Join us for our next book!

December 14th, 2011

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.

NOTE: Our December meeting is also our holiday party, and will NOT take place at the Forest Park library.  Please use our contact form to inquire if you have questions.

Next meeting: 11 December  2011

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Miracle, and Other Stories

December 14th, 2011

Miracle, and Other Christmas Storiesby Connie Willis

For December, our group usually reads a holiday-themed book.  This year we selected Miracle, and Other Stories.  Willis’ collection includes several stories in the fantasy and science-fiction realms, all holiday themed.  As a whole, the group mostly enjoyed the collection, though no one seemed overly enthusiastic.  A solid set of stories, but nothing amazing.  A few additional comments:

  • The group spent quite a bit of light-hearted debate time arguing about Miracle on 34th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life, prompted by the title story of the collection.
  • We generally liked the mix of fantasy, social commentary, and science-fiction that we saw in “Inn” and “Cat’s Paw,” though some members thought the stories were a little strident or opinionated.
  • We widely enjoyed “In Coppelius’s Toyshop,” a holiday story with a good E.C. Comics twist.  The group was also pretty favorable toward Adaptation and Newsletter, both of which make interesting use of ideas and push the reader to think about Christmas a little differently.
  • We were most divided over “Epiphany,” which has a magical-realism feel but whose ending left some readers in the group cold, while others felt the journey was more important than the destination, so to speak.

We also enjoyed some holiday cheer, some tasty treats, and exchanged some good books.  Enjoyable all around.

Posted in Alt History, Etherial SF, Fairy tales, Fantasy, Magic, Religion, Story collection, Time Travel | No Comments »

Stand on Zanzibar

November 9th, 2011

Stand on Zanzibarby John Brunner; selected by Trish

Brunner’s 1968 novel tells a complex story centered around the notion that the world is becoming overpopulated, and that eugenics laws have become so common as to dominate everyones’ lives.  It uses an experimental storytelling style to tell a broad, sweeping story in a detailed and elaborate world.

This was not a favorite of the group.  While several people acknowledged the critical value of the book, we generally disliked the experimental narrative approach as too difficult to get in to, and as a result only three of our eight members read the whole book.  A few thoughts:

  • One member explained that this book fits in with the movement toward experimental forms of SF in the 1960s that turned him away from the genre for a long time.  In conversation about that, we discussed the intellectual value of such work, but also the challenge in making it interesting and available to the general readership.  We also noted that two other books we’ve read might fall into this category: Shikasta (for sure) and Childhood’s End (perhaps).
  • We spent a fair amount of time dissecting the sexist and racist attitudes of the characters in the novels.  Aside from the apocalyptic population concerns, Brunner’s notions that prejudice in its most egregious forms from the 1960s would perpetuate through 2010 was disturbing.  While we certainly haven’t solved the problems related to these issues, we’ve made huge strides toward doing so.
  • We also spent some time discussing the eugenics laws that lie at the core of the book’s plot.  We considered whether such laws are ever okay, discussed a little of the history of involuntary sterilization in various places in the U.S., and discussed the declining birthrate affecting developed nations in real-life 2010.

Certainly, Brunner’s novel is an important work in the history of SF, particularly its more literary heritage.  But for our group, it just didn’t give enough attention to storytelling.

Posted in Apocalypse, Hugo, Near Future, Science | No Comments »

Machine of Death

October 12th, 2011

Machine of DeathMachine of Death, edited by Ryan North, Matthew Benardo, David Malki
Recommended by Brendan

Machine of Death is a collection of short stories based on the premise that there’s a machine which, with a simple blood test, can tell you how you’re going to die.  The crux of it is that the machine has a Delphic sense of humor, saying things like OLD AGE when you’re destined to be run over by an old man losing control of his car.  The group didn’t really like the collection very much, though each person had something good to say about at least one of the stories.  A few thoughts:

