Description

From of the author of The Silk Code, winner of the 1999 Locus Award for Best First Novel, comes another intriguing blend of science fiction and hard-boiled police procedural mystery. In The Consciousness Plague, forensic detective Phil D'Amato returns to investigate a spate of unusual cases of memory loss and discovers evidence of an organism that's lived in our brains since the beginning of humanity--and may be responsible for our very consciousness in the first place.

The Consciousness Plague is about memory-more particularly, how the loss of memory, in slivers of time deducted from a growing number of individuals, can subtly undermine and play havoc with everything from the investigation of serial stranglings to candlelight dinners. Dr. D'Amato, NYPD forensic detective, investigates a spate of unusual cases of memory loss and finds evidence of a bacteria-like organism that has lived in our brains since our origin as a species and may be responsible for our very consciousness.

There's evidence for this consciousness bug in the ancient Phoenician and Viking cultures and everywhere he looks in our world." A new antibiotic crosses the blood-brain barrier and inadvertently kills this essential bug. Phil himself is a victim of the memory drain, and must struggle to get the proper authorities to pay attention before everyone loses so much memory that they forget that they forgot in the first place.

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AUTHOR
Paul Levinson writes science fiction, sf/mystery and popular and scholarly non-fiction. The Silk Code won the Locus award for Best First Novel of 1999. His novel The Consciousness Plague won the 2003 Mary Shelley Award for outstanding Fictional Work. Paul, who has published more than 25 science fiction stories, is the Chair of the Communications and Media Studies Department at Fordham University.

NARRATOR
Mark Shanahan, a New York City resident, has appeared at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, off-Broadway, and on film and television. In addition to being an accomplished playwright, he had provided voices for commercials, animation, museum tours, and radio programs.

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REVIEWS
Booklist
"Levinson handles myth, history, science, and police procedures with equal skill, earning high marks for intelligence and originality in the process."

Buzzy Reviews (Buzzelle.com)
"I loved the sound effects. Listening, I could have been in each situation that the reader described. I felt that I knew this guy. Plus, the reader's voice seemed to embody the character that the author envisioned."

SFFAudio.com
"Levinson won the Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fictional Work in 2003 for this novel. The plot is really quite intriguing, and pulled in credible ideas from a number of fields such as Cognitive Anthropology... Mark Shanahan does different voices for over a dozen characters. He actually has the perfect voice for a New York forensic detective."

The Consciousness Plague

Author: Paul Levinson

Narrator: Mark Shanahan

ISBN: 9781593163174

SRP: 29.95

Length: 8:30:00

Item No: LL336

Available on the following websites: Amazon, Apple, Audible, AudioBookStore, Audiobooks, Blackstone, Catalist, Epic!, Kobo, Libro.fm, Mackin, Overdrive, StoryTel, Tumblebooks.