Hey, I have been rereading Way Station the past month (I usually pick a
book I know will be easy to read in small chunks to read while waiting
for the bus I take to work. But since I only read a few pages a day, it
can take a while to finish even a short book). I may have mentioned
before that here on the west coast the SF meeting starts at 6 PM and
that's about when I get home. That's why I haven't been able to make the
meetings.
Misha
On 4/16/2016 10:26 AM, Evan Reese wrote:
Hello Folks,
An average turnout at our most recent meeting with most of the regulars in attendance. Unfortunately, the general consensus was that our book, Infinity Link by Jeffrey A. Carver, was one of the worst we’ve done in our over nine years of reading a book each month. So, in response, we’ve chosen a classic for next month that most of us have read and enjoyed very much, and will happily read again, Way Station by Clifford D. Simak.
The next meeting of the Science Fiction club will be on Thursday, May 12, 2016.
Place: 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 1:00 UTC.
Our book, Way Station, is available in a panoply of excellent accessible versions: A Publisher Quality version recently added to Bookshare, in two audio versions from BARD with two excellent narrators, and in downloadable braille from BARD.
The Publisher Quality Bookshare version is at:
https://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/1182087
The two audio BARD versions are at:
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.nls/db.58565
and at:
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.nls/db.11769
The downloadable braille volumes from NLS are at:
Volume 1
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.nls/br.15514v01
Volume 2
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.nls/br.15514v02
The NLS Annotation for the newer BARD audio version reads as follows:
As keeper of Earth's only galactic transfer station, 124-year-old civil war veteran Enoch Wallace has been attending to visitors and facilitating interstellar communication for over a century. When his charts indicate Earth's impending destruction, his alien friends offer a solution that seems worse than the disaster itself. Hugo Award. 1963.
Here is Bookshare’s Long Synopsis:
Enoch Wallace is not like other humans. Living a secluded life in the backwoods
of Wisconsin, he carries a nineteenth-century rifle and never seems to age -- a fact
that has recently caught the attention of prying government eyes. The truth is, Enoch
is the last surviving veteran of the American Civil War and, for close to a century,
he has operated a secret way station for aliens passing through on journeys to other
stars. But the gifts of knowledge and immortality that his intergalactic guests have
bestowed upon him are proving to be a nightmarish burden, for they have opened Enoch's
eyes to humanity's impending destruction. Still, one final hope remains for the human
race... though the cure could ultimately prove more terrible than the disease.
Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, Way Station is a magnificent example of
the fine art of science fiction as practiced by a revered Grand Master. A cautionary
tale that is at once ingenious, evocative, and compassionately human.
Come join us next month and have some fun talking about this universally acclaimed classic, and anything else having to do with SF literature.
Evan
