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Published Sep 2019
384 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
In this captivating science fiction novel from an award-winning author, public gatherings are illegal making concerts impossible, except for those willing to break the law for the love of music, and for one chance at human connection.
In the Before, when the government didn't prohibit large public gatherings, Luce Cannon was on top of the world. One of her songs had just taken off and she was on her way to becoming a star. Now, in the After, terror attacks and deadly viruses have led the government to ban concerts, and Luce's connection to the world--her music, her purpose--is closed off forever. She does what she has to do: she performs in illegal concerts to a small but passionate community, always evading the law.
Rosemary Laws barely remembers the Before times. She spends her days in Hoodspace, helping customers order all of their goods online for drone delivery--no physical contact with humans needed. By lucky chance, she finds a new job and a new calling: discover amazing musicians and bring their concerts to everyone via virtual reality. The only catch is that she'll have to do something she's never done before and go out in public. Find the illegal concerts and bring musicians into the limelight they deserve. But when she sees how the world could actually be, that won't be enough.
"[An] excellent debut novel by Nebula winner Pinsker establishes her as an astonishingly impressive writer of day-after-tomorrow SF...This tale of hope and passion is a remarkable achievement." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[P]owerful...A gorgeous novel that celebrates what can happen when one person raises her voice." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Pinsker's first novel is a riveting and plausible look into what our world could be if we become consumed with fear and dependent on social media. It is also a love letter to live music and underground shows, imagining futuristic musical innovations and the punk rebel scene that could emerge in response to a closed-off world." - Booklist (starred review)
"Pinsker's first novel depicts a moving alternate future in which technology provides everything a person could want, except human contact. Themes of virtual reality, humanity, and music are threaded throughout this melodic story." - Library Journal (starred review)
"An all-too plausible version of the apocalypse, rendered in such compelling prose that you won't be able to put it down...a lively and hopeful look at how community and music and life goes on even in the middle of dark days and malevolent corporate shenanigans." - Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Get In Trouble
"Sarah Pinsker has written a wonderful epic about music, community, and rediscovering the things that make us human...A Song for a New Day restored some of my faith in community, and I didn't even realize how much I needed this book right now." – Charlie Jane Anders, national bestselling author of All the Birds in the Sky and The City in the Middle of the Night
"Experiencing Sarah Pinsker's A Song For a New Day is like listening to a fine, well-rehearsed song unleashed live. It's a deeply human song of queer found family and the tension between independence and belonging, thoughtful and raw like the best live music...If you love performance—the magic of head-thrown-back ecstatic musical communion—read this book." - Nicola Griffith, author of Hild
This information about A Song for a New Day was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah Pinsker's Nebula and Sturgeon Award-winning short fiction has appeared in Asimov's, F&SF, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, as well as numerous other magazines, anthologies, year's bests, podcasts, and translation markets. She is also a singer/songwriter who has toured nationally behind three albums on various independent labels. Her first collection, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, was released in early 2019 by Small Beer Press. This is her first novel. She lives with her wife in Baltimore, Maryland.
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