Arthur C. Clark! Good call, SJCM
Yes, that makes sense, SJCM!
We’re having new A/C units installed this week. I’m very distracted with all the commotion, but how grateful I am for these things 
I played the oboe in band and orchestra. Although I took note of the nameless characters in our book, it felt reasonable because of once being an “oboe”! When I think back on some of my musical friends, I still associate them with their instruments. I also liked the idea of a symphony orchestra representing a small society. In my experience, each musical section of the larger musical group had its own territory–both physical and musical. Losing one member was very disruptive to the section, and shifted the voice of the whole orchestra subtly, or not so subtly–depending on their chair and function. Symphony orchestras with many members take years to develop and define their sound. All the survivors of the Georgia flu, not just those in the symphony, would certainly have felt and worked together like a disjointed, inharmonious symphony orchestra.
Wonderful metaphor.
PLANTMOM- I read that the original titie was " the traveling symphony" , but was changed during the extensive edits.
I think it would have been a better title,
And, I dint know that Arthur C Clarke retired to Sri Lanka, and discovered an ancient undersea world.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke#Undersea_explorer
Undersea explorer
SJCM–Thanks for that Arthur C. Clarke information–that’s fascinating! Given the undersea world stuff, it does sound intentional on Mandel’s part.
NJTM: I’m working on my son to apply to Escape the Room, in case they’re expanding. Will keep you posted if he takes my advice 
PlantMom: A/C units! That sounds lovely; but for me, it’s time to go shovel! (again)
Speaking of shoveling…
I’d known all that Arthur C Clark stuff once upon a time, but had forgotten it. It does seem too coincidental not to have been deliberate.
Aha, I get it! Makes better sense now.
Maybe in a certain sense, but Station Eleven was a better commercial choice. For one thing, there are people who might be bored or even slightly repelled 
by the idea of a “symphony.” The title Station Eleven implies something more sci-fi-ish or even vaguely military, and that would appeal to more people.
I would not venture to say that Mandel inserted the whole Station Eleven element into the plot in order to make the book seem more sci-fi-ish (which it really isn’t!) and therefore more salable. However, emphasizing that aspect of the book does broaden its appeal.
Good luck, buenavista. You might pique your son’s interest by telling him that very interesting things happen at Escape the Room because room escape games are very hot now. At the Philly ETR, Universal Studios is building a new themed room to promote the upcoming TV show “Dig.” The room will remain after the promotional period. My son is going to be one of the cluemasters running the new room as soon as it opens. Two of the stars of the show, Ann Heche and Jason Isaacs (Malfoy in Harry Potter) are going to be around during the promotional period. Cool, eh?
Probably Philly was chosen over NYC or Boston because they have more space, but you never know what will happen at Escape the Room!
Mary: Earlier I recommended The Dog Stars and you mentioned that you planned to read it. You posted - #130 - this link already but I missed this part:
Of course then there’s guys like my husband who wouldn’t read the book since it wasn’t science-fictiony enough.
Interesting to hear she did her homework! The thought that the survivalists are the ones most likely to survive is a bit scary. It’s nice to think that the symphony would have a chance too.
Very true – and your observation has reminded me that Jeevan recites his own name to himself on his thousand mile trek, as a means of staying sane. He has no plans to abandon it. The name Jeevan, by the way, means “life.”
Good segue into this question:
I’d say that basically it means that Man does not live by bread alone, but also by Shakespeare and Beethoven. I laughed when I read Dieter’s comment that the quote “would be way more profound if we hadn’t lifted it from Star Trek” (p. 119).
Ice cream?
Well, maybe not just yet. Probably just an excited, hopeful community.
If anyone is interested in the context of the original “Survival is insufficient” quote here it is:
It was more about having freedom and individuality and being able to make your own choices, less about making art. But I think for the symphony it was more about bring art to a world where for too long it seemed like too much of a luxury.
I think I saw the “Survival is Insufficient” motto of the traveling symphony group relevant to their ability to overcome fear and move in new directions. In the end,
.
While Clark and other airport dwellers choose to stay in one place, building a new life firmly anchored in the past, the traveling symphony look more to the future, fulfilling another Star Trek mission:
I hope they find hot showers or bubble baths in the electrified settlement!
