The Sower (2009) is the bestselling[1] second novel by American author Kemble Scott, pen name of Scott James, writer of a weekly column about the San Francisco Bay Area published in both The Bay Citizen and The New York Times.[2]
It was the first novel in publishing history to be sold in digital form by Scribd, the document sharing website. The Sower premiered on May 18, 2009, in conjunction with the launch of the company's book selling division, Scribd Store.[3] The author's decision to break with tradition and offer a first release of a new novel as a digital book received international media attention, including coverage in The New York Times,[4]The Times of London,[5]The Los Angeles Times,[6] and on National Public Radio.[7]
The media coverage led to offers to create a printed version. On August 31, 2009, Numina Press published the first hardcover edition, which instantly hit the San Francisco Chronicle's bestsellers list, premiering at #5 for that week.
The Sower is a darkly comic novel that tells the story of a California oil worker who becomes the sole carrier of a manmade virus that appears to cure all diseases. But the only way this cure is passed to others is through sex. Large forces conspire to prevent this from happening by plotting to control or destroy the virus and its host.
Written as a pastiche of the thriller novel genre, the storyline employs international intrigue that takes the plot around the world to exotic locations, including the San Francisco underground, the catacombs of Paris, a yacht on the Amazon river, the Vatican in Rome, and a bedroom in the U.S. presidential retreat Camp David. Villains in the story include highly fictionalized parodies of controversial evangelical minister Rev. Rick Warren, pop star Madonna, and president George W. Bush.
In October 2010, a second digital edition of was released: The Sower 2.0.[8] Debuting exclusively on Scribd, the new version was reimagined by the author and updated with topical references for late 2010. Considered the first version 2.0 of a novel, the second digital edition was also used reading technology from Apture to allow readers to get information on words and phrases in the novel via pop-up screens.[9] On November 15, 2010, a digital edition of The Sower 2.0 became available for Amazon's Kindle.[10]
Biblical Reference
The Sower derives its title from the Parable of the Sower, a story told by Jesus Christ in The Bible, found in gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Thomas. In the parable, a sower dropped seed on the path, on rocky ground, and among thorns, and the seed was lost; but when seed fell on good earth, it grew, yielding thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold.
Plot summary
Oil worker Bill Soileau is a reckless hedonist based in San Francisco and well acquainted with the city's notorious sexual underground. He long ago contracted HIV but seems unconcerned about exposing his partners.
On assignment at what appears to be an oil refinery abandoned by Soviet occupiers in a remote part of modern-day Armenia, Soileau meet Dr. Quif Melikian. She's conducting a health safety inspection of the plant and has discovered a hidden laboratory.
An accident in the mysterious lab infects Bill with a manmade virus, later identified as a mutated form of phage. It instantly cures Bill's HIV, unbeknownst to anyone. Eventually the doctor and oil worker discover the existence of the phage and learn it's a type of miraculous retrovirus that rewrites diseased cells back to their original configurations, a potential cure for all diseases.
The two also learn the phage cure can only be passed to others via sex. This sets in motion a plot to destroy or control the phage and Bill Soileau.
Major Themes
In an age where victims of AIDS and HIV continue to face moral condemnation, The Sower twists the notion that morality can be assigned to a disease. In the case of the phage virus, the disease becomes a cure and promiscuous unsafe sex has the potential to save millions of lives.
But “love conquers all” is not so easily executed. Dearly held American values are put in peril by the idea of sex as a cure.
The protagonist is an anti hero. He's a member of a suspect sexual underclass, a Southerner with racist tendencies, and an unrepentant cheerleader for the business of big oil companies. This makes him an outcast on some level with most political, social and religious ideals, and yet fate has chosen him to be the possible savior of all mankind.
The issue of genocide emerges throughout the novel. Dr. Melikian is a descendant of the Diaspora that fled the Armenian Holocaust. The Roman Catholic Church's opposition to distributing condoms and safe sex information to people infected with AIDS in Africa is equated to genocide, as are efforts to destroy the phage before it can be used to heal the sick.