  • The main complaint with the collection was that death is too heavy a subject for a whole book of stories.  Generally, the group felt pretty grim after reading the stories, despite the humor laced throughout.
  • We also had some complaints because we unwisely scheduled two short story collections in a row (following on last month’s Side Jobs), which made some of the group feel a bit scattered in trying to engage with the stories.
  • The group’s favorite stories were the first one (Flaming Marshmallow) and the one about the genius marketing behind the device (Cocaine and Painkillers).  There weren’t any that generated a lot of opposition or dislike, but more the overall collection was generally viewed as such a downer that people didn’t have a lot to say.
  • We did discuss the philosophical question at the heart of the stories — would YOU find out if you had the option?  The lesson from the stories seemed to be that, no, we wouldn’t want to.  No good could come of it.
  • We also decided that like the last story (Heat Death of the Universe) and a couple others, the overwhelming desire to try and mitigate the dangers of our deaths would inevitably lead to deaths, as people tried to get out of the way or tried to sequester people with horrible deaths.  (One story involved intentional plane crashings to make everyone else safe on planes.)

Overall, not the favorite book of the group.

Posted in Alt History, Fantasy, Humor, Near Future, Religion, Science, Story collection | No Comments »

Side Jobs

September 14th, 2011

Side Jobsby Jim Butcher; recommended by Vicki

Side Jobs is a short-story collection from the Dresden files, the wildly popular wizard PI series starring the lanky, bold mage, Harry Dresden. The stories come from diverse moments throughout the series, and Butcher provides a short intro to each piece, explaining its context a little bit.

One member of our group described the book this way (and summed up our collaborative opinion pretty nicely):

I think Jim Butcher is an enjoyable author. He is very descriptive and weaves a good situation. His “Dressden Files” are great fun. (P.S. I don’t read them in order and have never suffered from it.)  If you want fantasy with wizards, witches and talking skulls (oh my!) he is your man.  I prefer the books over the short stories because the plot is similar in all his writings ( wizard meets monster, wizard defeats monster, monster has friends in high places, wizard saves the day and murphy keeps him out of trouble with the law. I do question how she manages that.) I prefer not to read it over and over as in the short stories but a book once in a while is a treat.

A few more thoughts:

  • We generally appreciated the few stories that provide a different perspective than Harry’s.  One story was from Thomas’ point of view (Harry’s Vampire brother) and one was from Karrin Murphy’s perspective.  We decided this later perspective was particularly funny, with her notions of the male grunt-code and her ability to use it.  We also thought the way Murphy described the world helped us see that the women-ogling so common in the other stories is probably representative of Dresden‘s view, rather than Butcher’s.
  • The stories are mostly set in Chicago, so the use of familiar places (like the Woodfield Mall) was pleasing to most of us.  They also use lots of familiar magic systems, so vampires, werewolves, and fairies all make appearances.
  • Among people who had not read any (or many) of the Dresden books, the perspective was that these would have been better and made more sense in the context of the series.  Your humble author also lamented the spoilers that some of the stories caused, for those of us who have not read the full series yet.
  • We had a vigorous conversation about the relationship of real-world religion (Christianity, belief in the afterlife, spirituality) to the magical world in the Dresden files.  We noted that most magical-world stories like these do not integrate mainstream religion much, but Dresden features a few holy men who seem to have access to God and support from above.  In this context, such religion becomes another, perhaps more powerful, magic that can be wielded by specific some.
  • We also discussed the ‘nerd fantasy’ element to the novels, in which the socially-awkward lanky dweeb turns into an all-powerful magician.  At the same time, Butcher’s interests in martial arts make him a real-world athlete, if also probably a nerd.

Worth a read, though if you haven’t read these books at all, give Storm Front a try first.  (Vicki also recommended Summer Knight and Turncoat as the second and third best book in the series.)

Posted in Fantasy, Humor, Magic, Psychic Phenomena, Story collection | 2 Comments »

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