Chicago Nerds- The Prestige

For the June meeting of the Chicago Nerd Social Club, we discussed The Prestige by Christopher Priest. A tale of two rivalrous stage magicians in the 19th century, the novel plays with ambiguity and illusion—there are huge plot elements that have to be inferred, and can't be proven conclusively—and has a lot of uncanny doubling and mirroring.

We had a good discussion about this, with lots of references to other magicians (fictional and otherwise) and some discussion of its 2006 film adaptation by Christopher Nolan. Brief notes and possible spoilers below:

Think Galactic- Stations of the Tide

For January's Think Galactic, we discussed Michael Swanwick's 1991 novel "Stations of the Tide".

The novel is set an indeterminate but considerable time in the future. Humans have colonized other solar systems, and our action mostly takes place in the Tidewater region of the planet Miranda, which is periodically flooded. Our protagonist, a nameless bureaucrat, has been sent from the advanced space-borne societies to track down Gregorian, a Mirandan who may have stolen some dangerous replicating technology.

On one level, it's a straightforward science-fictional riff on the noirish detective tale, flavored with some bureaucratic spook business. Despite its relative brevity, though (250ish pages), there's a surprising number of levels here, threads and allusions and alternate plot interpretations constantly seeping in.

So, as you can imagine, a nice discussion. Spoilers below!

Chicago Nerds: Hyperion

After many nominations and near-selections, Dan Simmons' Hugo-winning "Hyperion" (1989) finally made it to the top of the Chicago Nerds' book-club list.

Structurally, "Hyperion" draws on "The Canterbury Tales" (1390ish), being composed of a frame story of a group of pilgrims travelling together, with the bulk of the novel made up of the individual stories that six of the pilgrims relate; each individual's story is told in a different style, and has a different thematic focus.

I found Hyperion a delight to re-read, as did many others at group; I think we were about evenly split between first-time readers and re-readers. It's one of those books that is a real pleasure to share and talk about. Possible spoilers below!

Weird & Wonderful: Lexicon

It felt like it had been far too long since I had the pleasure of attending City Lit's "Weird & Wonderful" book club, and last Wednesday's discussion of Max Barry's "Lexicon" (2013) was a delightful return! The novel uses a science-fictional concept (controlling people by means of neurolinguistic "hacking") but is done more in the mode of a thriller. We all quite enjoyed it, and while our discussion focused more on the ideas than the plot, there may be SPOILERS BELOW: