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August 2018
Stefen’s Bookclub – August
The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden This is a book I've been eyeing off for the book club for a while now and while it is science fiction, it's also a lot more than that too. Like many of the recent books to wear the Afro-futurism label it's a mix of science and the supernatural, contemporary ideas and folk lore. It was also shortlisted for the Lambda LGBT literary award in the science fiction/fantasy/horror category. The winner incidentally, was…
Find out more »September 2018
Stefen’s Bookclub – September
The Drowned World by J G Ballard Tuesday September 4th from 6.00pm at Durty Nelly's. We've done quite a few recent books over the last few months, so I thought this time we'd do something older. Written in 1962, The Drowned World is set in a future where global warming has rendered whole areas of the planet uninhabitable. London, where the story takes place is flooded, hot and overgrown with jungle. Told from the perspective of a survey team sent…
Find out more »October 2018
Stefen’s Bookclup – October
Dreams Before the Start of Time by Anne CharnockThis is the winner of the 2018 Arthur C Clarke award for science fiction literature, and I'm always interested to see what the group makes of award-winning books so its what we'll be reading in preparation for our October meet.It begins in a near-future and spans several generations focussing on a subject that is often left vague in science-fiction, childbirth and conception. Already we have technologies that offer vastly more options and…
Find out more »November 2018
Stefen’s Bookclub – November
The Thousand Year Beach by Tobi Hirotaka I've been keen to do this one ever since it first appeared in the 'forthcoming' notices. A Japanese science fiction book set in a virtual tourist destination that has had no tourists for more than a thousand years, the AI constructs within left to their own devices. Then something new and destructive arrives and changes everything. We haven't read any Japanese science fiction before so I'm intrigued to see what folks will make…
Find out more »December 2018
Stefen’s Bookclub – December
Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach by Kelly Robson For our last book of 2018 I thought I'd go with something not too long, since I imagine folks might be a bit busier than usual. Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach comes in at about 230, so it won't take too long to read but it’s got quite a lot of content idea-wise so I think we'll still have plenty to talk about. Future post-humans, the aftermath of world-wide ecological…
Find out more »January 2019
Special Event – Odd Bookclub Redux
The Cloven by Brian Catling Folks familiar with the store book club will know that we usually have our first meet of the year in February. That's still the case, and the normal book club will be meeting on the first Tuesday of February. In January however, we'll be doing something that throws back to the other book club we used to run. We called it the Odd Book Club and it was dedicated to really strange and peculiar works.…
Find out more »Book Launch – The Subjugate by Amanda Bridgeman
The Subjugate by Amanda Bridgeman I was hoping to do more events in 2019, so I'm thrilled to be involved with launching WA author Amanda Bridgeman's new book, The Subjugate. It's a science fiction / crime thriller set in a religious community where violent criminals are neurally 'edited' to remove their criminal tendencies and are then returned to serve the community as obedient servants called Serenes. It's also a community plagued by a recent spate of horrific murders. As the body…
Find out more »February 2019
Stefen’s Bookclub – February
Occupy Me by Tricia Sullivan This is a quirky mix of supernatural and science fiction ideas with the basic plot of a thriller and told in a peculiar style. It's about an angel, a killer, a mysterious briefcase and the fate of everything. It's also a book that there have been quite polarised reviews of, so I think it's something that will provide us with an interesting evenings conversation.
Find out more »March 2019
Stefen’s Bookclub – March
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman The last few book club books have been fairly recent ones, so I thought it was time to weave another old classic into the mix. This time it's Joe Haldeman's 1974 book, The Forever War. It's an interesting mix of futuristic war and time travel story and manages to fit a lot into its 240 odd pages. It's a highly regarded book and I'm looking forward to what the group makes of it.
Find out more »April 2019
Stefen’s Bookclub – April
The Subjugate by Amanda Bridgeman I've been eyeing this one off as a book club book since before we did the book launch for it. It's an interesting mix of crime and science fiction that engages with a variety of social and cultural issues, particularly to do with ideas of justice, crime and punishment. This is one of those books that crosses genres, so it's detective fiction and science fiction and I'm interested in seeing how folks respond to it.
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