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First there was The Stand. Then came The Hot Zone. Now the publishing world's virus fever is spiking for Doubleday's Pandora's Clock. The thriller -- originally scheduled for an October release but advanced to Aug. 11 to capitalize on all the buzz -- follows a 747 jumbo jet that can't get permission to land after a passenger, believed to have been exposed to a killer virus created for germ warfare, dies on board. The Hot Zone meets Airport, right? ''Actually, it made us think of The Hot Zone meets Speed, because the plane has to keep circling around,'' says Lori Lipsky, the book's editor. Lipsky adds that the initial draft, by author John Nance, wasn't quite so Zone-like. The danger was merely a figment of some overactive bureaucratic imaginations. ''But I didn't think that was as satisfying,'' says Lipsky. ''So we changed the ending and made the threat real.'' Nance, 49, who is a commercial pilot as well as an airline correspondent for ABC's Good Morning America (and who says he began worrying about traveling viruses 20 years before the Ebola virus panic) did not mind the editing. ''It doesn't matter whether the virus is real or not,'' he says. ''The fact is, every passenger on every flight is a potential time bomb -- and no government in the world has a method to deal with this. This will happen.'' To make sure Clock happens, Doubleday isn't being shy. Travelers will find bookstore window displays for the novel and light-box ads on their way to the gate at 16 major U.S. airports, as well as 15-second commercials saturating CNN's airport-lounge news service. Have a nice trip!
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