"The City in the Middle of the Night" by Charlie Jane Anders

This was a real treat to read! I seriously could not put this down. I loved the characters, and the worldbuilding is deep, weird, and inventive. The whole novel is an adventure—something I forget that I'm always looking for, until I find such a good example. Although there's plenty of darkness—dystopia, struggles for survival, tragedy and betrayal—the work as a whole has tons of exuberance. It's a sophisticated but unpretentious take on classic science-fictional topics, and I devoured it.

The story takes place on January, a tidally-locked planet colonized by humans. In the narrow strip between perpetual day and perpetual night, humanity has adapted to the world's challenges. Our main characters meet as a revolution is brewing, travel to a rival city, make forays into the night, encounter some of January's original inhabitants, and generally have an exciting time.

No plot recaps, but possible spoilers below:

Annalee Newitz @ Women & Children First

pic by CNSC member
Paul Callan (Flickr)

Back in September, Annalee Newitz did a reading at Women & Children First from her newly-launched novel, Autonomous. Brief notes below!

Newitz was joined by partner, fellow io9-cofounder, and All the Birds in the Sky author Charlie Jane Anders for the discussion. After reading  some introductory sections from Autonomous, which follows a scientist-turned-pharmacy-pirate and the robot/human pair of agents sent to stop her, Newitz took questions from the audience:

Taking a few questions about the process of writing the novel, and writing fiction instead of nonfiction:

• Autonomous started while both Newitz & Anders were still working on io9. She started working on it kind of as if it were nonfic, interviewed scientists in relevant fields. The novel is set in a definite near -future (2144), and relies on a fairly well-defined central device, the fictional concentration drug "Zacuity", so Newitz turned to a few different specialists to try to both flesh out the ideas and also avoid "smack your own face" fact errors. She also talked about her own disenchantment with the academic research world informing the novel.

Think Galactic- All the Birds in the Sky

For the June meeting of Think Galactic, we discussed All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders. The much-lauded novel (it's on a serious awards streak) follows two characters from childhood through early adulthood, as they find themselves on opposite sides of a magic vs. technology war in a very near future.

Brief notes and possible spoilers below:

Podcast #4- The Hugo Novels

Our new podcast is live, just in time for us to load our bikes up and head to Wiscon! This episode, we talk about some more science fiction & fantasy theater in Chicago, then launch into a brief discussion of all 6 Hugo novels on the 2017 shortlist.

Download Directly (mp3) | RSS Feed | iTunes | Google Play 

• 0- Introduction & What We've Been Reading (Hugo Nominations & C.J. Cherryh's Rimrunners)
• 4:00- Upcoming Events
• 6:18- What we're looking forward to at Wiscon & BikeCon
• 10:55- Theatrical Discussion: Lifeline's A Wrinkle in Time, Edge of Orion's Illyria, and a bit more discussion of New Millennium's The Incredible Hank and Otherworld's The Rogue Aviator
• 16:27- Hugo overview & voting mechanics
• 20:51- Novel discussion!
• Ada Palmer's Too Like The Lightning
• N.K. Jemisin's The Obelisk Gate
• Cixin Liu's Death's End
• Charlie Jane Ander's All the Birds in the Sky
• Becky Chamber's A Closed and Common Orbit
• Yoon Ha Lee's Ninefox Gambit
• 43:51- Overall Hugo thoughts
• 53:52- Credits

(Extended show notes after we return from Wiscon!)

Thanks to our events reader this episode, Chelsea Fiddyment from Unreal.

Our music is provided by Pelafina. Check them out on Facebook and Bandcamp!

Hope you like the show! Questions, comments? Sound off in the comments, or drop us a line at positronchicago@gmail.com.

Printer's Row Lit Fest & CAKE Outing

This coming weekend holds two cool events in Chicago:

The Printer's Row Lit Fest, a huge bookish celebration on and around Printer's Row downtown. Hundreds of booksellers of all kinds, all the local presses and groups, and tons of authors doing talks and signings. Check the schedule for more.

The Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE!) is a celebration of alternative, indie, underground comics/graphics/zines of all kinds, and is a good fun. Lots of locals, lots of international artists, lots of illustrious webcomic folks you may know of! CAKE is at the Center on Halsted in Lakeview.

Both events run both Saturday and Sunday and are primarily free and open to the public--Printer's Row does have some ticketed events.

I'm seeing if I can rustle up some Think Galactic, Chicago Nerds, and other bookish SF/F types to meet up on Sunday--wander Printer's Row for a bit and catch a talk with Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane Anders, Dan Sinker, and Kameron Hurley, then head up to CAKE for a bit. Probably some food/drinks in between or after, too.

Shoot me a message or check out the Facebook event if you want to tag along.

Chicago Nerds- All the Birds in the Sky

For the March Chicago Nerd Social Club book discussion, we read "All the Birds in the Sky", the 2016 debut novel from Charlie Jane Anders, known to many of us as the editor at influential SF/F/geeky news/media site io9.

"All the Birds" self-consciously straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy. It follows Laurence and Patricia, childhood friends who wind up on opposite sides of a war between magic-users and super-scientists.

This was one of those (exceedingly rare) Chicago Nerds selections that we almost-unanimously liked, and we had a good discussion teasing out some of our favorite parts. Anders was also kind enough to join us via videochat to talk about the book and answer some questions. Possible spoilers below!