Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility features a character Mandel seems to have based loosely on herself: an author named Olive Llewellyn who is famous for writing a novel about a pandemic. Pandemics are a common trope in novels, particularly in the speculative or science fiction genre, with authors considering different imagined scenarios as to how a pandemic might occur and who might be affected. The following is a list of recent novels that feature fictional pandemics as a means of exploring social and political issues as well as human behavior.

Station Eleven (2014) – Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and one of BookBrowse's Best of the Year in 2014, narrates the aftermath of the fictional Georgia Flu, which has killed 99% of the world's population. The plot features dual timelines — one that unfolds during the very beginning of the pandemic, and another set 20 years later. The ...