HADRON AGE SF (51)
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December 21, 2022
One in a series of posts about the 75 best sf adventures published during the genre’s Hadron Age era (from 2004–2023, according to HILOBROW’s periodization schema). For Josh Glenn’s Hadron Age Sci-Fi 75 list (a work in progress), click here.
Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014).
During a production of King Lear in Toronto, the actor Arthur Leander suffers a heart attack. Jeevan, a member of the audience, attempts to resuscitate him unsuccessfully; later, he comforts Kirsten, a child actor in the production. That night, a swine flu pandemic (known as the “Georgia Flu”) breaks out in Toronto. Fast forward to twenty years later, when most of the world’s population has died, and its cities have been largely abandoned. Kirsten is now part of the Traveling Symphony, a nomadic group of actors and musicians in the Great Lakes region; she is obsessed with Arthur Leander, who’d given her Station Eleven, a two-volume set of graphic novels, which she peruses like the Talmud. After a run-in with a cult under the control of a figure known as the Prophet, the troupe heads to a settlement in an old airport… but along the way their members begin to go missing. Meanwhile, we learn that Station Eleven was an unpublished project by Arthur’s first wife; and that Jeevan, formerly a paparazzo, had encountered both Arthur and his wife at a crucial point in their marriage. One of Arthur’s friends, Clark, along with Arthur’s second wife and child, will also make an appearance in this story. It’s a charming cozy (mostly) catastrophe, one which revolves around a line from Star Trek: Voyager: “Survival is insufficient.”
Fun facts: Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award. A ten-part television adaptation premiered on HBO Max in December 2021.
JOSH GLENN’S *BEST ADVENTURES* LISTS: BEST 250 ADVENTURES OF THE 20TH CENTURY | 100 BEST OUGHTS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST RADIUM AGE (PROTO-)SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TEENS ADVENTURES | 100 BEST TWENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST THIRTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST GOLDEN AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FORTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST FIFTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SIXTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST NEW WAVE SCI FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST SEVENTIES ADVENTURES | 100 BEST EIGHTIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST DIAMOND AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES | 100 BEST NINETIES ADVENTURES | 75 BEST HADRON AGE SCI-FI ADVENTURES.