Worlds do end, and that fascinates. Emily St. John Mandelās novel Station Eleven opens with the end of an eraāthe end of two eras, really, one personal and one global. Arthur Leander, a noted actor playing King Lear on a Toronto stage, collapses and dies of a heart attack in the bookās opening pages. Soon after that, the paramedic who attempted to revive him learns of a strain of flu thatās quickly exceeded the pandemic level, and will soon end society as we know it. The bulk of the novel is set years later, and is (in part) about how society endeavors to preserve its best parts and builds on the structures left behind. Thereās an apocalypse in John Darnielleās Wolf in White Van, too, but itās a fictional one, the setting of a game called Trace Italian played through the mail that the protagonist created while recuperating from a horrific accident. Sean Phillips, the novelās narrator, lives in relative isolation, his face disfigured from the aforementioned accident, his primary relationships with the correspondents who play the game he created, journeying through the perilous geography of a devastated United States a century in the future. And while the landscape that Phillips has envisioned exists only the intricately-constructed world of the game, it transpires that this is a world that many find compelling, some to the point of obsession. (via Vol. 1 Brooklyn | Fractured Chronology and the End of the World)