“Pariahs become saints, disease becomes a cure, the cursed become the chosen people, and promiscuous sex a moral duty. In the end, a moral leper shows us what is right, humane, and true,” said novelist Joe Quirk, author of The Ultimate Rush and Exult, in his endorsement of The Sower.[3]
“Dark, subversive, and laugh-out-loud funny,” said Raj Patel, author of international bestseller Stuffed and Starved.[3]
Significant Characters
Bill Soileau (Louisiana Acadian, pronounced “swallow”) is an oil worker based in San Francisco. This character first appeared in the novel SoMa.
Quif Melikian is a doctor with the Institut Pasteur. She's an investigator for the European equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control, specializing in tracking outbreaks of illness around the world.
Benoit DuCharme is Dr. Melikian's Pasteur colleague and love interest.
Ike is the executive director of Project Inform, an HIV prevention campaign who develops a relationship with Bill Soileau.
Mark Hazodo is a videogame entrepreneur known for his excessive thrill seeking. This character first appeared in the novel SoMa.
The Reverend Willie Warrant is a popular televangelist who advocates for new laws against gay Americans.
Natara Melikian is the sister of the doctor. She is dying, suffering from end-stage AIDS.
Cardinal Umberto Uccelli is a special envoy at The Vatican for the Roman Catholic Church.
Name Game
Most of the characters names are double entendres referring to sexual acts.
Safe sex is sexual activity using methods or contraceptive devices to reduce the risk of transmitting or acquiring sexually transmitted infections (STIs), especially HIV. "Safe sex" is also sometimes referred to as safer sex or protected sex to indicate that some safe sex practices do not eliminate STI risks. It is also sometimes used colloquially to describe methods aimed at preventing pregnancy that may or may not also lower STI risks.
Various fringe theories have arisen to speculate about purported alternative origins for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), with claims ranging from it being due to accidental exposure to supposedly purposeful acts. Several inquiries and investigations have been carried out as a result, and each of these theories has consequently been determined to be based on unfounded and/or false information. HIV has been shown to have evolved from or be closely related to the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in West Central Africa sometime in the early 20th century. HIV was discovered in the 1980s by the French scientist Luc Montagnier. Before the 1980s, HIV was an unknown deadly disease.
The AIDS epidemic, caused by HIV, found its way to the United States between the 1970s and 1980s, but was first noticed after doctors discovered clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in homosexual men in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco in 1981. Treatment of HIV/AIDS is primarily via the use of multiple antiretroviral drugs, and education programs to help people avoid infection.
The spread of HIV/AIDS has affected millions of people worldwide; AIDS is considered a pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in 2016 there were 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, with 1.8 million new HIV infections per year and 1 million deaths due to AIDS. Misconceptions about HIV and AIDS arise from several different sources, from simple ignorance and misunderstandings about scientific knowledge regarding HIV infections and the cause of AIDS to misinformation propagated by individuals and groups with ideological stances that deny a causative relationship between HIV infection and the development of AIDS. Below is a list and explanations of some common misconceptions and their rebuttals.
HIV-positive people, seropositive people or people who live with HIV are people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus which if untreated may progress to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
This is a timeline of HIV/AIDS, including cases before 1980.
Serosorting, also known as serodiscrimination, is the practice of using HIV status as a decision-making point in choosing sexual behavior. The term is used to describe the behavior of a person who chooses a sexual partner assumed to be of the same HIV serostatus to engage in unprotected sex with them for a reduced risk of acquiring or transmitting HIV/AIDS.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. It can be managed with treatment. Without treatment it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).
Kemble Scott is the pseudonym for fiction used by American journalist Scott James, writer of a weekly column about the San Francisco Bay Area for The New York Times and The Bay Citizen. His debut novel SoMa became a bestseller in the spring of 2007. The novel tells the interwoven stories of twentysomethings on the prowl for thrills in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood following the city’s infamous Dot-com crash. In June 2008 the novel SoMa was honored as a finalist for the national Lambda Literary award for debut fiction.
