[nesfa-reading-group] Zoom link for tonight's NESFA Reading Group meeting @7PM, discussing The World Inside by Robert Silverberg

[Wesley Brodsky]

Hello;

FYI: Here are the three books (not 3 rocks, for Bill Griffith's fans):

All from reviews I read in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). I have not read any of them. The descriptions in “quotes” are amalgamated from Goodreads and Amazon. The books are available on the Old Colony Library Network and are for sale by Amazon.   
  
Consider Phlebas
Iain M. Banks
This was not from a review of this novel which I read in the WSJ; it was suggested by a review there of a coffee-table book filled with the sketches and maps Banks created about his “Culture” series, of which “Consider Phlebas” was the first.
“The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.
Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.”    
      
2054
Elliot Ackerman & James Stavridis
This is a SciFi war book, concerning artificial “intelligence”. James Stavridis, is a Retired Admiral. In my humble opinion, artificial “intelligence” is over-hyped. It does not exhibit “intelligence” as people normally consider it. I think it is automated plagiarism. However, this might be an interesting book.
‘It is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the United States and China that brought down the old American political order at a moment when a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence creates an existential threat to the USA, and the world. The American president collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death. A cover-up ensues, conspiracy theories abound, and the country descends into a new type of civil war.
A handful of elite actors from the worlds of computer science, intelligence, and business have a fairly good idea what happened. As some of the world’s great powers, old and new, state and non-state alike, struggle to outmaneuver one another in this new Great Game of scientific discovery, the outcome becomes entangled with the fate of American democracy.”
      
A View from the Stars: Stories and Essays 
Cixin Liu
This is by the author of “The Three-Body Problem”, which we have read. It is not one novel, but we have read books which were not one novel before.
“Features a range of short works from the past three decades of Cixin Liu's career, putting his nonfiction essays and short stories side-by-side for the first time. This collection includes essays and interviews that shed light on Liu's experiences as a reader, writer, and lover of science fiction throughout his life, as well as short fiction that gives glimpses into the evolution of his imaginative voice over the years.”

-Wes
________________________________________
From: reading-group <reading-group-bounces at lists.nesfa.org> on behalf of David G. Grubbs <dggrubbs at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, May 3, 2024 4:46 PM
To: reading-group at nesfa.org
Subject: [nesfa-reading-group] Zoom link for tonight's NESFA Reading Group meeting @7PM, discussing The World Inside by Robert Silverberg

Note1: I suggested we would vote on the next three books to read at our June meeting. But since Wes posted his three book choices a while ago, we might vote on those and make that the August book, swapping around the ordering from the original plan for Wes to suggest the October book.

Note2: It was requested that I post a Google Doc in the NESFA shared drive to contain our history of book choices. I have the data, but my recent open-heart surgery delayed everything. I'll get to that soon and post it on our website.

See you at 7PM tonight or thereabouts.


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