Classic Sci-Fi- Holy Fire

For the April meeting of Classic Sci-Fi, we read Holy Fire (1996) by Bruce Sterling.

Coming out of the cyberpunk tradition, Holy Fire is a near-future tale in which medical technology and questions of posthumanism loom large. Our protagonist, a woman in her nineties, undergoes an experimental rejuvenation technique and promptly starts wandering around Europe, spending time with an odd assortment of young anarchists & theorists, fashionistas and artists.

Brief notes and possible spoilers below:

Weird & Wonderful: My Real Children

We had a small group but a lovely discussion of Jo Walton's "My Real Children" (2014) at City Lit's Weird & Wonderful Book Club last week. Walton's novel is a kind of double-alternate history with deep reflections on family and ageing: Patricia, our protagonist, lived two very different lives, and is remembering both of them as she falls into dementia in a nursing facility.

The strongly science-fictional elements are mostly off screen (alternate history of space travel, medicine & technology, world politics), and since they're not very central to Patricia's life we don't get too much about them--but finding those little clues about the different worlds is one of the treats of reading this. The fantastic here lies in the dissonance/resonance between Patricia's two lives, not in any science fictional or fantastic elements within them. Each timeline kind of overlays the other, so even as you're getting wrapped up in Tricia's life, you remember that things are different in Pat's. It's a very strange and interesting effect.