Favorite Fictional...Diseases?

[Ranchoth]

Weird poll time, and I don't think that this one's even been done yet. (I'm almost 30% sure of it.)

And "conditions" or "syndromes" count as well, as long as they're fictional. Although "favorite" is somewhat subjective, I'll conceede.

For starters?

•The Mutaba Virus from "Outbreak." Just like Ebola, only airbourne. A classic.

•The , from the Marvel Comics universe. Aka "The Techno-Organic Virus." Transforms the organic tissue of it's victims into a technological construct. Nasty stuff, but good for clearing out the ranks of luddites. (Yuuzhan Vong, I'm looking at you, 'ere!)


So...any other suggestions? And a outline of the symptoms for each entry would be appreciated.

[Mephisto]

The one from Star Trek that makes everybody horny. It made orgies break out on both Kirk's and Picard's Enterprises. I can't remember what it's called (if in fact it was ever named).

Although now that I think about it, it also made Data uncontrollably aroused, so maybe it wasn't a disease but some other phenomenon . . . Trek Dopers . . . ?

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Lycanthropy.

[Ukulele Ike]

Lycanthropy isn't fictional. Take my word for it.

My choice? No contest....cathynpnia, the childhood disease that renders its small victims both lethargic and telepathic, and elegible for "treatment" by the mysterious McNair Foundation.

From the brilliant Peter Dickinson's especially-brilliant 1971 mystery novel Sleep and His Brother.

[Mephisto]

Originally posted by Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor
Lycanthropy.

Good one. To which I'll add vampirism (in some books and movies it's caused by a virus or bacteria).

And according to a couple websites I've looked at since my first post in this thread, the horniness that afflicted the Enterprises' crews was indeed a disease of some sort, even though it affected Data who I thought should be immune to such things. The ST:TOS episode was called "The Naked Time"and the ST:TNG episode was called "The Naked Now."

[Ukulele Ike]

Vampirism isn't fictional, either.

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

Cryptococcus Neuromyces from Wilbur Smith's The Sunbird.

It's a lethal airborne fungus-or-something-like-it found in sealed-off ancient tombs.

This novel also made use of the word "Gry," but saying more would be spoiling.

[TeaRoses]

The "disease" in Greg Bear's Blood Music.

[K'rul]

the changa from ian mcdonald's evoloutions shore

[FaerieBeth]

On an old soap opera (can't remember which) there was a woman who suffered from 'hysterical pregnancy'. It was a psychologic disorder wherein she wanted to be pregnant so badly that her periods stopped and her tummy started expanding. It was a very bizarre storyline....

So I'll go with that. It was......hysterical?

FB

[Freudian Slit]

Originally posted by FaerieBeth
On an old soap opera (can't remember which) there was a woman who suffered from 'hysterical pregnancy'.

FB

Let me beat you to it, Ukulele Ike...



Also--I think Cecil did a column on lycanthropy...but vamprisism can't be real, can it? Unless this is all one big whoosh.

[Otto]

IIRC the horniness disease from ST was caused by "long chain water molecules" or some such treknobabble.

My favorite fictional diseases are the ones, too numerous to list off, in which if the serum/vaccine/antidote is administered by, say, 11:51 AM then the disease will go into instant remission with no after-effects of any kind, but at 11:52 AM it's too late and the end result is a 100% fatality rate.

Oh, and also what at least one movie reviewer has termed "Ali McGraw Disease" from its appearance in Love Story, the symptoms of which are to have it announced one is ill and then die shortly thereafter.

[Icerigger]

Barclays Protomorphosis Syndrome

[sugaree]

Originally posted by Otto
Oh, and also what at least one movie reviewer has termed "Ali McGraw Disease" from its appearance in Love Story, the symptoms of which are to have it announced one is ill and then die shortly thereafter.

Yes, I believe the main symptom is that of having one's glossy hair spread across the pillow in a fetching corona of shininess.

[isthatsowrong?]

CRS Disease - Can't Remember Shit, from too many movies to list.

[Annie-Xmas]

Captain Tripps.

[Chefguy]

Ooh, ooh, uromysitysis from Seinfeld.

[Steve Wright]

Nobody's mentioned the (Masque of the) Red Death yet?

[Zenster]

Skin failure! (Dr. Nick Riviera)

Tertiary coreopsis of the patella (thanks, Arthur Hoppe)

The vapors.

[Max Carnage]

Originally posted by Zenster
Skin failure! (Dr. Nick Riviera)

Tertiary coreopsis of the patella (thanks, Arthur Hoppe)

The vapors.

The Vapors is very real as well, just very Southern. Actually it's just gas, but real southern belles don't have gas, they "get tha' vapahs." Just like they don't sweat, they glisten.

[The Mad Hermit]

Frank Herbert's White Plague, from the book of the same name. It was developed by a bioresearcher as vengeance for the IRA bombing that killed his family. It killed women exclusively.

Brain cloud? -Joe vs. the Volcano

Hollywood amnesia, seen in everything- lately in last season's 24, where Keifer's wife forgets just enough to keep the mystery in the plot.

The puberty-induced madness disease on Star Trek's Miri.

Oh, and how about the galactic "disease" in Trek's Immunity Syndrome? That was one big bacterium.

