A Song for a New Day

This is a book about how society -- specifically musicians and music lovers -- deals with the fallout of a terrorist attack and some sort of deadly pandemic (the specifics are never really described). The book was published in late 2019, and a couple months later, musicians and music lovers were dealing with a deadly pandemic, so there's a lot of articles and reviews out there that describe it as a very apt and timely book.

But it did not work for me. For awhile I couldn't figure out what clanged for me, but ultimately I think my main issue is that it manages to paint the picture of a dystopia that is less dystopic than our current dystopia.

In the book, "anti-congregation" laws have been passed to protect people from disease and maybe terrorist attacks (that element gets dropped pretty quickly). It's unclear why these laws are still in place -- is the pandemic still happening? It doesn't seem like it from the plot. It's also not clear how these laws work -- a law preventing people from gathering is obviously a real problem, but it's also clear from the plot that restaurants still exist, public transit exists, and people are obviously allowed to meet up in real space, so is it only concerts and other large events like that which are banned? Ultimately the concept of a law like that seems ridiculous not because I don't think it could happen, but because it doesn't make any real sense in the context of the book.

The main antagonist of the book is a company called StageHoloLive -- it's basically hologram live-streaming concerts. The book focuses on two people -- a musician who scrapes together a career by running illegal concerts, and a music fan who starts working for SHL as a talent scout. SHL offers musicians contracts, then they call the cops to get them to shut down illegal concert spaces, so that they don't have any competition for their streams. They also definitely have a generic family-friendly sort of feel, so any edgy, political, or unusual artists get pushed to the side.

That's an interesting kernel of an idea for a story, but it isn't really developed, and I feel like it basically ignores the fact that musicians and artists are already fucked, and they were before the pandemic. Streaming services have been screwing artists for over a decade, concert halls have been jacking them for longer than that, and managers and labels have been screwing them for a century. I feel like this book would've been more compelling if it was set in current times, but with Spotify as the main villain.

It also falls into the classic trap of assuming that music is better, and only really worthwhile, when experienced live and in person. Live performances, and live events in general really, can obviously be very powerful experiences, and certainly different from experiencing something recorded or not live. But not everyone feels that way, many people have experienced traumatic events at performances, many people don't feel comfortable at live events for any number of reasons, and many people don't have good access to live music or the means to attend concerts even if they want to.

Anyway, I'm rambling. This book wasn't all bad, but overall I didn't really like it.

This 2019 Nebula award winner tells the story of Rosemary and Luce in the near future after social unrest and some sort of pandemic(!) leads to anti-congregation laws, so everyone pretty much lives in the "Hoodie", which is a VR device. Luce is a musician, who either lives to play music or plays music to live - it is her, through and through. She became know as "The Last Power Chord" - the last person to play before a live audience.

Rosemary lives a quiet sheltered life in the country, working for SuperWally, a giant conglomerate that does all its business via the Hoodie. Barely into her 20s and barely remembering the Before, she gets involved in StageHolo, an entertainment giant that produces music and shows in this "hoodie space" as a talent acquisition expert. She and Luce bounce off each other through the book, exchanging chapters describing their lives in the After. Rosemary tries to find out who she is and what she should do, while Luce tries to find her musician's way in this new world order.

I am such a sucker for books about the creative process, particularly about music (one of my favorite books last year was [b:Daisy Jones & The Six|40597810|Daisy Jones & The Six|Taylor Jenkins Reid|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1580255154l/40597810.SY75.jpg|61127102]), and this one is no exception. The setting is eerily prescient, especially with Rosemary reacting in different ways to being around people, sometimes far too close for comfort. It's beginning to look like that is how I am going to feel if / when things ever open up again.

Luce is a real strong character. Her passion for her music and how it "rescued" her from a life she desperately did not want, pours through every word. And you can tell that Pinsker is a musician (she has 3 albums to her credit) because her writing about the passion music can create is powerful stuff indeed.

So I really enjoyed this book. I would like to read the short story that started it all out, Our Lady of the Open Road, published in Asimov's, which, according to the author, "features Luce at another point in her life." I'd like to learn more about Luce. It is exactly the kind of sci-fi I enjoy - just barely enough future to make it sci-fi, but really about timeless themes like longing, love, music and the creative driving force. Good stuff!