The Passage (2010 novel)
Encyclopedia
The Passage is a novel by Justin Cronin, published in 2010 by Ballantine Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York. The Passage debuted at #3 on the New York Times hardcover fiction best seller list, and remained on the list 7 additional weeks. It is the first novel of a planned trilogy; The Twelve and The City of Mirrors are due to be released in 2012 and in 2014, respectively.

Story

The Passage begins in the near future and details an apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...

 and, later, post-apocalyptic
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...

 world that is overrun by vampire-like beings that are infected by a highly contagious virus. What begins as a project to develop a new immunity-boosting drug based on a virus carried by an unnamed species of bat in South America eventually becomes the virus that transforms the world. The novel begins in 2018 and spans more than ninety years as colonies of humans attempt to live in a world filled with superhuman creatures who are continually on the hunt for fresh blood.

Development

Cronin first began developing his ideas for The Passage in 2006 when his daughter asked him to write a book about a "girl who saves the world." He set out to write a book that combined elements of multiple genres, most predominantly horror
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...

, science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

, and fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

. Cronin wanted his vampiric
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...

 creatures to seem like real-world organisms that might have inspired the vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...

 stories he knew from his childhood and the vampire-like creatures found in the folklore or numerous cultures. Cronin described writing the book as feeling "natural", and having come "very quickly". Cronin said that the title is a reference to the characters' journeys, and the journey "from life to death". Cronin said that many of the places featured in the novel were selected because they were places he had lived, and that he decided to "travel every mile my characters did, in order to capture not only the details of place, but the feeling of place."

Reception

The Passage has received generally positive reviews, receiving a 77% score from the review aggregator
Review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services . This system stores the reviews and then uses them for purposes such as: creating a website for users to view the reviews, selling information to third parties about consumer tendencies and creating databases for...

 "The Lit Review". The National Post
National Post
The National Post is a Canadian English-language national newspaper based in Don Mills, a district of Toronto. The paper is owned by Postmedia Network Inc. and is published Mondays through Saturdays...

 called The Passage "Homeric" and "one of the creepiest books of 2010". The book has earned comparisons to The Stand
The Stand
The Stand is a post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy novel by American author Stephen King. It demonstrates the scenario in his earlier short story, Night Surf...

, and earned Cronin comparisons to Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton
John Michael Crichton , best known as Michael Crichton, was an American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted...

. Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...

 criticized Cronin's use of certain "tropes
Trope (literature)
A literary trope is the usage of figurative language in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning...

" of the genre, but added that "he manages to engage the reader with a sweeping epic style." Booklist
Booklist
Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. It is geared toward libraries and booksellers and is available in print or online...

 said that the book was so similar to The Stand
The Stand
The Stand is a post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy novel by American author Stephen King. It demonstrates the scenario in his earlier short story, Night Surf...

 that it "required some fact-checking to ascertain it was not written under a new King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

 pseudonym." USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...

 said that The Passage "could be the best book of the summer." The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...

 said that The Passage is "A blockbuster…astutely plotted and imaginative". The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

 said The Passage is "as stirring as it is epic", and even described a portion of the book as "nearly flawless", though it also describes some of the narration as "portentous and slack". The San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

 selected The Passage as one of the best science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 and fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 books of 2010, and describes the book as being "action packed" and "rousing".

The book has also been praised by numerous contemporary authors. Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

 called The Passage "enthralling", and said that "It has the vividness that only epic works of fantasy and imagination can achieve." Dan Chaon
Dan Chaon
Dan Chaon is an American writer.His first novel was You Remind Me of Me . His short-story collections Fitting Ends and Among the Missing were both well-received; the latter was a finalist for a National Book Award and was also named one of the year's ten best books by the American Library...

 called The Passage "hypnotic" and said that "you can’t turn the pages fast enough, and yet... you don’t want it to end." Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan is an American novelist and short story writer who lives in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Egan's novel A Visit From the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction....

 said that "Justin Cronin has written a wild, headlong, sweeping extravaganza of a novel. The Passage is the literary equivalent of a unicorn: a bonafide thriller that is sharply written, deeply humane, ablaze with big ideas, and absolutely impossible to put down." Danielle Trussoni
Danielle Trussoni
Danielle Anne Trussoni is an American writer. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including The New York Times Magazine, Telegraph Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review...

 called The Passage a "sweeping dystopian
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...

 epic".

