Play that spookily foresaw plague
IF LIFE imitates art then Val McDermid must surely have felt like a seer when the Covid pandemic hit.
When she wrote her dystopian radio play Resistance in 2017 about an infectious disease gone wrong which results in a fastmoving pandemic, she could have no idea how prophetic and credible the science-fiction thriller would be in 2020.
The play has now been turned into a graphic novel – proving that the versatile McDermid can turn her hand to almost anything.
“I’ve long been concerned about the fact we are staring down a barrel into a world where there are no antibiotics.
“The idea came from a workshop I attended on anti-microbial resistance and gave us a glimpse into the future without antibiotics and where even minor infections could kill you. It was terrifying so I wrote a play about it which was turned into a graphic novel, with illustrator Kathyrn Biggs, and it came out this year.
“2020 was such a scary time. People were dying and getting ill and there was no vaccine or cure on the horizon. Covid appeared to be out of control and was raging around the world. It was a terrifying time, just like in my play and now the graphic novel.
“Writing 1979 during lockdown took me out of 2020 and back to a simpler world – I was in control and could write about a year where I knew the ending.
“The world is slowly opening up again thanks to the vaccines but we still have a problem with antibiotics and future resistance.”