Thomas Legendre recently published Spring Fever, a quantum romantic techno-thriller novel with a literary sensibility.
The book is set in London and Nottingham and follows Amanda Nigh, an employee of HocusLocus who recrafts digital content with viral potential while beta-testing radical new software and enjoying London nightlife. But, she discovers a strange story involving American ice hockey player Craig Merleau, who talks like a European philosopher, inexplicably propelling his team to victory with his cerebral pronouncements. All the while, the world is threatened by a subatomic virus that affects computers and humans in bizarre ways. While global networks run awry and everyone struggles with quantum superposition and gravity quakes, Amanda and Craig remain blissfully untouched and attempt to avert technological and biological Armageddon.
“Strangely enough, I started writing Spring Fever before COVID-19, mainly as a way of addressing the rift or gap between our everyday experience and the imperceptible world described by quantum physics, which in some ways corresponds to the gap between appearance and reality that underlies so much of social media. This really was a vexation of mine. I’m not normal. But then of course the pandemic had a huge effect. Suddenly my research on viruses and related issues was in the mainstream and I could draw from the daily news instead of articles on JSTOR. And social media went absolutely bonkers with everyone trapped at home. It was eerie in many ways, a bit like writing about a naval disaster a few months before the Titanic,” Legendre told Jamie McGarry of Valley Press.
Thomas Legendre is a fiction writer, with published works including Keeping Time, The Burning (longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Writing) and Double Jeopardy. He has also written Half Life, a play performed as part of NVA’s art installation in conjunction with the National Theatre of Scotland, and a radio drama entitled Dream Repair for BBC4. He is an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham.
Spring Fever is available from Valley Press. Visit Legendre’s YouTube channel to hear readings of different excerpt from Spring Fever. Read more about Thomas Legendre here.
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