Plot

The novel is broken into 11 parts of varying lengths. The story itself is broken into two sections: The first and shorter section covers the origins of the virus and its outbreak, while the second is set 92 years after the infections, primarily following a colony of survivors living in California. Several narrative devices are used, including email, journal entries, newspaper reports, and other documents. Occasional use is made of reference material from 1,000 years after the outbreak, coming from "The Journal of Sara Fisher", sourced from a future University of New South Wales, Indo-Australian Republic.

The U.S. government is conducting a top secret experiment referred to as "Project Noah," which involves acquiring and transporting death row inmates to a secret military compound in Colorado for the purposes of modifying them into super-soldiers for the U.S. Army. These genetic experiments originate from patient zero Fanning - the sole surviving member of an expedition investigating a Bolivian bat-carried virus. The virus, while eventually causing hemorrhagic fever and death in initial subjects, is being refined to accentuate its other properties - boosting of the immune system, enhanced strength and agility.

The FBI agents responsible for recruiting the prisoners are ordered to collect a 6 year old girl, Amy "NLN", ("No Last Name") from a convent
Convent
A convent is either a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters, or nuns, or the building used by the community, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion...

 - and although conflicted, deliver her to Dr Lear, the head of the project. At Noah she is exposed to the same serum as "The Twelve" - the original inmates. Lear theorizes that as Amy's immune system has not had chance to mature it will form a symbiosis with the virus and live with her sympathetically, instead of the violent forms it has taken with the other twelve.

Of the inmates, the first and last recruited are depicted as being different to the others - Babcock, the original test subject is stronger and appears to have developed psychic abilities, occasionally influencing his guards and cleaners, and Carter is in fact innocent, but was convicted of first degree murder nonetheless.

Babcock and the other twelve inmates mentally take control of their guards and escape their quarantine cells, rapidly killing all who stand in their way. Amy is rescued by Wolgast (the FBI agent who brought her to Noah,) and Sister Lacey (a nun who was looking after Amy when she was recruited). Lacey is taken by Carter, as Wolgast and Amy escape to a mountain retreat where they live for several months, occasionally picking up news of the contagion spread throughout America. The rest of the world's fate is not stated, but it is mentioned that most of Europe has imposed quarantine over travel.

Despite living reasonably comfortably in the mountain site Wolgast eventually succumbs to radiation sickness when a nuclear device is detonated relatively nearby - he assumes that the government is attempting to sterilize infected areas of the country - and Amy is left to fend for herself.

The novel shifts forward in time approximately 93 years (with occasional reference retrospectively 1,000 years in the future,) and the narrative is taken up around a self-sufficient and isolationist colony established by the military (specifically FEMA
Federal Emergency Management Agency
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, initially created by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1978 and implemented by two Executive Orders...

,) not long after the initial outbreak. The colony is in slow decline, although only one character - a technician called Michael - seems to recognise this, and is trying to establish clandestine contact with the outside world to obtain spares for their failing equipment - specifically their batteries
Stand-alone power system
A stand-alone power system , also known as remote area power supply , is an off-the-grid electricity system for locations that are not fitted with an electricity distribution system...

 which power the high-wattage lights which protect the colony from the virals
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...

, who in traditional vampiric style are highly light sensitive.

During a night-time attack, Amy arrives at the gates of the camp, having previously met Peter Jaxon (one of the colony senior figures,) during a foraging expedition. Amy's arrival also results in a break-in from the virals leading to the death of "The Teacher" - the person responsible for the upbringing of all the under-8's in the colony. Amy now appears to be a fifteen year old girl, and upon her arrival is greviously wounded by a crossbow, but her own recuperative powers soon heal her and within days she is as healthy as she was before being injured.

