[nesfa-reading-group] Potential reading choices for February 2025

[Shelly Thomas]

Here are my three books for voting on.

Spindle’s End (2000)

Robin McKinley

All the creatures of the forest and field and riverbank knew the infant was
special. She was the princess, spirited away from the evil fairy Pernicia
on her name-day. But the curse was cast: Rosie was fated to prick her
finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a poisoned sleep-a
slumber from which no one would be able to rouse her.





The Breaking of Northwall (1980)

Paul O. Williams

One thousand years after a devastating and chaotic series of nuclear
exchanges, all that is left of the United States of America are scattered,
warring tribes and small city-states. One of the latter is Pelbar—proud,
civilized, and intolerant of change and new ideas. Rebels and troublemakers
are sentenced to a year of exile at the massive midwestern fortress of
Northwall, defending Pelbar against the fierce Shumai and Sentani tribes.
Restless and brilliant Jestak is a visionary who has seen and learned too
much in his distant travels to be content with life in Pelbarigan. During
his exile at Northwall, he makes contact with Pelbar’s age-old enemies and
risks all to rescue his beloved Tia from nomads armed with long-lost
weapons from before the atomic holocaust.


Davy (1964)

Edgar Pangborn

Davy is set in the far future of our world, in the fourth century after the
collapse of what we describe as the twentieth-century civilisation. In a
land turned upside-down and backwards by the results of scientific
unwisdom, Davy and his fellow Ramblers are carefree outcasts, whose bawdy,
joyous adventures among the dead ashes of Old-Time culture make a novel
which has been hailed as "a frightening, ribald, poignant look at the
imaginary future," as "this chilling and fascinating book," as "superb
entertainment - unique," as "so unusual as the make it both refreshing and
thought provoking."

On Thu, Oct 3, 2024 at 8:56 AM Gloria Lucia Albasi <trebbiana61 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Here are my three suggestions for our group to vote on. Dave Grubbs has
> assured me that these haven’t been read as group choices. Yet.
>
> Thank you,
> Gloria
> 
>
> (1) *The Futurological Congress *by Stanislaw Lem
>
> “The Futurological Congress is a 1971 black humour science fiction novel
> by Polish author Stanisław Lem. It details the exploits of the hero of a
> number of his stories, Ijon Tichy, as he visits the Eighth World
> Futurological Congress at a Hilton Hotel in Costa Rica. The book is Lem's
> take on the science fictional trope of an apparently Utopian future that
> turns out to be an illusion.
>
> The book opens at the eponymous congress. A riot breaks out, and the hero,
> Ijon Tichy, is hit by various psychoactive drugs that were put into the
> drinking water supply lines by the government to pacify the riots. Ijon and
> a few others escape to the safety of a sewer beneath the Hilton where the
> congress was being held, and in the sewer he goes through a series of
> hallucinations and false awakenings, which cause him to be confused about
> whether or not what's happening around him is real. Finally, he believes
> that he falls asleep and wakes up many years later. The main part of the
> book follows Ijon's adventures in the future world — a world where everyone
> takes hallucinogenic drugs, and hallucinations have replaced reality.”
>
> — Wikipedia
>
>
> (2) *Infomocracy* by Malka Older
>
> “It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a
> powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring
> nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party
> Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the
> horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the
> line.  With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right
> by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues.
> For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing
> struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information
> operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels
> running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have
> so much to gain?”
>
> — Google Books
>
>
> (3) *Pattern Recognition* by William Gibson
>
> “Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson
> published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows
> Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological
> sensitivity to corporate symbols. The action takes place in London, Tokyo,
> and Moscow as Cayce judges the effectiveness of a proposed corporate symbol
> and is hired to seek the creators of film clips anonymously posted to the
> internet.
>
> The novel's central theme involves the examination of the human desire to
> detect patterns or meaning and the risks of finding patterns in meaningless
> data. Other themes include methods of interpretation of history, cultural
> familiarity with brand names, and tensions between art and
> commercialization. The September 11, 2001 attacks are used as a motif
> representing the transition to the new century. Critics identify influences
> in Pattern Recognition from Thomas Pynchon's postmodern detective story The
> Crying of Lot 49.”
>
> — Wikipedia
>
>
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