Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Station Eleven



Late last night. I was running a malware scan on my computer and reading a novel, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. The story, which is about a group of Shakespearean actors in a world devastated by a mysterious virus, was starting to get spooky so I set it aside, not wanting to read something bizarre just before bedtime. The scan finished - no malware - and I shut down the computer. I could hear a strong wind blowing outside.

And then the electricity went out. 

Station Eleven doesn't have any zombies but it is strange enough. An excerpt from the book:

No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films, except rarely, except with a generator drowning out half the dialogue, and only then for the first little while until the fuel for the generators ran out, because automobile gas goes stale after two or three years. Aviation gas lasts longer, but it was difficult to come by.

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