Near the end of the book, Kirsten recalls an experience she had with Charlie years earlier: They walk into an abandoned house, and in the nursery they find a child’s porcelain tea set free of dust, and “Kirsten had the impression that someone was watching them from a corner of the room” (p. 307).
Any thoughts on this passage? The paranormal isn’t something that appears elsewhere in the novel (at least not that I recall). I don’t know if the scene is meant to be significant in some particular way, or if it is simply there to provide a glimpse of what it might be like sometimes to walk through a world so full of the dead. Charlie has no explanation, calling it, “A strange moment in a lifetime of strange moments.”
The latter. I’d say.
^^^ I agree and yet …
Unexplained moments like this happen - maybe not often but happen they do. I have one: My mother-in-law had lung cancer. She ended up in the hospital over our July 4th scheduled visit. She was scheduled to be released the day we left. Early early that morning the fire alarm started beeping at the house - battery probably. We got up to take care of the noise but couldn’t get it to stop. For some reason our three children in the room right next to the fire alarm continued to sleep. The phone rang and the minute it rang I knew why. My mother-in-law passed away at around the same time the fire alarm started its beep. Shortly after the call, it stopped. She would have hated to have the phone wake us. Coincidence … maybe … but I figure she got us up and ready to deal with the day ahead. Strange things happen.
^ And so do coincidences. I think we often add meaning to chance events, but that’s okay. Also, according to Oliver Sachs hallucinations are a lot more common than you might think. http://www.oliversacks.com/hallucinations/ I have a strange thing that happens in my office whenever I sit at my computer the phone looks like it’s blinking out of the corner of my eye. I’ve been remodelling and have now completely rearranged the furniture. I hope that particular thing is gone, because it drove me crazy. But I can imagine that in a world full of unburied dead bodies, and real life people hiding behind bushes ready to pounce that imagining ghosts would be very easy.
I’ve heard or read some reviews of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, just out today. He asks how humans evolved from savanna dwelling primates to the dominant force on the planet. One hypothesis he puts forth is that humans, social beings, are able to form cooperative communities with the aid of uniting “stories” or “imagined realities”, such as money, religion, and Limited Liability Corporations to keep us organized". We are the only animal species capable of doing so. Our ability to create these uniting “stories” has led to human expansion across the planet. This controversial idea–the suggestion that we’re naturally programmed to imagine things cooperatively-- is certainly thought provoking, and may be a different way to explain the tea set-like incidents, or overlap of coincidence and supernatural events, in our lives? Once, after my father died, I was listening to a piece of music. I was struggling to recall the composer, and in a flash, the name Strauss popped into my head along with an image and feeling that my father, a musician, was near. Of course I’d love to say that he was there in spirit, even though R. Strauss is hardly an exotic composer whose name I should be able to find with ease, even in the increasingly more common “senior moments”.
^Oh that sounds like a book dh would like. He’s a biologist and has read about a jillion books about human evolution and is very interested in the idea that we evolved to survive in social groups. He sees religion as one of the major ways we organize ourselves, so it’s interesting that the only religion that seems to have survived is the prophet’s warped version.
I think all of us (or most of us) have stories of weird events we can’t explain. I love such stories, and I thank you for yours, ignatius. I have one of my own, but I’m not going to tell it, because if we get into telling such stories it will be even more OT than the “memory snapshots” discussion was.
The fact that paranormal or woo-woo type things happen in our own lives isn’t any reason to place such an occurrence in a book where it is the only such occurrence. To me, that violates the “unity” principle of design.
mathmom, it sounds like you are talking about Islam. If you are, I’m sure you know that there are many versions of Islam that exist today. The religion has been warped by the Islamists, who are a small percentage of the Muslims of the the world.
The Prophet’s version of Islam can’t be a warped version of the religion, because it is its original form. In addition, there are a lot of people who would probably tell you that Christianity has survived pretty well, and who would admit that bad things have been done in the name of that faith from time to time.
I am not a Muslim, but I hate to see the whole religion blamed for the dreadful actions of a tiny sub-group.