Chicago Nerds- Leviathan Wakes

For the last 2016 meeting of the Chicago Nerd book club, we discussed Leviathan Wakes (2011) by James S.A. Corey, the first book in "The Expanse", an on-going series that is also going into its second season as a SyFy television show.

Leviathan Wakes is set in a fairly-near future where humans have colonized chunks of the solar system using an extremely efficient new impulse engine, but have not yet moved on to interstellar exploration. At the book's start, there's a bit of three-way political tension between Earth, a partially-terraformed (and militarily well-equipped) Mars, and the inhabitants of the outer asteroid belts, moons, and dwarf planets. The novel alternates viewpoints between James Holden, who becomes captain and unwitting political player after his original civilian ship is destroyed, and Joe Miller, a detective on Ceres whose hunt for a missing young woman leads him to a plot that killed Holden's ship and threatens the solar system.

Notes & possible spoilers below!

Think Galactic: Feed

Last time at Think Galactic, we discussed Mira Grant's "Feed" (2010), a novel that has in it: zombies. Also journalism? It was a fun if somewhat aggravating read, and we had a good discussion.

"Feed" takes place a few decades in the future, and a bit after a zombie infection has taken a big chunk out of the world population, and remains an ongoing threat. Our protagonists are a team of bloggers--independent journalists/entertainers, really--who follow a contender for the presidential nomination as he begins the election trail. Along the way: zombies.

I took a ton of notes at this one--our criticism leans towards the madcap at a times. Which, befitting the ravenous unlife being resisted, I shall record with LOTS OF BULLETS. IN QUOTES are CLEVER THINGS that PEOPLE SAID. Almost certainly, there are spoilers below:

Chicago Nerds: The Girl With All The Gifts

Good meeting tonight, about a dozen people. I liked M. R. Carey's "The Girl With All The Gifts" (2014) quite a bit, which is saying something--I'm pretty bored of zombie narratives, but this one was well-done. Drew some strong comparisons to the 2013 video game "The Last of Us", Daryl Gregory's 2011 novel "Raising Stony Mayhall", and Jonathan Levine's 2013 film "Warm Bodies".