Recommendations from our site
“It’s a love song to watching and performing music live, and more broadly to making something, however small, rather than passively consuming. It’s a zippy read, driven by the page-turning missteps and misunderstandings. In amongst that, the sci fi elements – the near-future tech, and the implied commentary on our own direction of travel – are easily absorbed and believed.” Read more...
“The novel is in the subgenre of post-apocalyptic fiction, and imagines a world in which a plague has caused all of us to become isolated. Everyone is living like a hermit, working from home, eating at home, studying at home, and there are no large-scale gatherings anymore. So, the very visceral experience of going to a live concert, of that connection between the performer and the audience, of being part of an audience, and performing for an audience—these experiences are no longer possible.” Read more...
The Best of Speculative Fiction
Ken Liu, Novelist
Sci-fi author and translator Ken Liu recommended A Song for A New Day when we asked him to recommend the best speculative fiction, explaining that it “imagines a world in which a plague has caused all of us to become isolated. Everyone is living like a hermit, working from home, eating at home, studying at home, and there are no large-scale gatherings anymore.” In this world, illegal concert-goers find themselves united by their passion for music—just as, in Station Eleven, the survivors of a deadly pandemic take comfort from the genius of Shakespeare. “Sarah draws on her experiences as a professional musician to portray why that matters,” explained Liu, “and to give people a sense of the potential of resistance in live music.”
From our article Books like Station Eleven
