The Edinburgh SF Book Group

The blog moves

2007-09-24T21:03:00.000Z

The blog for the Edinburgh SF Book Group has now migrated to a nicer and more reliable WordPress format here.

June 2007 meeting

2007-05-30T19:56:00.000Z

The next meeting of the Edinburgh SF Book Group will be on Tuesday 26th of June from 6 to 7pm in the usual haunt of Henderson's bistro on Hanover Street, where the book under discussion will be Russell Hoban's acclaimed novel Ridley Walker.

The picking of books

2007-05-08T21:00:00.000Z

The picking of books is a difficult matter,
it isn't just one of your holiday games...

(apologies to T.S. Elliott for riffing in his poetry)

Thanks to Beth for sending me an updated list of who will be picking a book each month for the next several meetings; if your name is on there this gives you a chance to think what book you want to pick. For anyone interested in joining the group, we take it in turns to select books to discuss, with regulars getting a month each to pick out a book. The criteria is pretty flexible - we take in traditional SF, modern and classic, horror, fantasy, graphic novels and 'slipstream'/speculative fiction works which may not be considered SF&F by many but do contain some SF elements (such as some of Margaret Atwood's novels, for example). The main aspect really required in a choice is that it contains elements that will generate some discussion.

May – Greg

June – Thomas

July – Jake

August – Suzy

Sept – Chris

Oct – Jer

Nov – Joe

Dec – Beth

May meeting

2007-05-07T16:38:00.000Z

The next meeting of the Book Group will take place on Tuesday the 29th of May from 6 to 7 pm in Henderson's in the New Town's Hanover Street. Greg (H) has the choice for this month and he has picked out an old classic of SF, "I, Robot" from the prolific pen of Isaac Asimov, the start of a series of works which gave us the famous Three Laws of Robotics (ignore the lacklustre movie version!) which seem to have increasing relevance half a century on as people start to discuss the possibility of artificial intelligence. All are welcome to come along and join in.

April meeting

2007-03-31T20:46:00.000Z

Due to schedule conflicts, the April meeting will actually be in May - well, only just by a tiny, teensy bit since it will be Tuesday 1st May. The book for this month will be the jolly crime caper fantasy romp The Lies of Locke Lamora, the debut novel by Scott Lynch (it made me think of a Stainless Steel Rat book mixed with Renaissance Venice). Venue as usual will be Henderson's bistro on Hanover Street in the New Town, all are welcome.

March meeting

2007-03-17T18:20:00.000Z

The March 2007 meeting will take place on Tuesday 27th from 6 to 7pm in the usual venue of Henderson's on Hanover Street. This month we will be looking at Charles Burns' acclaimed graphic novel Black Hole, a tale of teenage problems, school and coming-of-age set against a bizarre sexual disease which attacks only teens, creating odd mutations.

February meeting

2007-02-11T22:45:00.000Z

The February meeting of the Edinburgh SF Book Group will take place on Tuesday February 27th from 6 to 7pm in Henderson's on Hanover Street. The book under discussion this month will be the classic Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; all are welcome to come along.

Coffee and Comics February

2007-01-28T13:44:00.000Z

The first meeting of the book group's graphic novel offshoot, Coffee & Comics, went pretty well and so we're going ahead with a second meeting on Tuesday 13th of February where we will be discussing the Pulitzer Prize-winning interpretation of the Holocaust by Art Spiegelman, Maus.

January meet - location change

2007-01-28T13:42:00.000Z

The meeting due this week will not take place in the usual location of Henderson's as the plan has now changed to take in watching the movie version as well as talking about the book of Starship Troopers. Anyone new wanting to join in, normal service should be resumed for the February meet.

Coffee and comics reminder

2007-01-14T18:51:00.000Z

Just a reminder that the first meeting of the graphic novels offshoot of the Book Group, Coffee and Comics, will be this Tuesday (16th) from 6 to 7pm in Biblos on the corner of Chambers Street and Southbridge to discuss Pride of Baghdad.

Coffee and Comics

2006-12-19T22:53:00.000Z

Details for the first meeting of the graphic novel offshoot from the Book Group, Coffee and Comics, can be found over on a new blog here.

January 2007 meeting

2006-12-19T21:25:00.000Z

The Book Group meeting for January 2007 will take place on Tuesday 30th in the usual haunt of Henderson's on Hanover Street (hopefully a bit quieter and in our usual spot this time) at 6pm. The book under discussion will be Robert A Heinlein's SF war tale of man versus superbug Starship Troopers.

