Oppegaard, David
Entry updated 16 January 2023. Tagged: Author.

(1979- ) US author whose first novel, The Suicide Collectors (2008), radically mutates an old horror trope – the corpse-devouring ghoul – into a Near Future sf tale of considerable force. For five years Earth has suffered under a "disease" or perhaps recognition known as the Despair, which has caused the Suicide of most of the world's population; their bodies are routinely gathered up by a group known as the Collectors for reasons clearly inimical to the survival of Homo sapiens, but the Invention of a cure for Despair may save our species, and redeem what has rapidly become a Ruined Earth. Oppegaard's second novel, Wormwood, Nevada (2009), inhabits a not dissimilar territory: a burned-out western town after a Disaster – in this case a meteorite – has dislodged human beings from the daylight, civilized world. [JC]
David Oppegaard
born St Paul, Minnesota: 19 August 1979
works
- The Suicide Collectors (New York: St Martin's Press, 2008) [hb/]
- Wormwood, Nevada (New York: St Martin's Press, 2009) [hb/]
- The Town Built on Sorrow (Mendota Heights, Minnesota: North Star Editions (Flux), 2017) [pb/]
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