New Millennium Theatre's "The Incredible Hank"

The New Millennium Theatre Company focuses on "new or non-traditional" plays with an eye towards bringing in new audiences; previous endeavors have included Tolkien/action movie mashup Old Hobbits Die Hard and recurring Christmas special Silent Night of the Living Dead, if that gives you any idea.

Their newest production is The Incredible Hank, a farcical super-hero tale written & directed by Alex B. Reynolds. Set in a super-hero saturated metropolis, it follows a file clerk (Mike Movido) with incredible strength who is drawn, against his will, into the world of super-crime and vigilante justice.

A fast, loud show with broad humor, The Incredible Hank had the audience erupting in laughter at every other line. Some quick thoughts below:

Think Galactic- Get In Trouble

Way back in May, before Wiscon, Think Galactic discussed Kelly Link's short story collection "Get In Trouble" (2015). Which is just darn tootin' good, you should read it.

As is our custom with collections, we pre-selected a few for focused discussion, although in this case we did wind up talking about most all of the stories. "Summer People", "Secret Identity", "Two Houses", and "Light" were our focal stories.

Lots of questions of reality & identity, lots of interweaving of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and even superhero elements throughout this collection. All delivered in this style that's kind of Lethem crossed with O'Connor crossed with...someone who writes sexy stuff. Brief discussion sketches and possible spoilers below:

Chicago Nerds: Lagoon

For the last meeting of the Chicago Nerds book club, we read and discussed Nnedi Okorafor's 2014 novel "Lagoon". It's an unusual first contact story--shape-shifting, primarily ocean-based aliens land just off the shore of Lagos, Nigeria, and then...stuff happens.

There is a lot, a confusing lot, going on in this novel--intentionally so, it would seem, with the chaos of the story meant to reflect, perhaps even praise, the chaotic nature of Lagos. Unfortunately, I  found that the intersection of many different codes, coupled with some rough areas in the writing, deflated the novel's impact. I'll try to expand that a bit below.

The biggest consensus from the group, I think, was something along the lines of "we really wanted to like it", but had too many issues in actually reading it. Definitely a worthy discussion, our reservations notwithstanding--possible spoilers below!