Empty Cities of the Full Moon

Empty Cities of the Full Moon, a science fiction novel
by Howard V. Hendrix

The novel revolves around the near extinction of the humanity by an artificial prion originally designed to help the mentally ill but which becomes ashamanistic pandemic of madness, shape-shifting and death. There are 2 plots-lines which each follow the same set of characters before and after this near extinction.

Explanation of the novel's title

The title of the novel comes from both the correlation between the pandemic's symptoms and the full moon, and that the pandemic effectively emptied the cities.

The novel opens in 1999 with a car accident occurring in parallel universes. In Universe A, the universe in which Hendrix's previous novel Better Angels occurs, the accident is avoided allowing 3 of the major characters in that novel to be born. However in Universe A Prime the accident does occur and the resulting deaths prevent those characters from being born. The 3 characters are brothers Jiro and Seiji Ansel Yamaguchi, and their cousin John Drinan.

Years later in 2032 the process of Jiro's transcendence, which occurs at the end of Better Angels, results in John being thrown from Universe A to Universe A Prime. Empty Cities of the Full Moon takes place in Universe A Prime after this.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_Cities_of_the_Full_Moon