Chicago Nerds- Binti

For the November book discussion of the Chicago Nerd Social Club, we read Binti and Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor.

The first two parts of a novella trilogy, these works follow the titular character, a mathematically-gifted young woman who is the first of her people to travel off-planet for education. Along the way, she becomes a kind of unintentional liason with the warlike Meduse; Binti: Home follows her first return to Earth.

Brief notes and possible spoilers below:

Weird & Wonderful- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

For the October meeting of City Lit's Weird & Wonderful bookclub, we discussed "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" (1987) by Douglas Adams.

Plot-wise, the novel is a bit of a tangle, involving time travel, ancient aliens, ghosts, clairvoyant detectives, and Samuel Coleridge (among other things), but we found it worth reading page-by-page just owing to Adams' style. Notes and possible spoilers below:

Bloody Reads- At The Mountains of Madness

"Bloody Reads" is the horror-focused book club of Bucket O'Blood. I was able to attend their most recent meeting, where we discussed H.P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness", first published in 1936.

The novella is the firsthand account of an Antarctic scientific expedition that goes awry when the members find remains of an ancient, non-human civilization.

It seems like Lovecraft's influence on modern speculative fiction is something that's being increasingly discussed and scrutinized, so it was particularly rewarding to talk about this story with a large and pretty diverse group of readers. Probably no significant spoilers below, but hey, one never knows.

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!