Chicago Nerds- Time Salvager

For February's Chicago Nerd book discussion, we read "Time Salvager" (2015) by Wesley Chu.

To summarize: fractally dumb. Astonishingly, breath-takingly bad:

• Painful, terrible writing. Shocking to us that editors of a major publisher would sign off on this.
• Sneaky, creepy sexism. Not as blatantly bad as the puerile wish-fulfillment of "Lives of Tao", but maybe worse for that. Normalizes/excuses abusive, controlling behavior.
• Dumb, dumb, a thousand times dumb. Science, logic, continuity, common sense: leave them behind.
• The cleverest suggestion put forth is that this is actually an ironic work: a poorly-executed, derivative novel about ineptly ripping off the past. Clever! We don't buy it, though.
• Shockingly little time-travel, really.
• I would like to pass a law that when characters do/say something unnecessary purely to drive home that they are villains, they must twirl their moustaches, whether or not that makes sense.
• Despite our opinion of the book, a discussion full of laughter. And groaning.
• We are now completely cynical about blurbs and reviews.

The end! I'll waste no more brain-time on this. I took literally 100 notes on this, in order to stay sane, which I won't burden you with. Indeed, if this novel had been written a little better, I would have stopped reading: it was only a sense of editorial horror--"what basic grammar will he forget next?"--that kept me going page to page.

Next time we're reading Charlie Jane Anders' "All the Birds in the Sky", which narrowly edged out Jeff VanderMeer's "Southern Reach" trilogy. Clearly, we are craving the good stuff.

Also, a reminder: lots of Chicago Nerd stuff coming up, including C2E2-related events and Pi Day.  Keep up to date via the CNSC website and Facebook.

Chi-SF: The Lives of Tao

Tao has apparently specced hard
into dual-wielding.

The Chicago Speculative Fiction Community recently discussed Wesley Chu's "The Lives of Tao". A Chicago author, this was Chu's first novel, published in 2013; he's already published a sequel and the third book in the trilogy is slated to be published in the near future. The plot revolves around a race of aliens who have been hiding among humans, guiding our civilizations and also fighting a war amongst themselves.

In theory, at least, discussions at Chi-SF follow a linear path around the table, with each attendee in turn giving their thoughts on the novel, after which it turns into a more free-ranging discussion. In practice, back-and-forths and tangents get going pretty early, but the Platonic ideal of the circular discussion is a nice framework to fall back to if a given thought plays out, or if we go way too far off topic. I tried to keep track of people's main comments, but as always, mistakes are mine, good/clever things might not be, and writing these up usually turns into a more personally reflective piece (meaning I blather on about my theories and peeves), rather than an accurate report of the group discussion (might have missed a lot of comments, mistook who said what, etc). Spoilers below!