It is the year 2010, and the United States is ravaged by disease and stiffled by martial law. With whole cities succumbing to a lethal virus known as V-CIDS, the panicked authorities take the drastic action of hearding the infected into specially designed internment camps. Into one of these prisons stumbles Michael Barris, a wealthy interactive-television mogul with a controversial past. He is searching for his sick son, spending his fortune and his future for answers. What he finds is a carefully guarded nightmare -- one that he helped create.

As Barris struggles to survive in this shadowy world, he comes to aunderstand that reaching his son is not his only battle. For the camps have a far more sinister agenda than the military is willing to admit -- an agenda which threatens not only life, but the very spark of human spirit.

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From Publishers Weekly

It's 2010, and an attempted cure for AIDS has mutated into a deadlier disease, V-CIDS. The U.S., under martial law, has set up "quarantine centers" in the Southwest. Searching for his gay son, Jon, media mogul Michael Barris smuggles himself into one of centers only to discover that it and the other centers are actually extermination camps. With a strange assortment of allies, including the leader of the camp's gay barracks, an army officer and a local cowboy, Barris precipitates an inmates' rebellion that promises the unraveling of the death-camp system and the overthrow of the government that established it. Here, Hickman is working with a classic SF theme that's been popular since the days when the Great Menace could be the Yellow Peril or invaders from Mars. It shares some its predecessors' common faults-sentimentality, a dubious scenario, questionable technology-but boasts some considerable virtues, including superior characterization, a carefully built setting and excellent pacing. This novel represents a radical departure for the author, who's known for more easily popular SF and fantasy (the Deathgate Cycle, etc.). He's to be commended for his daring and vision.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The year is 2010. The V-CIDS virus, once thought to be a cure for AIDS, has mutated into an even deadlier disease and is ravaging the United States. While scientists struggle to find a cure, victims are rounded up and isolated in government camps. Their numbers increase at a staggering rate, and the camp officials treat the victims like so much cordwood to be shipped to local crematoria. Outside the camps, paranoia and homophobia run rampant. Michael Barris, an outspoken TV executive, bucks the paralyzing fear and seeks to visit his estranged son at one of the camps. Once inside, he too becomes a prisoner, and his efforts to deal with his own feelings as well as the overwhelming lack of humanity and compassion that he witnesses make this a powerful, disturbing, and depressing story. Hickman is coauthor with Margaret Weiss of the "Dragonlance" sf series (e.g., Dragonlance: The Legend Becomes Reality, Random, 1986). For popular collections.
Susan Gene Clifford, Hughes Aircraft Co. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.