Hive Mind: Obscure Brilliance

We're starting a new feature called Hive Mind, where we ask fans from all around Chicago for suggestions. (Just to cover our bases: opinions belong to the book-suggesters, and don't necessarily represent the opinion of any organizations they're connected to.)

For the first installment, Obscure Brilliance, we asked folks: what are the books that you really loved, or that have stuck with you strangely over the years, but it seems like practically nobody else has ever read or even heard of them?

Read on for our obscure and brilliant suggestions! 

Chicago Nerds: Dark Orbit

Just wrapped up the Chicago Nerds' discussion of Carolyn Ives Gilman's "Dark Orbit" (2015). A good discussion of a book that the group mostly enjoyed, with a few reservations. Most of us found it a pretty quick, engrossing read.

"Dark Orbit" takes place in the same universe as some of Gilman's other work. In discussion, we noted that is a distinctly Leguinean universe--humanity colonized many planets so long ago we've forgot about them, humanity somewhat separated into different tribes as a result  (doesn't seem like a species-level change as in Le Guin), there's instantaneous communication. In "Dark Orbit", a group of researchers is exploring a planet with many dark-matter related anomalies when they discover a settlement of blind humans living underground, whose different perception of reality may have granted them some unusual abilities. Possible spoilers below!