[nesfa-reading-group] suggestions for future reading

[Louis Galvez III]

This Friday, May 3rd, we’ll be discussing Folklorn by Angela Mi Young Hur

We’ll also be choosing new books for future discussions. Chip sent his suggestions earlier today. My suggestions are below.

I’ll send the Zoom link for Friday's meeting on Wednesday.

Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard (2015)

Daniel Carter used to be a homicide detective, but his last case - the hunt for a serial killer - went wrong in strange ways and soured the job for him. Now he's a private investigator trying to live a quiet life. Strangeness, however, has not finished with him.

First, he inherits a bookstore in Providence from someone he's never heard of, along with an indignant bookseller who doesn't want a new boss. She's Emily Lovecraft, the last known descendant of H. P. Lovecraft, the writer from Providence who told tales of the Great Old Ones and the Elder Gods, creatures and entities beyond the understanding of man. Then people start dying in impossible ways, and while Carter doesn't want to be involved, he's beginning to suspect that someone else wants him to be. As Carter reluctantly investigates, he discovers that H. P. Lovecraft's tales were more than just fiction, and he must accept another unexpected and far more unwanted inheritance.


Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan (2018)

Hakan Veil is an ex-corporate enforcer equipped with military-grade body tech that’s made him a human killing machine. His former employers have abandoned him on a turbulent Mars where Earth-based overlords battle for profits and power amid a homegrown independence movement. But he’s had enough of the turbulent red planet, and all he wants is a ticket back home - which is just what he’s offered by the Earth Oversight organization, in exchange for being the bodyguard for an EO investigator. It’s a beyond-easy gig for a heavy hitter like Veil...until it isn’t.

When Veil’s charge starts looking into the mysterious disappearance of a lottery winner, it stirs up a hornet’s nest of intrigue and murder. And the deeper Veil is drawn into the game, the more long-buried secrets claw their way to the Martian surface. Now it’s the expert assassin poised against powerful enemies hell-bent on taking him down - by any means necessary.


The Fold by Peter Clines (2015)

The folks in Mike Erikson's small New England town would say he's just your average, everyday guy. And that's exactly how Mike likes it. Sure, the life he's chosen isn't much of a challenge to someone with his unique gifts, but he's content with his quiet and peaceful existence. That is until an old friend presents him with an irresistible mystery, one that Mike is uniquely qualified to solve.

Far out in the California desert, a team of DARPA scientists has invented a device they affectionately call the Albuquerque Door. Using a cryptic computer equation and magnetic fields to "fold" dimensions, it shrinks distances so a traveler can travel hundreds of feet with a single step. The invention promises to make mankind's dreams of teleportation a reality. And, the scientists insist, traveling through the door is completely safe. Yet evidence is mounting that this miraculous machine isn't quite what it seems - and that its creators are harboring a dangerous secret.

As his investigations draw him deeper into the puzzle, Mike begins to fear there's only one answer that makes sense. And if he's right, it may be only a matter of time before the project destroys...everything.




NESFA Lou
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On May 30, 2022, 3:04 PM -0400, Wesley Brodsky <wesbrodsky at alum.mit.edu>, wrote:
> I think Louis asked, but thank you anyway.
>
> ________________________________________
> From: reading-group <reading-group-bounces at lists.nesfa.org> on behalf of cjhi newcastle2.com <cjhi at newcastle2.com>
> Sent: Monday, May 30, 2022 2:44 PM
> To: M NESFA Reading Group
> Subject: [nesfa-reading-group] suggestions for future reading
>
> At the last session, Wes asked me to come up with 3 suggestions. Herewith:
>
> Stand on Zanzibar (John Brunner, 1967). The first of the doorstops I mentioned in my leadup to the discussion of a couple of his later works; his only Hugo winner, and in his opinion his best work. Set in a more advanced 2010 than we got to (and more chaotic, but don't ask me about 2022), and written as a mosaic (ref Dos Passos's USA, if anyone still knows that work) with labels, so following main/sub/context lines isn't hard. Main line is two characters, one chasing rumors of a breakthrough in genetic modification and the other returning to his ancestry by bracing a small African country against its larger neighbors.
>
> The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (Patricia McKillip, 1974). A breakthrough book not so much for the author (first non-YA book) as for fantasy, which was mired in gaudy heroism (this was the era of the series some of us called "The Sword of Sha-Na-Na"); still sometimes miscalled YA on account of its publisher, but it isn't. Sybel is the latest of a line of hermit mages, collecting control over the titular beasts, and doesn't think much when an infant is dumped on her doorstep in the aftermath of a faraway battle; a decade later, the unsettled battle causes come to her, leaving her with stark choices. Winner of the first World Fantasy Award for best novel, ahead of a couple of much better-known figures. McKillip died just a few weeks ago<https://www.tor.com/2022/05/11/patricia-a-mckillip-1948-2022/>; this is a good intro to her work. Commentary (with possible spoilers) at https://www.tor.com/2022/03/31/the-price-of-power-in-the-forgotten-beasts-of-eld-by-patricia-mckillip/
>
> Growing up Weightless (John M. Ford, 1993) Six people on the cusp of legal adulthood, against a mid-ground of tangled politics (finding water turned out to be much harder than Heinlein thought), in what Wolfe called the best book set on the Moon since The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Also not YA despite (and rarely mislisted as such). Ford was Boskone GoH in 1997; like all of his novels this resembles his other novels only in involving some of his major interests (here, gaming and trains) while telling a great story in several layers. (See if you notice the plotting trick he pulls off without making a show of it.) Ford died way too young and there was confusion about his estate; Tor is now reprinting everything they can get the rights to (he did a couple of brilliant and just-as-unique(*) original-StarTrek novels as work-for-hire, so those may not come out), and Amazon says the new printing/e-ing will be out on 27 Sep 2022.
>
>
> And just for fun: The Alteration (Kingsley Amis, 1976). Amis was a frequently snarky mundane writer who upset the British writing establishment with his first book (about a non-U grad student at a toffy university) and upset Princeton a few years later when he chose to answer his invitation to guest-lecture by talking about SF(*), which was a major interest. He co-edited several anthologies (with snarky comments about people who tried to dis SF) and wrote three very assorted genre novels(**); this is set in a version of 1976 which begins with a couple of members of the papal music faculty listening intently to a brilliant boy soprano, to consider whether he should remain a soprano. Assorted implausible in-jokes (typical of many uchronias) decorate a serious and IMO plausible story.
>
> (*) later collected as New Maps of Hell -- much of it is dated now but it's an excellent study of its time.
> (**) the other two are a contemporary ghost story and a technothriller-on-the-side
>
>
> /CHip
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