Ep 091 When Fiction Becomes Reality - Sugar Mountain with Alfred Alcorn

The Mosaic Podcast

This happens sometimes in the world of fiction and science fiction, a writer writes a story that speaks of something that happens only to find years later, what the writer saw happen, actually happens. Alfred Alcorn is not a prophet, a psychic or a doomsayer, he is just a brilliant author who has seen enough of the world to tell stories of a world that could be.

Sugar Mountain, written in 2013, could become a manual to help us navigate or way through the global pandemic of Coved -19. it is not an exact rendition, but what it does do, is it invites the reader to contemplate, is Coved -19 a one and done endemic or the messenger for a more deadly pandemic that could surface at any time.

Hear Alfred thoughts on what can be done, what the world is trying to say to us and what the world might soon look like if we don’t all come together.

First published in 2013 and set in western Massachusetts, Sugar Mountain revolves around the struggle of an extended family to survive a pandemic that starts in China and spreads around the world with devastating effect. As it stands, Sugar Mountain could serve as a survival manual should Covid 19 mutate and turn more deadly than it already is. Because of the relevance and increased demand for Sugar Mountain, the publisher has come out with a reissue that might be of interest to those who have not read the 2013 edition.

Born Alfred Denny and orphaned at the age of eight, the author grew up in the U.K. (Merseyside), in Ireland (County Roscommon), and in the U.S. (Massachusetts). He graduated from Harvard and has worked as a journalist, editor, teacher, travel director (for the Harvard Museum of Natural History). In that last capacity he planned and led trips all over the world, including Antarctica. He has also been a safari guide, mostly in Tanzania, which he knows well.

To date he has written and published 10 novels. They have been reviewed in the New Yorker, The New York Times, the Boston Globe, and many other publications.