Join us for our next book!

Please check out our Upcoming Books page to see when we’re meeting and what we’re reading. We’d love for you to join us.

Next meeting: 13 June 2012, 7pm

Posted in Announcements

We’ll miss you!

Have Fun Storming the Castle!

Have Fun Storming the Castle!

It’s with sadness for us but happiness for their new opportunity and adventure that the Forest Park Speculative Fiction group says goodbye to regulars Seth and Trish, who are leaving us for tropical Dallas.

Trish has been a regular in the group since our beginning nearly five years ago, and Seth joined us for the discussions and reading shortly thereafter.  We’ll miss you both!

Posted in Announcements

Dreamcatcher

DreamcatcherDreamcatcher
by Stephen King
recommended by Sally

Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher follows the horrifying and terrible events experienced by five friends in the woods North of King’s favorite setting, Derry, Maine.  We don’t want to give too much away, but we will say the novel features psychic communication, aliens, the military, and only one (or two) female characters, neither of which gets more than a page or two of attention.  Our thoughts:

  • Two of the characters, Duddits (a boy with down syndrome whom the other four friends spent a lot of time with as children) and Beaver (one of the boys who had a propensity for swearing in colorful ways) were our favorites, being both likeable and honorable.
  • King’s concept of the alien was very imaginative because it had multiple forms, almost like the way some trees can reproduce by spores or by growths or by roots, so too does the alien presence spread by multiple means.  We also believe he was right to suggest that bacon would be a key piece of what Earth can bring to the table at any intergalactic meetup.
  • The story in the novel develops in both the present and in flashbulb memories from the group of friends, and King keeps the down time in the story interesting by narrating those dramatic events, which of course determine or explain key things about the characters’ personalities.
  • We discussed, a little, the overlaps in storytelling style between this book and some of his other work: IT also features a group of friends who grew up in Derry, experienced dramatic and traumatic events there, drifted apart, and come back together in the novel; “The Body” also revolves around a group of middle-school-aged boys and their friendship; The Tommyknockers also ponders the situation of aliens in the Main North Woods; The Regulators uses the narrative trick of having someone be secluded inside their own mind in a metaphorical room.
  • This last point brought up our final discussion topic — the question of the mind/body problem.  Dreamcatcher aligns itself with the Cartesian idea of the mind, something distinct from the body in which it exists, an idea we all can relate to and the reason movies like Freaky Friday make sense.  But some philosophers believe we can’t actually conceive of a mind separated from the physical properties of the body itself — that the structure of neurons could not accommodate an additional mind, for example.  We didn’t resolve this age-old debate, alas.

All in all, the group liked the book, but we generally agreed it was too long, and that the story could have been told more quickly without loss of quality.

Posted in Aliens, First Contact, Military SF, Psychic Phenomena

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

The Yiddish Policemen's UnionThe Yiddish Policemen’s Union
by Michael Chabon
Recommended by Seth

Your usual blog author was unable to attend the meeting this month, so below are a few brief notes from someone who did attend, augmented with my commentary.

Chabon’s alternative history novel, much celebrated and widely read, tells the story of an alternate universe where the U.S. offered asylum to the Jews under attack during World War 2, but under the agreement they were given, they had 60 years only.  The Yiddish Policemen’s Union takes place at the end of those 60 years, following the murder investigation of a detective trying to find out who killed a former chess prodigy.  A few thoughts:

  • Everyone thought the character development was good and engaging.  We especially liked Berkos.
  • There were a few things we couldn’t figure out in the book, especially the Yiddish words.  It seemed like many of the plot points were vaguely resolved (as in how Landsmen’s sister was killed) but also left unresolved.
  • We talked about why the author picked Sitka and the whole idea of displaced Jews.  [Ed: it's not clear to me whether the group discussed the Slattery Report and its proposal to make real the situation depicted in the novel.]
  • Regarding genre, we decided it was a mystery and a alternative history book, not science fiction.  While much of the alternate history worldbuilding Chabon does IS science-fictional, the novel itself doesn’t reflect as much of that as it could.

One of the big questions that we took away from this novel was the question of whether alternate history is, ipso facto, science fiction.  Even if it weren’t, our vague self-appointed charge to read speculative fiction gives us wiggle room, I suppose.

Posted in Alt History, Hugo, Nebula, Religion

The Puppet Masters

The Puppet MastersThe Puppet Masters
by Robert Heinlein
Recommended by Walt

Heinlein’s classic alien invasion novel follows the same plot of its generic siblings: the body-snatching aliens show up, only a few people realize they’re here, we’re in deep trouble.  Whoooo!  The Puppet Masters takes place in 2007, but reflects the 1950s view of the future.  A few thoughts from our discussion:

  • People generally liked the novel, but our opinions varied widely based on whether we got the original abridged version or the unabridged version released in the 1990s.  The latter had more background, more depth of character, and more romance (I think).
  • The aliens themselves were pretty creepy, and gave us a lot to talk about.  We wondered what the effect would be to have that kind of creature grab you.  We also discussed similar stories like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and some zombie films.
  • We were also amused by Heinlein’s ideas about gender relationships in the future.  Sex was more common, but the attitudes about it still carried over from the 1950s.  The main character regularly referred to women as babes, which was particularly odd.
  • As is usually the case, Heinlein predicted some tech very well, and other tech very poorly.  He imagined that we’d be a lot farther along in space exploration and in ground transport than we are, but he also underestimated the potentials for interpersonal communication and digital hardware development.
  • Finally, we chatted about the Red Scare and what we thought Heinlein might be trying to say about the Russians with this story.  It wasn’t entirely clear, but the coincidence between the aliens having a communal mind and people ending up filthy because of it is hard to overlook.

Overall, we enjoyed the book and are happy to have read it.

Posted in Aliens, First Contact, Military SF, Near Future