Sarah Pinsker - A Song for a New Day

A SONG FOR A NEW DAY

A lively and hopeful look at how community and music and life go on even in the middle of dark days and malevolent corporate shenanigans.

Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Get In Trouble

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.

Charlie Jane Anders, national bestselling and award-winning author of All the Birds in the Sky and The City in the Middle of the Night

Pinsker has one of the strongest voices for character in fiction today; everything her characters do is compelling. When I put the book down, I actually suffered from FOMO because I felt like the characters were continuing on their stories without me.

Mur Lafferty, author of Six Wakes

A Song for a New Day is a compulsively readable story about music, freedom, taking chances, and living with your past. I meant to read it slowly, savoring Pinskers near-future world-building and her perfect descriptions of performance, but I ended up gulping it down, so eager to see what happens.

Kij Johnson, author of The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe

A full-throated call to arms in the service of music, creation, and shared experience, A Song for a New Day resists both extremes and easy tropes, offering hope in the face of catastrophe through the engrossing stories of characters youll want to spend more time with. Pinsker gives us a future rooted in fully-drawn, believable characters and sensory, unflinching descriptions.

Malka Older, author of Infomocracy

Let freedom ring in the growl of an angry guitar chord! Sarah Pinskers A Song for a New Day is an absorbing tale of a quiet, all-too-believable American dystopia in which a passion for music becomes the secretive, surprising seed of rebellion.

Linda Nagata, Nebula Awardwinning author of The Last Good Man

Woven through Pinskers meticulously crafted future of technology-enabled isolation and corporate-consumerist powerlessness is a stirring anthem against the politics of fear. A dazzling tale told in multiple voices, with not a single note out of place. This is the lyrical protest song that we have always needed, perhaps more so now than ever.

Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings

[A]n unsparing vision of a near-future world only a few degrees removed from our own, but has the nerve and audacity to leaven the darkness with hope. A powerful novel whose unforgettable characters channel humanitys true superpowers: art and the act of creation.

Elizabeth Hand, author of Curious Toy and Generation Loss

At last, the answer to the question science fiction fans have been asking: YES, Sarah Pinsker can write a novel with all the energy and heart and wonderful wackiness that characterize her magnificent short stories. A Song for a New Day is a must-read from a new voice you wont forget.

Sam J. Miller, author of Blackfish City

Sarah Pinsker plays genre like a favorite guitar, and I am in awe of her talents. How can a writer so new be so central, so necessary?

Andy Duncan, author of An Agent of Utopia

BERKLEY

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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Copyright 2019 by Sarah Pinsker

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pinsker, Sarah, author.

Title: A song for a new day / Sarah Pinsker.

Description: First Edition. | New York : Berkley, 2019.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019011852 | ISBN 9781984802583 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781984802590 (ebook)

Subjects: | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3616.1579 S66 2019 | DDC 813/.6dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011852

First Edition: September 2019

Cover art and design by Jason Booher

Title page art: Music sound waves by Shutterstock/Liubou Yasiukovich

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

For everyone who plays music live and everyone who listens

And for Zu, who inspires all my songs

PART ONE