Reception
Due to the detailed and graphic descriptions of the effects of exotic tropical diseases, as well as the revelation that an ebola virus was found a few miles away from Washington D.C., The Hot Zone was hailed by many as a chilling and accurate story of lethal viruses and their encounters with humans. Because Preston's writing style is that of a "science fact" thriller, some critics accused Preston of dramatizing and exaggerating the effects of an Ebola virus infection and embellishing facts with his own imagination. Since its publication over a decade ago, however, The Hot Zone is generally regarded as a nonfiction work and acknowledged for its masterful dramatization. In his blurb, horror writer Stephen King called the book, "one of the most horrifying things I've ever read." When asked whether any book "scared the pants off you" television writer Suzanne Collins answered, "The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston. I just read it a few weeks ago. Still recovering."
Read more about this topic: The Hot Zone
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)