December meeting

2006-12-01T17:04:00.000Z

The December meeting will fall on Tuesday 19th at the usual time of 6pm in Henderson's on Hanover Street. It's Beth's turn to choose this month and she has selected a classic from one of the godfather's of SF, Herbert George Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, with themes of eugencics, race and manipulation of nature by man which seems to become more relevant every decade. Since this is such an old book it is well outside copyright, meaning there are many budget Penguin Classics and the like editions to be had, or you can get the text free from Project Gutenberg.

November meeting

2006-10-24T21:10:00.000Z

After a terrific meeting tonight (ticked all the boxes - great turnout, good book with tons to discuss and everyone liked it) for Michel Faber's Under the Skin we've picked out book and date for next month. The next meeting will be on Tuesday 28th of November at 6pm in Henderson's and the book under discussion will be Provender Gleed by James Lovegrove, a book set in a world much like ours except run by the Families (the great Families have run everything since the Borgias and the Medicis formed an alliance), playing with notions of celebrity, hereditary power, class, inequality and also some fine humour and the world's only anagrammatic detectives.

October meeting

2006-09-28T18:44:00.000Z

The meeting for October will take place on Tuesday 24th at 6pm in Henderson's on Hanover Street. Our latest member Jer had the choice for this month and he's picked one of the books that put a revamped Edinburgh publisher, Canongate, on the UK-wide literary map with Michel Faber's Under the Skin.

September 2006 meeting

2006-08-30T20:30:00.000Z

After struggling to choose between Jennifer Government and Singularity Sky (and then lately Provender Gleed after a certain someone mentioned a James Lovegrove-related Gleed tale) Chris has settled on Jennifer Government by Max Barry for September's meeting, which will be on Tuesday 26th in Henderson's as usual.

This meeting will be starting a little earlier this time due to commitments (5.30 instead of 6 for the kick-off if folks can manage it, if not toddle in at the usual time and we will just talk about you until then). And what a great turn-out and meeting last night for August's discussion of Lathe of Heaven! Next up to choose should be Jer for October.

July meeting postponed to August

2006-07-24T16:42:00.000Z

The July meeting for Urusla le Guin's Lathe of Heaven has been postponed due to holidays and other commitments tying up too many members. The meeting will now take place on Tuesday 29th of August at 6pm in Henderson's on Hanover Street.

June meeting

2006-06-20T13:06:00.000Z

The next meeting will take place on Tuesday the 27th of June at 6pm in our usual haunt of Henderson's yummy veggie/wholefood bistro on Hanover Street in Edinburgh's New Town. The book for June will be the classic Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe, dating from 1972 and told as a series of overlapping novellas; as ever all are welcome to come along and join in.

May meeting

2006-04-28T16:30:00.000Z

The meeting for the merry month of May will take place on Tueday the 30th, from 6 to 7pm in Henderson's on Hanover Street. The book under discussion will be Polystom by the most excellent Adam Roberts. All are welcome.

Edinburgh SF Book Group reschedule - April and May

2006-04-10T09:23:00.000Z

The March meeting of the Edinburgh SF Book Group which had to be cancelled due to the transport strike will now take place at the end of this month in the April meeting slot, so March becomes April and April's book becomes May and so on (as a lifelong Doctor Who fan I feel I have a right play with Time). So Tuesday 25th of April will now be dedicated to the book which should have been March's choice, Ishuguro's Never Let Me Go, with Adam Roberts' Polystom now moving to 30th May. The Book Group meets on the last Tuesday of each month in Henderson's on Hanover Street, Edinburgh from 6 to 7pm, all are welcome.

March meeting postponed

2006-03-28T19:09:00.000Z

Due to the problems caused by the bus strike in Edinburgh the March meeting scheduled for tonight has been postponed and will be rescheduled as soon as is suitable for everyone.

March

2006-03-01T11:22:00.000Z

The book under discussion for the March meeting of the Edinburgh SF Book group is the latest novel from Booker-shortlisted Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go, which follows the story of an idyllic school for children which is not all that it seems.

It is a powerful and moving book (so Susan tells us, we will all find out when we read it and discuss it!) which raises issues of the meaning in life, friendship and loss of innocence. Never Let Me Go is also one of the shortlisted novels on this year's prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award.

The March meeting of the book group will be from 6 to 7pm in the warm environs of Henderson's on Hanover Street on Tuesday the 28th of March with all welcome to come along.

February

2006-02-01T13:56:00.000Z

The February meeting of the Edinburgh SF Book Group will take place on Tuesday the 28th, from 6 to 7pm in Henderson’s on Hanover Street. The lovely people at Henderson’s have very kindly allowed us to make this our ‘official’ home now, reserving us a space each month and we’d all like to thank them for their generosity (and highly recommend them for gorgeous food and drink!).

The book for February will be a classic from the 1960s, a work often held up by critics as one of the most important SF novels ever, Babel 17 by Samuel R Delany. Does it deserve these critical plaudits? Why not come along and find out?

January

2005-12-08T23:16:00.000Z

Well, we've just had out last meeting of the year this evening where we had a very enjoyable discussion of Jeff VanderMeer's City of Saints and Madmen. Jeff himself very kindly emailed us some observations on the work and on novel discussion in general which added a nice element to the proceedings.

The next meeting will be on January Tuesday 31st 2006 at the usual time of 6pm, again in Henderson's cafe on Hanover Street in the New Town. The book under discussion for January will be the Booker-nominated Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, a work which has great appeal to both SF and non-SF readers.

We have also decided to return to our old format of holding meetings on a fixed time of month, so we are aiming to hold all future meeting from the January 31st meet onwards on the last Tuesday of each month.

December

2005-11-13T15:15:00.000Z

The December meeting of the Edinburgh SF Book Group will take place on Thursday the 8th of December at 6pm, with the venue once more being Henderson's yummy veggie/wholefood restaurant on Hanover Street. The book under discussion will be City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer. It comprises four novellas set in and around his city of Ambergris and associated material pertaining to the city (like the squid in the nearby river) - Jeff has a new full-length novel set in Ambergris, Shriek, due out in January in the UK, which I hope will confirm him to larger audiences as a wonderfully unusual and inventive writer. All are welcome to come along and join in.

November

2005-10-25T18:37:00.000Z

For a change we are moving to a Thursday this month instead of the usual Tuesday. November's meeting of the Edinburgh SF Book Group will be on Thursday 10th November at 6pm and we will be meeting once more in Henderson's (the great wholefood and veggie place) on Hanover Street in the New Town. The book will be Alfred Bester's classic The Demolished Man (making Bester the first author to have had two books covered). Details of December's meeting aren't fixed yet, but the book will be Jeff VanderMeer's excellent City of Saints and Madmen collection.

October meeting change

2005-10-03T20:00:00.000Z

Because of various clashes we've decided to move the October meet scheduled for Tuesday 4th to the following week, Tuesday 11th October. The meeting will still be at 6pm in Henderson's veggie restaurant in Hanover Street and the book is V For Vendetta.

October

2005-09-19T21:50:00.000Z

Oops, missed posting September... D'oh. Well, September's meet for Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon has been and gone. October's meeting is now set for Tuesday 4th October at 6pm in Henderson's, 94 Hanover Street in the New Town (the yummy veggie cafe/restaurant). The book under discussion will be Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V For Vendetta, often held to be on of the Big Three (along with Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns) which helped create the modern, mature graphic novel.

July

2005-06-13T21:11:00.000Z

The next meeting of the book group will be on Friday July 1st at 6pm in Cafe Nero (on the side of Blackwell's Bookshop on South Bridge). The book under discussion will be the exceptionally cool contemporary novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by author and Boing Boing stalwart Cory Doctorow.

March

2005-03-05T14:56:00.000Z

The March meeting of the Book Group will take place on Tuesday 22nd (a week earlier than usual) when we will be discussing Sheri S Tepper's classic novel Grass (available from the SF Masterworks series) from around 6pm.

Thanks to Jen and the generosity of her uncles we will be meeting in the library room of the Melville House Hotel on Rothesay Place in the New Town (only a street or two from Dean Bridge and Palmerston Place, so pretty central) and, presumably also meeting in the bar as well... Anyone in the Edinburgh area who is interersted in coming along is more than welcome - contact me for any details.

Just realised we probably should have done last month's book this month instead since it is now the official season of Mad March Hares :-)

February

2005-02-12T17:55:00.000Z

For the next meeting on Tuesday February 22nd we are going to try out one of the nice, panelled front rooms of the Standing Order on George Street (a Witherspoon's pub near the Assembly Rooms).

We will be meeting at 6.30pm (if folk can make it earlier by all means settle down for a drink!) and after tackling an enormous and recent title in January (Jonathan Strange) this month sees us turning our attention to Lewis Carol's classic Alice novels. Remarkable, unusual with clever wordplay (which went on to influence the likes of Jeff Noon much later) and beloved of children and adults alike. If any new folk want to come along feel free to email me.

January

2005-01-21T19:29:00.000Z

Due to events beyond our control the Edinburgh SF Book Group will no longer be meeting in Waterstone's Edinburgh. We will be continuing to meet but for the moment I'm afraid we may have difficulty in taking new members.

Guardian

2004-12-02T21:36:00.000Z

Okay, not actually SF, this is a science title - Mutants by Armand Marie Leroi has become the first science book to win the prestigious Guardian First Book Award (the Guardian gave an award to Chris Ware's fab graphic nvoel Jimmy Corrigan a coupe of years back, so it is a very open prize unlike many other literary prizes). I thought it was a remakable and fascinating book - anyone interested can have a look at the review I posted on the Alien back in June - I heartily recommend it to anyone looking for an unsual book for Xmas.

January

2004-11-30T23:36:00.000Z

After much discussion at tonight's meeting (which, alas, stopped Beth from espousing her Feminist points of view on the Margaret Atwood choice for November) then more at the cosier environs of the Guildford Arms we dithered between the classic reprint, Grass by the wonderful Sheri S Tepper and the rather newer but equally wonderful Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (excellent review here) by Susanna Clarke. After pondering, drinking (some lovely Arran Fireside seasonal ale on offer, yummy), much wandering off the subject we came down on the side of the Jonathan Strange for our Book Group choice for January, since the hiatus over Xmas gives everyone a good bit of time to read what is, to be fair, a hefty tome.

For February we decided to go for a complete change of theme and pace with Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (the adult version, Malice in Pornoland, was held, on reflection, not to be part of the canon). Front runner for March therefore is likely to be the aforementioned Grass. As ever, send in ideas, suggestions etc.

We're also planning an informal meet on Tuesday 21st December since we aren't having an in-store official meeting. Possibilities run from watching a DVD and drinkies (Troy appears to be a front runner, along with a cast of thousands of thighs) or we could have a trip to the movies to see the Lemony Snicket film (if you haven't read any of these wonderful Edward Gorey-esque books you really need to) - the Warner Village is pretty close to the store and central, as well as handily near the Guildford too.

Contributions

2004-11-11T23:26:00.000Z

Beth has been the first of our group to come forward and share some of her personal thoughts and musings - have a look at her contribution to the August choice of Fire and Hemlock. Come on the rest of you, your opinions are actively sought, so send them in! We're also still needing to settle on a choice of book for January and February as well as a date for our Xmas drinkies.

And on the subject of impending Festive Cheer (now available in aerosol form), may I take the opportunity to point you all to a gorgeous potential gift from a wee independent Glasgow outfit Metaphrog in the form of Louis? Yes, I know I am a shameless book pimp, but it is a lovely wee book and they deserve support.

November

2004-10-28T20:34:00.000Z

November's selection is a bit more 'mainstream' (i.e. the literati and the author like to pretend this isn't SF a lot of the time!) for us as we take on the last novel by Booker-prize winning author Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (yes folks, it's another Beth special! Go, Beth!). The next meeting is on Tuesday November 30th (Saint Andrew's Night no less) from the usual time of 6-7pm. And it has a very cute laughing pig on the cover, which didn't influence our selection at all, no sirree.

Halloween Grudge

2004-10-28T20:31:00.000Z

Susan says:

'The Grudge' which I was talking about on Tuesday, is being shown at cinemas on Sunday as a Halloween special preview. I'm going to go to the 8.50 showing at Ster Century. Would anyone from book group like to come? I'll be buying the tickets at about 5 tomorrow, so let me know before that. Or just come along on Sunday night and I'll see you there.

Let me know by email! susangarven@yahoo.com

2004-10-13T21:08:00.000Z

December

As you all know we won't have a meeting at the end of December because its too busy and lots of folk are off home etc. As a lot of us have expressed an interest in still getting together in December for an informal meeting - the Guildford surprisingly (heh) seems to be fave for a location - Thomas has suggested we start thinking on a book (or maybe a movie since its an al-fresco meeting?) to discuss - or do any of you have any other ideas? Suggestions to the usual address.

As an aside I've noticed that we are trend-setters, folks! BBC Scotland's book club, which is linked to the current Writing Scotland series, is pushing our October choice of RLS. Hmmm, maybe we should go to Deacon Broadies after that one! If anyone is interested in a faithful-yet-different take on this classic tale then there is Mattoti's gorgeously painted graphic novel version (review here)

2004-10-05T20:11:00.000Z

Thomas has suggested that anyone coming to a meeting straight from work who is hanging around for the 6pm start could arrange to meet, most probably in our normal post-club Victorian delight of the Guildford. I know a couple of folk if they’re there early have just been coming down to the basement – the security guard knows most of you now I think and will let you down if you ask him nicely, or else he’ll ring me and get me to let you in.

As well as inviting comments on the books etc here, please also feel free to send me in relevant links (authors we've discussed, book forums etc) and of course any personal web sites belonging to our members (Alex and I have ours in there already!).

I had a call from a fellow SF fan at Edinburgh University Press who is a member of the local Doctor Who Appreciation Society. He did send in some fliers to give out but they arrived after the meeting, so I’ll give them out at the next meeting. In the meantime, if anyone is interested the flier details a special event the Edinburgh Whovians are having with sixth Doctor Colin Baker, with interviews, signings and a charity auction on Sunday 7^th November from 12-5pm – details at www.edinburghwho.co.uk.

Choices

2004-10-03T18:02:00.000Z

Choices, choices

Well, we have picked November, but we still have to pick books for January and November of next year (something appropriate about an SF group having to look to the future, isn’t there?). At the recent meeting we came up with several possible titles, so here they are for your consideration:

K J Parker’s Shadow

Sheri S Tepper’s Grass

Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash

Jeff Noon’s Vurt

C J Cherryh’s Cuckoo’s Egg (if it is still in print in the UK!)

Of course, we can still add in new ideas – email me at lestat@ultraviolet.freeserve.co.uk with your votes, bribes etc.

October 2004

2004-10-03T17:55:00.000Z

This month

Tuesday 26^th of October is our Halloween special as we delve into the dark psychological underside of the human mind and desires with our city’s own Robert Louis Stevenson and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. If you only know it from the simplistic good versus evil of the movie or play adaptations then you are in for a treat.

Tuesday November 30^th – Saint Andrew’s Night – will see us dipping our collective toes into the more mainstream of literary output in the shape of Booker-winning author Margaret Atwood’s recent Oryx and Crake. Set in a semi-dystopian future of environmental and genetic disaster and upheaval the author vehemently denied that this – or her earlier Handmaid’s Tale – were science fiction, which garnered her much ridicule among the SF community. She has finally relented and admitted there may be some SF elements to the novel. Is it SF or fantasy? Why not come along and discuss it?

2004-09-08T21:39:00.000Z

September 2004

The September meeting of the SF Book Group took place on Tuesday 28^th of September, from 6-7pm. September marked our first full year and also our first graphic novel selection. Fittingly we selected one of the finest writers of the comic world: Neil Gaiman’s multi-award-winning Sandman. We have decided to focus on The Doll’s House volume for this meeting, which is arguably where the astonishing Sandman series really began to shine, showing some of the remarkable attributes that would make it such a stand-out series, highly regarded by readers, other writers, critics and academics alike.

Also in October we will be hosting the home-town author event for Iain M Banks and his first SF novel in four years, the rather excellent The Algebraist. Should be taking place in the Traverse Theatre on Tuesday October 12th - more details as I get them sorted - tickets soon from the store or the Traverse.

brief history

2004-09-08T21:38:00.000Z

A Brief History of (SF) Time

We held our inaugural meeting back in the dim and murky days of September 2003. For the first few meetings my colleague and good mate Alex and I picked out the titles, trying to ensure a mixture of genres and eras. Our ultimate aim was that the group would pick the books they most wanted to read and discuss so that everyone would have a chance to see their favourites aired and hopefully expose us all to writers and areas we may not have encountered before and this is how the group now works. This means the group really belongs to the people who come along and participate, so why not be a part of it?

Previous Meetings

Aug-July 2004

2004-09-08T21:37:00.000Z

August 2004

<>We took an interesting new turn this month when we picked on a fantasy novel for young adults by Diana Wynne Jones, discussing Fire and Hemlock. Polly, a young woman, realises that her memories of the last ten years are not right. She has a set of straightforward memories, but isn’t there something else in there? The novel progresses in this flashback manner as Polly attempts to reconstruct her real memories – if indeed they are real and she’s not losing it. Broken families, the fragility of memory and realities which interact with our own, look like our own but are not – the book eschews the frequently used ‘omniscient narrator’ model of story-telling, so we are as confused as Polly is, we know as little as she does. I have never read one of Diana Wynne Jones’ novels for younger readers and was pleasantly surprised to see that her storytelling is pretty much the same as in her adult novels – she treats both with respect and intelligence. One of our members (hand up, Beth!) told us all this was one of her favourite novels and one that she has re-read many times since she was a teenager – if that’s not a recommendation, then what is?

<>Beth says: This is a book that can be read on many levels. On one hand, it is the story of a child becoming a young adult. It deals with Polly’s experience of family break-up, friendships, hopes and ambitions, and eventually love. This side of the book is realistic enough to allow anyone, young reader or not, to empathise with Polly, and I suspect for many writers would be enough to create an entire book. However, Fire and Hemlock is also a rewriting of the myth of Faerie into late 20^th century Britain; in particular the novel draws on the ballad of Tam Lin with Polly as a modern-day Janet. Many of the supernatural events in the book depend on an understanding of ritual and rules, just as in folk tales and legends. On yet a third level, the novel explores what it means to be a hero in both the traditional sense and in modern society. And so on.

<>Writing itself is a central theme of the novel. Tom tries to explain his situation through the books he buys her. As Polly and Tom write the stories of Tan Coul, the boundaries between reality and imagination begin to dissolve. Ultimately the novel asks ‘what is reality?’ and this question can also be looked at on many levels (e.g. the events Polly makes up are reality for others, Polly’s dual memories and not forgetting that Polly’s ‘real’ life is in itself a fiction created by DWJ!). Another, and related, key concept is Nowhere and Now Here, two versions of the same word which symbolise the relationship between Laurel’s world (Faerie, Nowhere, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, or any of hundreds of names) and Polly’s (non-magical 20^th century Gloucestershire, Now Here). This is not a dualism but an intertwining rather like Polly herself makes when creating her map of Nowhere from a map of the Cotswolds. The two vases at Hudson

Some people asked me to try and explain the ending…. Laurel demands a life every nine years (the ‘tithe to Hell’ as mentioned in Tam Lin). This, it is revealed, is not to give Laurel life (she is undying) but to prolong the life of Morton Leroy, her consort. Tom has had a reprieve for nine years as the last sacrifice had to be a woman (not explained if this was an actual sacrifice or just, as Polly thinks, Laurel pretending to be her own mother in order to inherit). Polly, like Janet, refuses to let go and Laurel is forced to let Tom and Morton Leroy fight.

<>
Both men must obey the rules like everything in Faerie, but Laurel’s power allows her to twist them – although she cannot allow Morton to break the rules if Tom cannot. Both men can use anything integral to themselves to win, so Tom can use his cello (important for both Tan Coul and Tom), the horse that represents Tom and Polly’s first heroic adventure and his love for Polly. But Laurel’s twisting means that Tom’s strength helps Morton. The only way for him to win is for Polly to lose – to give up her love for Tom. When she does this, Morton is defeated and Tom is free. Laurel, however, does not suffer. She simply chooses Morton Leroy’s son Sebastian to be her new consort. <>Am not TOO sure about the ‘coda’ section, but this is my interpretation. Tom and Polly have to give up their love in order for Tom to be free from Laurel, so they can be together Nowhere – literally nowhere, or possibly in Faerie, where they cannot go. However, because Nowhere and Now Here are interlinked for Polly and Tom, it is not ‘true Nowhere’ and therefore must be somewhere! There is no division into Nowhere and Now Here for them and this outmanoeuvres Laurel’s conditions. Tom and Polly can be together after all. Phew!

Joe says: Jan Siegel’s Prospero’s Children would probably appeal top anyone, young or old, male or female, who enjoyed Fire and Hemlock. A motherless family, a young girl on the cusp of womanhood and a new home on the forbidding moors; it is a lovely piece of English fantasy.