And the Band Played On is a 1993 American television film docudrama directed by Roger Spottiswoode. The teleplay by Arnold Schulman is based on the best-selling 1987 non-fiction book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts, and is noteworthy for featuring both a vast historical scope, as well as an exceptionally sprawling cast.
A sexually transmitted infection (STI), also referred to as a sexually transmitted disease (STD) and the older term venereal disease (VD), is an infection that is spread by sexual activity, especially vaginal intercourse, anal sex, oral sex, or sometimes manual sex. STIs often do not initially cause symptoms, which results in a risk of passing the infection on to others. Symptoms and signs of STIs may include vaginal discharge, penile discharge, ulcers on or around the genitals, and pelvic pain. Some STIs can cause infertility.
Françoise Barré-Sinoussi is a French virologist and Director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Division and Professor at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France. Born in Paris, France, Barré-Sinoussi performed some of the fundamental work in the identification of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS. In 2008, Barré-Sinoussi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with her former mentor, Luc Montagnier, for their discovery of HIV. She mandatorily retired from active research on August 31, 2015, and fully retired by some time in 2017.
Gero Hütter is a German hematologist. Hütter and his medical team transplanted bone marrow deficient in a key HIV receptor to a leukemia patient, Timothy Ray Brown, who was also infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Subsequently, the patient's circulating HIV dropped to undetectable levels. The case was widely reported in the media, and Hütter was named one of the "Berliners of the year" for 2008 by the Berliner Morgenpost, a Berlin newspaper.
Koolaids: The Art of War is a novel by Rabih Alameddine, an author and painter who lives in both San Francisco and Beirut. He grew up in the Middle East, in Kuwait and Lebanon. Published in 1998, Koolaids is Alameddine's first novel. The majority of the story takes place in San Francisco and Beirut, the sites of two very different "wars". San Francisco from the mid-1980s into the 1990s is the main site of the AIDS epidemic, especially among the gay community, while Beirut is the site of a brutal civil war.
The relationship between religion and HIV/AIDS has been an ongoing one, since the advent of the pandemic. Many faith communities have participated in raising awareness about HIV/AIDS, offering free treatment, as well as promoting HIV/AIDS testing and preventative measures. Christian denominations, such as Lutheranism and Methodism, have advocated for the observance of World AIDS Day to educate their congregations about the disease. Some Churches run voluntary blood testing camps and counselling centers to diagnose and help those affected by HIV/AIDS.
Steffanie A. Strathdee is the Associate Dean of Global Health Sciences, Harold Simon Distinguished Professor at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and Co-Director at the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics. She is known for her work on HIV research and prevention programmes in Tijuana.
The virgin cleansing myth is the belief that having sex with a virgin girl cures a man of HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases. Helping the idea that Christian women who were virgins, were capable of being powerful enough to fight off transmitted diseases.
Since reports of emergence and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the United States between the 1970s and 1980s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has frequently been linked to gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) by epidemiologists and medical professionals. It was first noticed after doctors discovered clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in homosexual men in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco in 1981. The first official report on the virus was published by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) on June 5, 1981, and detailed the cases of five young gay men who were hospitalized with serious infections. A month later, The New York Times reported that 41 homosexuals had been diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma, and eight had died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made.
HIV/AIDS research includes all medical research that attempts to prevent, treat, or cure HIV/AIDS, as well as fundamental research about the nature of HIV as an infectious agent and AIDS as the disease caused by HIV.
Robert "Chip" T. Schooley is an American infectious disease physician, who is the Vice Chair of Academic Affairs, Senior Director of International Initiatives, and Co-Director at the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH), at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine. He is an expert in HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) infection and treatment, and in 2016, was the first physician to treat a patient in the United States with intravenous bacteriophage therapy for a systemic bacterial infection.
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