[nesfa-reading-group] NESFA Reading Group Meeting this Friday, April 1st at 7pm

Wed Mar 30 22:23:49 EDT 2022

I will be at my sister’s in Saugerties NY on Friday.

Here are my inputs:

Review of Blue Champagne 
The stories kept my interest. Some science errors did annoy me. In particular, how could anyone who lives on the moon get the impression that the earth revolves around the moon, when the moon always shows the same face to the earth?
The humorous stories near the end reminded me of the satire of Mad Magazine.
I give it a 7 or 13.

My votes for the meeting:

Science Fiction by Sherryl Vint

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: A Novel by Hank Green (because I have walked in NYC at 3 AM)

________________________________________
From: reading-group <reading-group-bounces at lists.nesfa.org> on behalf of Louis Galvez III <nesfalou at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2022 10:16 PM
To: NESFA Reading Group
Subject: [nesfa-reading-group] NESFA Reading Group Meeting this Friday, April 1st at 7pm

Hey,

This coming Friday, April 1st, we’ll meet on Zoom at 7pm to discuss Blue Champaign by John Varley.

The Zoom link will be sent out Friday, hopefully in the early afternoon.

We’ll also vote in our July book and our August book. The books we’ll choose from are below.

(minuitman library and amazon availability provided because that’s as much research as I feel like doing. Also as a possible indication of how widley available that book might be outside of those venues)

Nominees for the July book:

  *   The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

(Available as a physical book and an audiobook through the Minuteman Library Network, and as a physical book, audiobook, and kindle ebook on Amazon)
France, 1714: In a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever - and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

------------

  *   The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu

(Available as an audiobook through the Minuteman Library Network, and as a physical book, audiobook, and kindle ebook on Amazon)
In the much-anticipated sequel to the "magnificent fantasy epic" (NPR) Grace of Kings, Emperor Kuni Garu is faced with the invasion of an invincible army in his kingdom and must quickly find a way to defeat the intruders.

Kuni Garu, now known as Emperor Ragin, runs the archipelago kingdom of Dara but struggles to maintain progress while serving the demands of the people and his vision. Then an unexpected invading force from the Lyucu Empire in the far distant west comes to the shores of Dara - and chaos results.

But Emperor Kuni cannot go and lead his kingdom against the threat himself with his recently healed empire fraying at the seams, so he sends the only people he trusts to be Dara's savvy and cunning hopes against the invincible invaders: his children, now grown and ready to make their mark on history.
------------

  *   Science Fiction by Sherryl Vint

(Available as a physical book through the Minuteman Library Network, and as a physical book, and kindle ebook on Amazon)
The world today seems to be slipping into a science fiction future. We have phones that speak to us, cars that drive themselves, and connected devices that communicate with each other in languages we don't understand. Depending the news of the day, we inhabit either a technological utopia or Brave New World nightmare. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge surveys the uses of science fiction. It focuses on what is at the core of all definitions of science fiction: a vision of the world made otherwise and what possibilities might flow from such otherness.

Nominees for the August book:

  *   The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel

(Available as a physical book and an ebook through the Minuteman Library Network, and as a physical book, audiobook, and kindle ebook on Amazon)
Kobo has some problems. His cybernetics are a decade out of date, he’s got a pair of twin sister loan sharks knocking on his door, and his work scouting for a baseball league run by pharmaceutical companies is about to go belly-up. Things couldn't get much worse.

Then his childhood best friend-Monsanto Mets slugger J.J. Zunz-is murdered at home plate.

Determined to find the killer, Kobo plunges into the dark corners and glittering cloud condos of a world ravaged by climate change and repeat pandemics, and where genetic editing and advanced drugs mean you can have any body you want--as long as you can afford it. But even among the philosophical Neanderthals, zootech weapons, and genetically modified CEOs, there's a curveball he never could have called. "a perfect balance of cyberpunk noir, futuristic sci-fi, and easy, wonderful readability."

------------

  *   An Absolutely Remarkable Thing: A Novel by Hank Green

(Available as a physical book, an overDrive audiobook and an overDrive ebook through the Minuteman Library Network, and as a physical book, audiobook, and kindle ebook on Amazon)
The Carls just appeared.

Roaming through New York City at three AM, twenty-three-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship—like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor—April and her best friend, Andy, make a video with it, which Andy uploads to YouTube. The next day, April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world—from Beijing to Buenos Aires—and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the center of an
intense international media spotlight.

Seizing the opportunity to make her mark on the world, April now has to deal with the consequences her new particular brand of fame has on her relationships, her safety, and her own identity. And all eyes are on April to figure out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us.

-------------------------------------------------------

  *   Walk the Vanished Earth by Erin Swan

(NOT YET Available through the Minuteman Library Network (Release date May31, 2022), Available for pre-order as a physical book, audiobook, and kindle ebook on Amazon)
In the tradition of Station Eleven, Severance and The Dog Stars, a beautifully written and emotionally stirring dystopian novel about how our dreams of the future may shift as our environment changes rapidly, even as the earth continues to spin.

The year is 1873, and a bison hunter named Samson travels the Kansas plains, full of hope for his new country. The year is 1975, and an adolescent girl named Bea walks those very same plains; pregnant, mute, and raised in extreme seclusion, she lands in an institution, where a well-meaning psychiatrist struggles to decipher the pictures
she draws of her past. The year is 2027 and, after a series of devastating storms, a tenacious engineer named Paul has left behind his banal suburban existence to build a floating city above the drowned streets that were once New Orleans. There with his poet daughter he rules over a society of dreamers and vagabonds who salvage vintage dresses, ferment rotgut wine out of fruit, paint murals on the ceiling of the Superdome, and try to write the story of their existence. The year is 2073, and Moon has heard only stories of the blue planet--Earth, as they once called it, now succumbed entirely to water. Now that Moon has come of age, she could become a mother if she wanted to-if only she understood what a mother is. Alone on Mars with her two alien uncles, she must decide whether to continue her family line and repopulate humanity on a new planet.

A sweeping family epic, told over seven generations, as America changes and so does its dream, Walk the Vanished Earth explores ancestry, legacy, motherhood, the trauma we inherit, and the power of connection in the face of our planet's imminent collapse. This is a story about the end of the world--but it is also about the beginning of something entirely new. Thoughtful, warm, and wildly prescient, this work of bright imagination promises that, no matter
what the future looks like, there is always room for hope.
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