Megatext 2: Octavia Butler

Megatext 2: Octavia Butler

Thursday, August 25th, 7pm

Open Books, 651 W. Lake St.
(Facebook Event Page)

For our second Megatext discussion, we're going to be talking about Octavia E. Butler (1946-2008), who's had a powerful impact on the genre. This discussion is being supported by Open Books, who are hosting, and by Think Galactic.

The idea behind the "Megatext" book club is that we talk about an author as a whole, rather than one specific book. Feel free to come if you've read everything Butler's written, if you've only read one book, or if you're just interested!

photo via Joshua Trujillo

Miéville Megatext

Our first Megatext meeting was a delight! The folks at Open Books were our gracious hosts (they also made this awesome flier), and we had members of Think Galactic and the Classic Sci-Fi Meetup in attendance.

We had a wide-ranging discussion and touched on almost all of his work at least a little. Quick notes:

Megatext 1: China Miéville

I'm very pleased to announce an exciting book discussion series that we're calling Megatext, where we won't talk about only one book--instead, we'll discuss an author, digging into themes and topics. The idea here is that you needn't have read everything, or even more than one book, but you're interested in their work and ideas as a whole.

This discussion is being supported by Open Books, who are hosting, and by Think Galactic, who have been talking about this idea since gushing over the fictional SF/F club in Jo Walton's "Among Others". Besides having an insightful discussion, however, one of my goals for this group is to bring together some readers from as many of the other SF/F groups of Chicagoland (and there are many) as we can, and perhaps also bring in some new folks.

Megatext 1: China Miéville

Thursday, March 24 6:30pm

Open Books, 651 W. Lake St.
(Facebook Event Page)

 Discussing Marxism & Halloween.

For the first meeting, we're going to discuss China Miéville! Here's how this works:

1. Read one or more things that he's written. I have some suggestions below.
2. Come to the meeting!
3. We'll have a little bit of structure--a quick introduction/overview and some comments. Possibly some Provocative Remarks or Questions. We liked the idea of having one or more moderators/discussion leaders for these Megatext meetings, and I will be trying that hat on for Miéville.
4. Then we'll go around and discuss! The format of this will depend a bit on how many people show up, and what we want to talk about. Feel free to just listen in if you don't feel like discussing.
5. Afterwards, possibly a jaunt to a local pub of some kind.

 Some ideas on what to read, and what we might discuss, below: