The M.D.

A Horror Story

2010
Author:

Thomas M. Disch
Foreword by John Clute

A chilling allegory for the field of modern medicine

Exploring questions of guilt and responsibility, the second book in Thomas M. Disch’s Supernatural Minnesota series, The M.D., is a satisfying mix of dark humor, biting social commentary, and terrifying horror.

The M.D. is simply one of the best novels of horror-fantasy I’ve ever read. Thomas M. Disch has been writing wonderful tales of imagination for years now—stories that sometimes amuse, sometimes sting, sometimes horrify, and sometimes manage to do all three at the same time—but The M.D. is surely his magnum opus.

Stephen King

Exploring questions of guilt and responsibility, the second book in Thomas M. Disch’s Supernatural Minnesota series, The M.D., is a satisfying mix of dark humor, biting social commentary, and terrifying horror. Given the power to heal or to harm by the Roman god Mercury through a magical staff, the caduceus, young Billy Michaels embarks on a lifelong journey of inflicting good and evil on those who cross his path. Wielding the caduceus, Billy, and later the grown-up, greedy physician William, can only cure in proportion to the amount of suffering he inflicts. From paralyzing his brother and mutilating schoolmates to wreaking a nationwide plague and running for-profit concentration camps for the sick, Michaels’s powers spin quickly out of control.

Thomas M. Disch (1940–2008) was a best-selling and prolific American science fiction writer and poet. He won several awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book in 1999.

John Clute, author of the novel Appleseed, has won several Hugo Awards for his work.

The M.D. is an extraordinary feat of imagination and frequently is outright mesmerizing.

Washington Post

Profound and dark and very dire, but it is also a page-turner. And each new page, like an electric eel, is poised to shock.

Los Angeles Times

The M.D. is a pitiless fairy tale and a Faustian pastiche, a (doomed) family chronicle, and a crackerjack medical thriller [that] fully, and brilliantly, earns its subtitle: a horror story.

Entertainment Weekly

The M.D. is simply one of the best novels of horror-fantasy I’ve ever read. Thomas M. Disch has been writing wonderful tales of imagination for years now—stories that sometimes amuse, sometimes sting, sometimes horrify, and sometimes manage to do all three at the same time—but The M.D. is surely his magnum opus.

Stephen King

I read Thomas M. Disch’s The M.D. with pure delight. . . . A story that, regardless of its subtitle, breaks all the genre chains. It is suspenseful, engrossing, full of well-observed and convincing characters, steeped in irony, sly, often darkly hilarious yet with serious intentions that give it considerable impact.

Dean R. Koontz