Amy's arrival, her healing abilities, Teacher's death and inner-colony friction (caused by Babcock's mental influence over several Colony figures) force several of the colony dwellers to abscond with Amy and seek out another military site in Colorado - from where Michael has been receiving faint radio signals.

Amy demonstrates a psychic bond with the virals, and manages to keep them relatively safe during their journey. They come across another settlement established in a Las Vegas prison, known as Haven, which while initially welcoming, is in fact Babcock's lair. Haven "feeds" Babcock blood sacrifices in exchange for being left alone by the horde of virals at his disposal, referred to as "The Many" (as opposed to The Twelve).

Sympathisers at Haven enable the group to escape via railroad, and they meet up with a Texan military group, who assist them in finding the Colorado outpost. Once at the Colorado outpost it is indeed where Amy was recruited, and still serves as home to Lacey, who like Amy was treated by Lear with a modified form of the serum, providing her with longer life, and a psychic bond with not only Amy and the virals, but Babcock as well.

It is decided to lure Babcock into the outpost - Amy and Lacey confirm that he is headed towards them in any case - where they will detonate a nuclear device originally designed to sterilize the compound, but never used. The group theorize that the virals are like a hive mind and once Babcock is dead his hold over the virals created exponentially
Exponential growth
Exponential growth occurs when the growth rate of a mathematical function is proportional to the function's current value...

 by him will cease and they will no longer be considered a threat. While waiting for Babcock to arrive the group is attacked, resulting in Alicia "Lish" becoming infected, and treated by Sara the medic with modified serum. Lacey hands over files on The Twelve, revealing their hometowns, which she suggests The Twelve will have returned to.

Babcock duly arrives, and Lacey seals them both in the outpost, detonating the bomb destroying herself, Babcock and much of the outpost. The attacking virals all collapse and "die" again, in most cases leaving behind nothing but dust, proving the hive theory correct.

Lish adapts to the virus in a similar manner to Amy and Lacey had before, yet with differences - she has no psychic abilities, but has the strength and endurance of a viral. Greer, one of the Texan soldiers traveling with them comments that she would be a formidable soldier - suggesting that Lish has become the first true Super Soldier that the government was trying to develop 93 years ago.

Part of the group - primarily Amy, Peter and Lish - return to the Colony only to find it deserted, with no sign of what happened or where the colonists may have gone. They decide to hunt down the remaining Twelve using Lear's files to determine their locations, and Lish as their primary weapon.

The other group stays with the Texan Expeditionary force, and their remaining story is related as parts of Sara's diary - her last entry is at Roswell Base, and among comments over her own pregnancy she states the she can hear gunshots, and is going to investigate. The entry is presented as part of the 1,000 years in the future reference work, and is stated to have come from the site of "The Roswell Massacre". The novel ends ambiguously for all surviving characters.

Characters

The protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...

 of The Passage is Amy Harper Bellafonte, a child who is infected with a form of the virus, and acquires some of the traits of the other infected (e.g. immortality
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...

), but does not acquire their bloodlust nor their morphology. Despite being the primary protagonist, she is absent from several of the sub-books contained within the novel. Numerous individuals help Amy along her journey, including Brad Wolgast, an FBI agent whose job it is to procure people to be part of an experiment in which participants are infected with the virus, and, decades later, Peter Jaxon, a young man who lives in a tenuously surviving colony. The primary antagonist
Antagonist
An antagonist is a character, group of characters, or institution, that represents the opposition against which the protagonist must contend...

 is the viral known as Babcock, who was a death row
Death row
Death row signifies the place, often a section of a prison, that houses individuals awaiting execution. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution , even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists.After individuals are found...

 inmate before being infected with the virus. Similarly to Amy, he is absent from a significant portion from the middle part of the novel.

Film adaptation

Fox 2000 and Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...

's Scott Free Productions purchased the movie rights to this novel for $1.75 million USD in 2007, long before the book was completed. John Logan, writer of Scott's Gladiator, will be writing this movie's screenplay.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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