July 2004

One of the great writers of the genre furnished the book for July’s meeting – Ursula K Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. A peaceful federation of worlds sends an envoy to a world in an ice-age, a world they dub ‘Winter’. One of the many human societies spread across the worlds then isolated, they want to re-integrate them back into the stellar human culture. Naturally there are difficulties. This is all largely secondary however since the book is really about the way we all interpret other people, genders and cultures, as well as the ways and reasons by which Le Guin creates and incredibly rich, believable and well-crafted society – sometimes you almost feel the chill of the cold winds of Winter as you read it. The humans of Winter are a little different from the other variations of humans on other worlds – there is a single ‘gender’. Actually gender is an inaccurate term as they are neither male nor female, but take on characteristics of both at certain times in their reproductive cycle. This may sound like a simple idea, but actually it allows for a very complex set of meditations on gender roles and personal identifications – perfect subject matter for a good discussion!

April-May 2004

2004-09-08T21:35:00.000Z

June 2004

The inventive Spares by Michael Marshall Smith was our subject matter this month. A war veteran and former detective returns to New Richmond, Virginia while attempting to free the Spares in his charge. Rich people keep clones as spare parts banks (one way of avoiding a risk of tissue rejection). The Spares are kept in dim, isolated places with almost no interaction with others in order to keep them healthy physically but mentally undeveloped – just a living spare parts library for their real counterparts. Until our anti-hero helps them to develop… Actually the Spares rapidly become something of a McGuffin, a mere plot device to get things rolling (causing some of us to think the book was rather mis-named). New Richmond is a now-grounded former flying mega-mall (Smith once said at an event he chose Richmond to be replaced by this grounded mega-mall because he found it to be one of the worst places he ever had to go) and Smith paints a bleak near-future, lightened by some inventive humour and a fabulous line in dialogue, especially the insults and descriptions (‘he looked like three kinds of shit in a one shit bag’). Opinion was divided over the ending.

May 2004

Top-selling British horror writer James Herbert was the choice for May, with his slim but very nasty novel, The Rats. Mostly a straightforward tale of super-rodents invading modern London with the horrific results (people being chewed up, eaten alive or dying from infections from the rat bites) Herbert also manages to work in observations on urban alienation and the British class system (the government minister views our teacher hero as about acceptable, since his middle-class teaching job balances out his lower-class origins). It is quite surprising how much character detail Herbert shoehorns into less than 200 pages (we’re often pleasantly surprised at how much detail there is in the older novels which are typically far shorter than today’s bloated texts).

April 2004

One of the finest of the current crop of Brit SF writers (so good we forgive him for writing the Soddit pastiche) Adam Roberts provided the subject matter in the shape of his novel Salt. Seemingly a simple narrative about a conflict between two groups of settlers on a distant world, Salt is actually a clever novel dealing in religious and political ideology and the justifications some individuals use to justify their actions and their effects on others. Told in flashback the novel alternates between the recollections of both of the opposing group’s leaders, giving their versions of events. The result is a tale in which neither group comes out terribly well.

March-Jan 2004

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March 2004

Classic time once more (the SF Masterwork’s series has provided with some choice titles) as we explored Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (originally published as Tyger, Tyger!). Despite being decades old it was a remarkably fresh and powerful novel with a central character, Gulley Foyle, who is neither hero nor really even an anti-hero. Foyle is physically ugly, mentally dim and utterly unlikeable – and unlike many novels he doesn’t become better or change as the story progresses – the novel is unremitting in this, quite a brave move for a writer. Although sinned against, Foyle’s continual quest for revenge is relentless and wearing – in a way you want him to have revenge, but in another it is hard to sustain sympathy for him. It’s amazing just how much Bester packs into this short but powerful tale and it is easy to see why it has become a classic of SF (Bester himself was honoured by J Michael Strackzynski by naming Walter Koenig’s Psi-Cop character after Bester in the award-winning and ground-breaking Babylon 5). Brilliant stuff.

February 2004

With his new novel, Newton’s Wake, just weeks away from publication we decided we should focus on one of our local authors, our favourite left-leaning SF writer Ken MacLeod and his novel The Sky Road. A part of his thematically-linked Fall Revolution series, the novel uses a split chronology narrative (a device Ken has used a couple of times). One strand, in the distant future has a group of engineers working in Scotland on the first spaceship in centuries (Ken paints a wonderfully evocative future which is ahead of us in a few places but behind us in many, building a spaceship almost the way the shipbuilders of the great Clydeside yards built liners), accessing forbidden knowledge from black devices in Glasgow University (information technology has become not only unused but regarded as evil over the centuries). In the other strand we are much closer to our own time and see some of the events of the fragmented near-future as nations and politics clash, leading to the events which will shape the far future we see in the ship-building era. Its an inventive and intriguing bit of future – and far-future – world-building by Ken, with a fair dose of politics thrown in, as is common in his work. Fictional future history SF for grown-ups.