[X~Slayer(ALE)]

Nymphomania

...seriously. Has anyone known anyone to clinically have this "disease"?

..and if you do, can I have name, address and phone number please.

[hebesphenomegacorona]

Originally posted by Ukulele Ike
Lycanthropy isn't fictional. Take my word for it.

I'd think he's talking about the guys who TURN into wolves, not those who THINK they're wolves.*



*I think that's the symptom...

[hebesphenomegacorona]

Never mind that it's an addiction instead of a disease, I'd go with Bloodhype addiction, from Bloodhype, by Allan Dean Foster.


100% addiction rate, guaranteed death unholily expensive...

[hebesphenomegacorona]

Never mind that it's an addiction instead of a disease, I'd go with Bloodhype addiction, from Bloodhype, by Allan Dean Foster.


100% addiction rate, guaranteed death unholily expensive...

[gotpasswords]

These weren't mentioned in any stories, but two diseases inspired by street signs near my office are:

Infectious Clementina and Malignant Natoma.

[emmaliminal]

The engineered, nanomachine-breakdown-induced Tourette syndrome in Greg Bear's Slant

[Dragonblink]

Every once in a while I'll find myself referring to Jovian Crotchrot. I must've read it somewhere, but can't for the life of me remember where ...

[masonite]

The Twibbit on occasion knows
A difficulty with its toes.

--Edward Gorey, The Utter Zoo

[Mudshark]

I always liked the Andromeds Strain.

[Orange Skinner]

Captain Trips, from The Stand.

[gonzoron]

Xenovirus Takis-A, The Wild Card Virus (90% die, 9% deformed, 1% get superpowers!)

At the risk of being set straight by Ukulele Ike, mummy rot?

does Reefer Madness count?

[gonzoron]

Xenovirus Takis-A, The Wild Card Virus (90% die, 9% deformed, 1% get superpowers!)

At the risk of being set straight by Ukulele Ike, mummy rot?

does Reefer Madness count?

[gallows fodder]

The Red Fever, from Victor Kelleher's The Red King.

[Armilla]

I think, just for the heartbreaking weirdness of it all, the Merlin sickness from Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

[LabRat]

I thought that DFSW's (Delicate Flower of Southern Womanhood) got dewey when they were too hot.

[pravnik]

Spontaneous pan-corporeal organ rejection
Transdermal vomiting
Ingrown brains
Explosive urethral exsanguination
Rockin' pnuemonia
Boogie-woogie flu
Cat scratch fev...wait, nevermind
24-hour Down's syndrome
Death by chocolate

[as_u_wish]

Mr. as-u_wish asks me to post PMS. He claims it's fictional. Comments are about to be made. He may survive. Report at 10.

[sleeping]

Tumorsyphillisitisosis (from Family Guy).

[theendisnear]

Rage - from 28 days later

[Cyn]

Was taking report at work and the L&D RN said this baby looked FLK to her, flat forehead, low-set ears.
During my ER rotation the doctor said the screaming child in bed 4 had SB syndrome.
FLK : Funny looking kid
SB : Spoiled brat

[RealityChuck]

Clayark disease in Octavia Butler's Clay's Ark and Patternmaster. (Actually, Patternmaster was written first, and Clay's Ark is something of a sequel.

Butler also postulated a disease in her short story "Speech Sounds," about a plague that affects the speech centers of the brain -- some people can't speak, while others can't understand language.

Lepcer in Alfred Bester's The Computer Connection, a combination of leprosy and cancer.

Connie Willis wrote a short story about a disease that turns your skin into a shell-like consistency.

The Wandering Sickness in Things to Come

I believe the disease that Katherine Mortenhoe has in Deathwatch (aka La Mort en direct, from the novel The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe/The Unsleeping Eye) was meant to be a new disease, set in a time when people never died young.

[VarlosZ]

AIDS.


What?

[Max Carnage]

The Curse of the Black Pearl

[Judith Prietht]

Rage-aholism.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

Kryptonite Poisoning.

BTW--I was thinling of the Lycanthropy that produces an actual physical transformation.

[Miss Gretchen]

The condition known as HOT DOG FINGERS!
This was on a commercial a few years ago. I think it was for an exterminator, where a "bug" starts running across the screen during what's supposed to be a normal commercial. It started out like a regular prescription drug ad, with sad looking people who ultimately triumphantly.. have a picnic or something. The narrator starts listing off in a rapid fire voice about the possible effects of this "drug" and one of the dreaded potential symptons was "the condition known as hot dog fingers"

[skeptic_ev]

Well, the disease isn't fictional, but the setting is: the chicken pox that killed the Martians in Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.

Along the same vein, the bacteria that killed the Martians in H.G. Wells's "War of the Worlds."

[skeptic_ev]

BTW, thanks, Max Carnage. I've always wondered what the vapors are.

[Skeezix]

There was a piece of IF (interactive fiction) released a bunch of years back now, titled Glowgrass, with something called "the Green Plague" that was never really explained in great detail.

From my rather spotty memory of it (it's been a while since I played this one, now) the player discovers that the thing prompted fairly liberal worldwide use of nukes to contain its spread, to no avail.

The name just sticks in my head, for some reason.