Emily St. John Mandel’s Kirkus-starred 2014 novel, Station Eleven, largely takes place in a post-apocalyptic future, following a horrific flu pandemic that wipes out approximately 99 percent of the human race. A recurring element of the narrative is a graphic novel titled Station Eleven, created by one character and read by multiple others, which tells a story of space travelers. One of these readers, a child-actor-turned-knife-wielding-survivor named Kirsten Raymonde, even gets a line from the TV show Star Trek: Voyager (“Survival is insufficient”) tattooed on her body. Despite all this, Mandel claimed in a 2014 Washington Post interview that she doesn’t consider her novel’s genre to be science fiction at all, but literary fiction: “I prefer literary fiction,” she told interviewer Ron Charles. “The apocalypse in ‘Station Eleven’ is obviously an important part of the story, but I think of it as being more of a story about what remains after we lose everything and the importance of art in our lives than a story about a flu pandemic.”

The implication of this statement, of course, is that SF can’t be about weighty topics, which is demonstrably untrue—countless postapocalyptic tales tackle “what remains after we lose everything” as their primary theme, after all. It reveals Mandel as one in a long line of authors—Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, and Margaret Atwood among them—that have no problem playing with SF’s toys, but balk when people point out that they’ve done so. One can’t help but wonder why Mandel accepted the SF-centric Arthur C. Clarke Award—the novel’s only major accolade—if she felt so strongly about such labels. The fact is that Station Eleven is quite clearly an SF story—and now, it’s one that been adapted as a 10-episode miniseries on HBO Max. Its first three episodes premiere on Dec. 16.

The book’s narrative pings back and forth between the present day—in which the Georgia Flu rips through humanity—and the future, as the people who remain struggle to survive in the aftermath. Most notably, the future-set sections follow the Traveling Symphony, a group of actors and musicians who perform Shakespeare’s plays to traumatized audiences who are improbably enthusiastic about the Bard of Avon. Kirsten is a member of this troupe; she was a child stage actor on the night that the pandemic first hit North America, in a Toronto production of King Lear starring celebrity Arthur Leander, who died of a heart attack onstage after an audience member, Jeevan Chaudhary, attempted unsuccessfully to revive him. The novel goes on to tell the past and future stories of Kirsten, Arthur, Jeevan, and many others—including Arthur’s ex-wife, Miranda Carroll, who created the Station Eleven comics; Arthur’s best friend, former actor Clark Thompson, who becomes a key figure in a post-pandemic settlement in a Michigan airport; and a figure whom later becomes known as the Prophet—the leader of a cult of rapists and murderers.

The story’s debt to genre fiction only becomes clearer when one sees it on the small screen. The miniseries’ use of flashbacks feels strongly reminiscent of the TV show Lost in this medium, and the plotline involving the Traveling Symphony and the Prophet feels like an outtake from The Walking Dead with a bit of Shakespeare thrown in. Still, the characters here are generally compelling, and they’re played by incredibly skilled actors on the show, including Halt and Catch Fire’s Mackenzie Davis as the adult Kirsten and Matilda Lawler as her younger self; Yesterday’s Himesh Patel as Jeevan; The Harder They Fall’s Danielle Deadwyleras the talented Miranda; a chilling Daniel Zovatto as the Prophet; and David Wilmot as Clark, who brings an ineffable sadness to his role.

However, fans of the book hoping for a straightforward adaptation will likely be disappointed. The miniseries’ co-writer and showrunner, novelist Patrick Somerville, instead presents something that readers could charitably call a remix of the source material, as it transforms many character relationships and includes many brand-new scenes—to the point that it eventually feels bloated. Kirsten and Jeevan, who barely interact in the novel, spend a great deal of time together on the show; indeed, their relationship arguably provides the adaptation with its emotional center. Another character gets a brand-new redemption arc that’s highly questionable, to say the least. The miniseries also greatly expands the roles of other characters, including the amusing and tragic Conductor, played by the great Lori Petty, whom postapocalyptic fiction aficionados will know from the 1995 film Tank Girl. She and other actors give the material their all, although not even their considerable talents are able to compensate for the fact that the miniseries is far longer than it needs to be; by comparison, the book is a model of efficiency. Still, it’s always good to see an SF novel receive a full-dress prestige-TV adaptation; maybe other, equally deserving genre tales will get similar treatment in our own post-pandemic future.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.