[bookshare-discuss] Next Meeting of the Science Fiction Club, Thursday, October 8, 2009

  • From: "EVAN REESE" <mentat3@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "Bob Acosta" <boacosta@xxxxxxxxxxx>, <scifi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:22:52 -0400

Hi Folks,

The next meeting of the Science Fiction Club will take place on Thursday, 
October 8, 2009 in the 
Book Nook at:
http://conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rs7867a2369e0e

Time: 9 PM Eastern, 8 PM Central, 7 PM Mountain, 6 PM Pacific, and 01 hour UTC.

For the next meeting, we are reading Glasshouse by Charles Stross. You can get 
it from both NLS--as digital download at:
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.nls/db.65900
or on tape with number RC 65900
and from Bookshare at:
http://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/38343/Glasshouse%20?returnPath=L3NlYXJjaD9rZXl3b3JkPWdsYXNzaG91c2Um
with an Excellent rating.

Here is the long synopsis from Bookshare:
When Robin wakes up in a clinic with most of his memories missing, it doesn't 
take him long to discover that someone is trying to kill him. It's the 
twenty-seventh century, when interstellar travel is by teleport gate and 
conflicts are fought by network worms that censor refugees' personalities-- 
including Robin's earlier self.
On the run from a ruthless pursuer and searching for a place to hide, he 
volunteers to participate in a unique experimental polity: the Glasshouse, a 
historical simulation of a pre-accelerated culture circa 1950-2040 where 
participants are assigned anonymized identities. But what looks like the 
perfect sanctuary turns into a trap, placing Robin at the mercy of the 
experimenters-- and at the mercy of his own unbalanced psyche...

And here is a review from Publisher's Weekly taken from Amazon:
The censorship wars"during which the Curious Yellow virus devastated the 
network of wormhole gates connecting humanity across the cosmos"are finally 
over at the start of Hugo-winner Stross's brilliant new novel, set in the same 
far-future universe as 2005's Accelerando. Robin is one of millions who have 
had a mind wipe, to forget wartime memories that are too painful"or too 
dangerously inconvenient for someone else. To evade the enemies who don't think 
his mind wipe was enough, Robin volunteers to live in the experimental 
Glasshouse, a former prison for deranged war criminals that will recreate 
Earth's "dark ages" (c. 1950"2040). Entering the community as a female, Robin 
is initially appalled by life as a suburban housewife, then he realizes the 
other participants are all either retired spies or soldiers. Worse yet, 
fragments of old memories return"extremely dangerous in the Glasshouse, where 
the experimenters'
intentions are as murky as Robin's grasp of his own identity. With nods to 
Kafka, James Tiptree and others,
Stross's wry SF thriller satisfies on all levels, with memorable characters and 
enough brain-twisting extrapolation for five novels.

At the last meeting, we had a great discussion of City by Clifford D. Simak, 
with more people than we've had in a long time. Hope to see even more next 
month.

Evan

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