World Mysteries and Thrillers discussion

Biotech thrillers involve some aspect of biology and new technological breakthroughs. With the advances in DNA technology, the ideas for plots in these action filled novels are endless. One could think of Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton as a fiction novel that fits this subgenre. Others might argue that Jurassic Park is science fiction.
My newest thriller novel, “The True Virus”, would be considered a biotech thriller. It deals with a Hamas bioterrorist who hacks into the CIA’s main computer and plants a program to use the new DNA component of the system to produce the deadly Ebola virus. The result is an epidemic in Israel which must be stopped.

What novels do you feel could be considered as biotech thrillers?

I--for one--am never impressed by 'science news'. Modern electronic media's news-providers fully well realize that some portion of the world's ignoramuses always groove on this kind of topic, so they scrounge around to cough up whatever fluffy, 'sciencey' article they can find which fits-the-bill. Just so as to have something to feature in their 'science-ey' news column. Its all so much bogus-ness and fraud. The general public is not mentally equipped to judge or assess the veracity of the science-news they're being fed. It is, 'science as entertainment'. We may as well still be living in medieval times, with science as a replacement for alchemy and magic.

Just like everything else lately...falsehoods running amok.

Now to hopefully keep this discussion going, let’s first look at a quick definition for a thriller novel. Thrillers are action filled stories where the plot usually involves an antagonist who presents obstacles that the protagonist must overcome. Depending on what subject mater these novels cover determines the sub genre they fit into. However, sometimes these stories end up covering more than one topic and might not fit conveniently into one of the recognized sub genres. That’s what happens with what I refer to as biotech thrillers.
Biotech thrillers are crossover novels for medical thrillers and technological thrillers. Medical thrillers deal with some aspect of medicine. Sometimes they deal with a mysterious disease. Now as for technological thrillers (technothrillers), cutting-edge technology is central to the plot. Well if one uses medical technology to deal with or even be the cause of an epidemic disease in a story, this would be what I would refer to as a biotech tale. Now to make these novels into thrillers, add bioterrorists.
Now again, can anyone think of novels that fit into the sub genre of biotech thrillers?

Useful explication there. Well..to answer you: there's tons of biotech thrillers these days. Michael Crichton made this style of novel mainstream. Today, I see them all over, (as moderator of four thriller groups and member of several more). A sprinkling of such titles appear on our own group shelves every few months. Whether its actual 'terrorist groups' as the villains of the plot doesn't seem to me, much to matter?

So, still not quite sure what you're driving at...its not a completely new genre; as this listopia shows:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7...

I agree about the dumbing down of science by media. My own definition of a biotech thriller would be a broad one; it used to be that the word "biotech" was used mainly for molecular biology things, but really it now seems to mean "any new science in the general area of biology." But let's face it, good biotech doesn't necessarily make a good thriller. I can attest to this, because I once wrote one - it was about bioprospecting for scary-cool new genes in the Amazon. I loved the technical parts of the story but my characters were - well, let's just say that the book is still in that drawer that all authors have!