Swan Song (novel)
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Swan Song (ISBN 0-671-74103-9) is a 1987 science fiction novel by American novelist Robert R. McCammon. It is a work of post-apocalyptic fiction describing the aftermath of a nuclear war that has provoked a nuclear winter.
[edit] Characters
The story follows several main characters:
- The President of the United States who rode out the nuclear war in an airborne command post
- Colonel Macklin, a survivalist contracted by investors to oversee a mountain bunker, he survived within it during the nuclear attack.
- Roland Croninger, a young boy that was brought to Macklin's mountain bunker by his parents and survived there, after which he took Colonel Macklin as his "King".
- Sister Creep, a formerly-deranged bag lady who survived deep underground in the New York City Subway system.
- Sue Wanda Prescott or Swan, the eponymous young woman who has an empathic ability to plant life, allowing her to accelerate the growth of or resurrect dead plants through physical contact.
- Josh Hutchins, an African-American wrestler stage-named Black Frankenstein, and later The Masked Mephisto at the beginning of the second book. Both Josh and Swan survive the war in a storm cellar (tornado shelter) and he becomes Swan's guardian.
- The Man with the Scarlet Eye or Man of Many Faces, an incarnation of the devil similar to Stephen King's Randall Flagg.
[edit] Awards
Swan Song won a 1988 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel.
[edit] See also
- The Stand — a somewhat similar Stephen King dystopia
