorse for the life-insurance frauds he's been carrying out with a cousin in the insurance business, works neatly toward a surprise ending. Matthew Costello's ``Friendly Wager'' tells of the psychotic Dr. Newlove, who decides to imitate the plot of a grisly Roald Dahl story while on a cruise and sets about killing people with undetectable poisons. The tightest, toughest piece of storytelling here is Tina L. Jens's ``The Cuban Solution,'' about a female American doctor sent to Guantanamo Bay Naval Station to help fight an epidemic among Cuban refugees being detained at the base and finds herself in the middle of an episode of biological warfare. Wilson's own ``Offshore'' is a knockout suspense tale whose background deserves novelization: The federal government has taken over the US hospitals, and the rich are now going to hospital ships beyond the hundred-mile limit off the Florida Keys--floating wards with smuggled medical supplies the government has declared illegal. The late Karl Edward Wagner's ``Final Cut'' tells of an alcoholic who pre-enacts his own death, while Ridley Pearson's ``All Over But the Dying'' deals with the AIDS epidemic in Africa; it's the most serious story of the 14, though it descends into melodrama. Top genre tales. -- Copyright �1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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