A Song for a New Day

Winner of the 2020 Nebula Award for Best Novel

After a global pandemic makes public gatherings illegal and 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.

“A compelling book about the importance of music–and any sort of art–in a world where it seems like the least essential thing. This is an expertly drawn post-catastrophe world peopled by compassionately written characters.” Ann Leckie, Hugo Award winning author of Provenance

“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

“You’d better keep a copy of A Song for a New Day with you at all times, because this book will help you survive the future. Sarah Pinsker has written a wonderful epic about music, community, and rediscovering the things that make us human. Pinsker has an amazing ear for dialogue, a brilliant knack for describing music, and most importantly a profound awareness of silence, in both its positive and negative aspects. 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

Sarah Pinsker‘s Nebula and Sturgeon Award-winning short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s and F&SF, as well as numerous other magazines, anthologies, and translation markets. She is a singer/songwriter who has toured 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. A Song for a New Day is her first novel. She lives with her wife in Baltimore, Maryland.

[The] truth is that ideas are everywhere. You can find ideas in scientific articles, in works of art, in songs, in the time your dog barked in the middle of the night and it sounded like a word, in the face you see in the trunk of the sycamore at the end of the block, in a conversation overheard. Ideas are the easy part...

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