Meeting for Saturn's Children

On November 19 2009 we met at the Bloomington Barnes & Noble to discuss Saturn's Children by Charles Stross. The book had been suggested by Gregory, Abe, and Raja.

Here are the votes in the order they were given:

Abe 7

Emily 8

Chris 7

Dru 8--no, 2--no, 5

Lisa 4

Jeff 4 (though the discussion made him suggest lowering to 3)

Raja 4

(Raja insisted on giving his vote last.)

The book was not terribly popular. Gregory and Raja loved the astronautics, though they had concerns about whether shipping bulky bodies around the Solar System was the best way to do things. Raja liked the planetary science as well; it reminded him of John Varley's work. Unfortunately, the characters weren't as good as Varley's, and Raja resented the time spent with the characters.

Gregory apologized; he'd complained in the past about other members' seeming obsession with books consisting of vampires and sex ... and this book seemed to mostly consist of robots and sex.

Several people said that the book started out reasonably well but got too confusing by about halfway.

(One other complaint of Raja's is that the book, like the middle section of Accelerando, presents people with incredible computational riches frittering them away simulating low-computational lifestyles (i.e., ours). Raja compared it to aristocrats playing at being peasants and found it insulting.)

After the meeting, Jeff suggested Heinlein's Friday--the putative model for this novel, and promised Chris he would be good if she would ;-). Rather to Raja's surprise, Friday will be the book for our February (25th) 2010 meeting.

Meeting for Dracula

On October 29 2009 we met Bloomington Barnes & Noble to discuss Dracula by Bram Stoker. The book was suggested by Emily (since the meeting was just two days short of Halloween).

Here are the votes (in the order they were given):
Abe 7 (who didn't reread it recently but remembers it pretty vividly)
Raja 9
Chris 8 (though she was 19 pages from the end)
Dru ~9 (though on this re-read she was just up to Lucy's death)
Lisa 9
Emily 10
Jeff 10 (He would have given it 9, but he thought it deserved a 10 "because Stoker made Heinlein-haters like a typist who 'thinks like a man.'")

Many people praised the book for its vivid descriptions.

Lots of people like Mina, though they would have preferred better praise from Stoker's characters than "She thinks like a man." Raja brought up several possible complaints, but considered them nitpicking, given how strong the book is. ("It's been in print continuously for 112 years now.") One plot hole people disliked was Harker's escape from Dracula's castle at the end of Chapter IV. Raja also brought up the strange fact that Lucy got three (!) marriage proposals in one day—Raja was expecting something sinister behind the coincidence—but Dru and Chris didn't find it unreasonable.

Gregory didn't read the book; he expected it to be a standard Gothic, e.g., "a woman is whisked away from her home town by her marriage; her husband sets her up in a dark, gloomy castle, and she becomes convinced that her husband is trying to kill her." It was pointed out that the first four chapters of Dracula actually do follow this pattern—but instead of a young bride, the role is taken by naïve young man Jonathan Harker(!)

It was also pointed out that, for the time, the book incorporates cutting-edge hardware (phonographic recorders) and medicine (transfusions). Modern readers wonder how Lucy survived four different blood transfusions from four different men—her blood type must have been AB positive (the "universal recipient")!

Meeting for Furies of Calderon

On June 25 2009 we met at the Bloomington Barnes & Noble to discuss Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher. The book was suggested by Lisa Bradley.

Here are the votes (in the order they were given):

Lisa 9
Jeff 7
Raja 9
Emily 7
Dru 8
Chris 6

Raja liked it a lot; he said that apart from some clumsiness in the first 20 pages or so, the author did a very skillful job of storytelling. He said Butcher was a professional entertainer, and we could use more of those. The only reason Raja didn't give the book a 10 is that, ultimately, it didn't feel like it was about anything more than solid storytelling.

Chris found the world and vocabulary confusing for a while.

Gregory didn't care for the book until the Trial of Wits, which changed certain things, and made for a very interesting relationship between two of the characters (one of them oblivious).

Heinlein's fan mail answer

Do you wish you could send RAH some fan mail? Well, you can get an answer from him! I'm pretty sure you can figure out which box he would have checked...

Book for June: Tea with the Black Dragon

The members present chose Tea with the Black Dragon as the SFDG book for June 21 2007.

Meeting to discuss The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

All votes:

Alek: 10
Chris: 3
Dru: 5
Jeff: 2
Lisa: 8
Raja: 10
TC: 10

Book for March: Wasp by Eric Frank Russell

Our book for March 29 2007 will be Wasp by Eric Frank Russell. It's currently out of print, but it's what the consensus arrived on. It is available as part of the omnibus Entities, linked below. It's also widely available through http://abebooks.com/ (a search for "Wasp" as the title and "Russell" as the author turns up 92 results). Click the title above to do the ABEBooks search.

If you want to buy the omnibus, here it is:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Is Back: The Complete Joss Whedon Q&A | TVGuide.com | TVGuide.com

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Is Back: The Complete Joss Whedon Q&A | TVGuide.com | TVGuide.com About Buffy, season 8 (in comic book format) with a few pages'preview that reveal what's the deal with Buffy & the Immortal!