Joe says: if you enjoyed this then perhaps you may want to try Singularity Sky by Charlie Stross, or Marrow by Robert Reed.

January 2004

Hold on! Haven’t you missed one? Well, no – it’s too busy in the bookstore in December and even we SF fiends need time to buy our Xmas pressies, so no meetings in December. We welcomed everyone back with a modern classic, the erotic horror that made Anne Rice’s name in the mid-70s (was it really that long ago???), Interview With the Vampire. Later entries may not measure up to the book which began the Vampire Chronicles, but Interview was to the late 20^th century Gothic novel what Stoker’s Dracula was to the 1890s – a shot in the arm and an inviting bite on the neck, re-inventing and re-invigorating the Vampire genre for a new age. It’s as lushly decadent as its New Orleans and Paris settings. Human mortality is highlighted by the focus on unchanging, immortal creatures, notably the tragic figure of the child vampire, Claudia, while the prose is rich and erotically charged.

Joe says: if you like this novel have you tried Tom Holland’s excellent The Vampyre? Lord Byron has been held up as the classic model for the aristocratic vampire – here Holland takes it literally, with Byron being vampirised during his European travels. It is a deliciously rich novel, traversing English literature as well as mythology. Seriously literate Gothic horror.

Nov- Sept 2003

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November 2003

Ah, another one of the Bright New Things of Brit SF this month – the excellent China Mieville and his remarkably unusual fantasy, Perdido Street Station. The novel begins in a seemingly normal fantasy setting, following predictable lines. A melting-pot city of different races and professions, from scientists and artists to criminals and politicians (if there is a difference between those two professions of course), with a medieval-meets-weird-science feel to it, almost like a very adult version of Pratchett’s great Discworld settings. However, the novel starts to take unusual, unpredictable turns after a while and you can’t take it for granted. In fact, don’t let the size of this novel put you off, because it travels off very unusual and remarkable directions, genuinely surprising even those of us who read an awful lot of SF&F books. The prose is sharp and the descriptive power of China’s writing is awesome – there are times when you not only picture his city scenes but can almost smell those streets (which is not always advisable in some areas of the city!). This was China’s breakout novel, although he had previously published King Rat and has since published The Scar, which is set on the same world as Perdido but in a different city.

October 2003

As the ancient Celtic festival of Sahmain beckoned (that’s Halloween to you Sassenachs!) we naturally settled on a scary novel to read. Combining SF and Horror genres we discussed Richard Mattheson’s classic novel I Am Legend. The last man in the world is besieged in his fortified home by night by gangs of vampires. Except these are scientifically-created vampires, not the legendary variety, caused by a mutation among the survivors of world war. This compact novel is horrific on large-scales (world war, end of civilisation) and on the personal level (a man alone and under nightly attack) but it is also a novel which explores what defines a society (do the vampires, now being in the majority, constitute a society? Would that make our hero the villain since he kills them?), notions of alienation and mythology, old and new. A classic slice of Cold War paranoia from a writer who also worked in film, scripting, among many others, some of the famous Corman’s Edgar Alan Poe series of films with the great Vincent Price. Several decades on this book remains one of the most inventive and clever re-workings of the old vampire genre.

September 2003

Our first meeting discussed one of my personal favourites and one of the fast-rising lights in the new wave of Brit SF firmament, Richard Morgan and his hard-boiled debut, Altered Carbon. It is a very gritty and inventive tale with a former special forces agent now hired as a private eye to solve the murder of his rich employer. When downloaded into his new clone body (called ‘re-sleeving’) this man hires Kovacs to find out who killed him. The police say it was suicide, but why kill yourself when you know you will be brought back via cloning and backup memory? This is as much a classic detective Noir as it is an SF novel. Mark Millar, one of Marvel Comics’ top writers recently referred to it as one of the best contemporary novels he had read.

Since this debut he has published Falling Angels (a second Kovacs novel, although quite different from AC, drawing on the likes of 2000 AD’s Bad Company for inspiration) and Market Forces in the spring of 2004 (not a Kovacs novel but a meditation on violence, ethics – or the lack of – and rampant capitalism in an almost J G Ballardesque kind of way). Richard is currently working on his fourth book which will mark a return to Kovacs and is also working on a Black Widow comic series for Marvel – not bad for a man who didn’t read a lot of comics until his college days!