Hello Folks,
A pretty good turnout at our most recent meeting, but opinions of our book.
Bowl of Heaven by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven, were decidedly mixed. We
stay in a similar vein for our next book, a tale of a planet with a mysterious
alien artifact inside. We’re reading Spinneret by Timothy Zahn.
The next meeting of the Science Fiction club will be on Thursday, January 14,
2016.
Place, Booknook at:
http://conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rs7867a2369e0e
Time: 9 PM Eastern, 8 PM Central, 7 PM Mountain, 6 PM Pacific, and 02:00 UTC.
Our book, Spinneret, is available both as a download from BARD, and as a
Publisher Quality version from Bookshare.
To download the BARD version, go to:
https://nlsbard.loc.gov/nlsbardprod/download/detail/srch/DB24999
and click on the Download Spinneret link.
The Bookshare version is at:
https://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/1131085
Here is the NLS Annotation:
When earthmen move out among the stars they find that numerous alien races have
already colonized the planets. Earth colonists are left with the metal-poor
planet
Astra which is unwanted by all the alien races. However, it turns out that Astra
holds some surprises that will cause political repercussions throughout the
galaxy.
Bookshare’s Long Synopsis reads as follows:
A newly colonized planet holds many secrets in its seemingly barren depths. But
will it lead to humanity's salvation, or its destruction?Chasing a new frontier,
humankind sends a manned starship into the universe and away from the
overpopulated
Earth in hopes of finding a new planet to colonize. But every Earthlike world
they
discover is already inhabited. As it turns out, the universe is a very crowded
place.
An alien council offers to lease the one remaining uninhabited world: Astra, a
bleak
and barren but serviceable planet. The new settlement, though, quickly
experiences
serious problems, from dying crops to the mysterious disappearance of anything
and
everything that is made of metal. And then Astra reveals a secret neither the
aliens
nor the human governments could ever have imagined.
Finally, here’s a brief review from Publishers Weekly taken from Amazon’s page
for this book:
The vision of an enlightened technocracy in this novel typifies the attitudes
that
have won both fans and detractors for Analog magazine, where this and many of
Zahn's
other works have appeared. If that vision seems a throwback to another era, with
it comes a welcome hardheaded sense of story construction. As a very late entry
in
the universe of spacefaring civilizations, humankind must settle for the
leavings
of the older races. But the seemingly worthless and metal-free planet of Astra
has
a surprise that makes it the envy and target of better equipped and
better-armed aliens.
This is millenia-old machinery that forges metal of unknown elements. If this
narrative
is overshadowed by more substantial books on the theme of exploring and
deciphering
ancient alien artifacts, it is nonetheless a light, brisk and entertaining yarn.
Hoping all of you have a great holiday season! Come join us for the first
meeting of the new year and to talk about this book, and anything else related
to SF literature.
Evan
