Reading this now (for obvious reasons...) and enjoying it. Oddly its making me feel better about everything - it definitely could have gone either way, wasn't sure if reading pandemic fiction would be comforting or just compound the terror of living in a pandemic. Anyway, great review! Also, since we're all amateur social media-trained epidemiologists now: I'm not sure how realistic I found the account of the pandemic. My instinct was that a virus with such a fast incubation period and high mortality rate would burn itself out way before we lost 99.99% of the population. It kills in 48 hours - presumably everyone could just hide indoors for a couple of days. Although the explanations of transmission are somewhat vague I guess, maybe we're meant to think it lasts in the air or on surfaces for ages.
I suppose it’s down to just how widely and quickly it spread. During the 14th century Black Death there are reports of some people contracting the plague and dying within a few short hours.
@@SFF180 for sure. I think I'm imagining this through the lens of bits and pieces I've read about coronavirus and the way that its up to 14 day incubation period + low-ish mortality rate was what allowed it to spread, whereas viruses that kill most of their victims - and quickly - are more containable, e.g. SARS. But I don't really know about it and I'm in no way qualified to assess the accuracy of Station Eleven's imagined pandemic. More importantly I should say I don't really think it matters all that much, just something I couldn't help wondering about given what's going on in the real world rn. I enjoyed the book for its characters, descriptions, plot, social commentary, etc not for showing us an accurate epidemiological model. I've never been that into the hard vs. soft SF distinction, at least when it implies a value judgement about the virtues of the former. I agree with Peter Frase's Four Futures, where he says: "a distinction...is customarily made among science fictions fans, between "hard" and "soft" science fiction. The former is supposed to be more plausible by way of its grounding in present-day science. But this distinction reflects the biases of the genre's traditional fan base and its fetishization of the natural sciences. The more important distinction...is between stories that take their world-building seriously, and those that don't. What is called soft science fiction is sometimes just Star Wars-style adventure stories, but sometimes it makes much richer use of social science. Meanwhile many of the supposedly "harder" counterparts pair detailed exegeses of physics with naive or utterly conventional understandings of social relations and human behavior". I have to say I've always found your reviews to be great for avoiding the biases and limitations in some SFF fandom that Frase talks about :)
Thank you! I think that part of the reason Station Eleven did not deal specifically with the nature of the outbreak was that it was never intended to be an outbreak novel, but a novel about how communities rebuild in the wake of tragedy. The outbreak was just the device to get the story there. This seemed to escape the notice of a lot of critics, who I suppose were expecting The Stand all over again.
So glad I got to hear you thought on this book! There were so many angles to this story that drew me in and I recommend it daily still at the bookshop. Her new book is coming out and you should read it if you get a chance- I have read it and enjoyed it just as much as Station Eleven!
This is a fantastic in-depth review. I really appreciate that you don't dismiss the concerns against the book but address them. I definitely want to try the book more now. :) Thanks!
Great review. I've thought for a long time that this book doesn't seem like something I would be interested in but after your review I find myself wanting to read it.
I've been hearing rather a lot about this book in the past few weeks and the more I hear the more I think I like it. I'll definitely seek it out. PS. A small point of order: the term 'cosy catastrophes' was coined by Brian Aldiss in his history of science fiction, Billion Year Spree - www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cosy_catastrophe
Thanks!
Appreciate you very much!
what a fantastic, fantastic review - nothing even remotely like it anywhere else on BookTube! You should do three of these every day!
Steve Donoghue I'd be delighted to, if perhaps I could stop time to get that much reading done! Anyway, feel free to spread the vid around BookTube.
Reading this now (for obvious reasons...) and enjoying it. Oddly its making me feel better about everything - it definitely could have gone either way, wasn't sure if reading pandemic fiction would be comforting or just compound the terror of living in a pandemic. Anyway, great review!
Also, since we're all amateur social media-trained epidemiologists now: I'm not sure how realistic I found the account of the pandemic. My instinct was that a virus with such a fast incubation period and high mortality rate would burn itself out way before we lost 99.99% of the population. It kills in 48 hours - presumably everyone could just hide indoors for a couple of days. Although the explanations of transmission are somewhat vague I guess, maybe we're meant to think it lasts in the air or on surfaces for ages.
I suppose it’s down to just how widely and quickly it spread. During the 14th century Black Death there are reports of some people contracting the plague and dying within a few short hours.
@@SFF180 for sure. I think I'm imagining this through the lens of bits and pieces I've read about coronavirus and the way that its up to 14 day incubation period + low-ish mortality rate was what allowed it to spread, whereas viruses that kill most of their victims - and quickly - are more containable, e.g. SARS.
But I don't really know about it and I'm in no way qualified to assess the accuracy of Station Eleven's imagined pandemic. More importantly I should say I don't really think it matters all that much, just something I couldn't help wondering about given what's going on in the real world rn. I enjoyed the book for its characters, descriptions, plot, social commentary, etc not for showing us an accurate epidemiological model.
I've never been that into the hard vs. soft SF distinction, at least when it implies a value judgement about the virtues of the former.
I agree with Peter Frase's Four Futures, where he says:
"a distinction...is customarily made among science fictions fans, between "hard" and "soft" science fiction. The former is supposed to be more plausible by way of its grounding in present-day science. But this distinction reflects the biases of the genre's traditional fan base and its fetishization of the natural sciences. The more important distinction...is between stories that take their world-building seriously, and those that don't. What is called soft science fiction is sometimes just Star Wars-style adventure stories, but sometimes it makes much richer use of social science. Meanwhile many of the supposedly "harder" counterparts pair detailed exegeses of physics with naive or utterly conventional understandings of social relations and human behavior".
I have to say I've always found your reviews to be great for avoiding the biases and limitations in some SFF fandom that Frase talks about :)
Thank you! I think that part of the reason Station Eleven did not deal specifically with the nature of the outbreak was that it was never intended to be an outbreak novel, but a novel about how communities rebuild in the wake of tragedy. The outbreak was just the device to get the story there. This seemed to escape the notice of a lot of critics, who I suppose were expecting The Stand all over again.
So glad I got to hear you thought on this book! There were so many angles to this story that drew me in and I recommend it daily still at the bookshop. Her new book is coming out and you should read it if you get a chance- I have read it and enjoyed it just as much as Station Eleven!
This is a fantastic in-depth review. I really appreciate that you don't dismiss the concerns against the book but address them. I definitely want to try the book more now. :) Thanks!
tarabyt3 I hope you enjoy it. No, not all post-apocalypse stories have to be _Mad Max_. :-)
Yeah, I mean, Mad Max was cool and all but. XD
Great review. I've thought for a long time that this book doesn't seem like something I would be interested in but after your review I find myself wanting to read it.
I've been hearing rather a lot about this book in the past few weeks and the more I hear the more I think I like it. I'll definitely seek it out.
PS. A small point of order: the term 'cosy catastrophes' was coined by Brian Aldiss in his history of science fiction, Billion Year Spree - www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cosy_catastrophe
Richard Hayden Ah, thanks for the clarification. I'd only heard it in the context of Ballard trolling Wyndham.
Wyndham was still the target. I imagine the concept was dreamt up at New Worlds social events so Ballard was likely involved in its creation.