One of his five top science-fiction books that make use of music, as shared at Tor.com:Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014)Read about another entry on the list.
In some respects Station Eleven is a modern return to a classic SF form: a novel describing a worldwide disaster which leaves only a handful of survivors. In one detailed section of the novel we follow a small group of characters before and after the catastrophe, some survive and others do not. One of them ends up in a raggle-taggle band of wanderers, struggling for existence in Michigan, following the shorelines of the Great Lakes. They call themselves the Symphony. By day they are forced to barter, argue and sometimes fight to stay alive, driving through the woods in their old pickup trucks, now engineless and horse-drawn. In the evenings they set up camp, take out musical instruments and perform Beethoven and Sibelius for the (small) audiences who emerge from their own hiding places. But this is only one aspect of an extremely satisfying, highly original and often moving novel.
Station Eleven is among Anne Charnock's five favorite books with fictitious works of art.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
