New Millennium Theatre's "The Incredible Hank"

The New Millennium Theatre Company focuses on "new or non-traditional" plays with an eye towards bringing in new audiences; previous endeavors have included Tolkien/action movie mashup Old Hobbits Die Hard and recurring Christmas special Silent Night of the Living Dead, if that gives you any idea.

Their newest production is The Incredible Hank, a farcical super-hero tale written & directed by Alex B. Reynolds. Set in a super-hero saturated metropolis, it follows a file clerk (Mike Movido) with incredible strength who is drawn, against his will, into the world of super-crime and vigilante justice.

A fast, loud show with broad humor, The Incredible Hank had the audience erupting in laughter at every other line. Some quick thoughts 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:

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!

Chicago Nerds- Welcome to Night Vale

For the last meeting of the Chicago Nerd book club, we discussed "Welcome to Night Vale" (2015) by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor.

The novel is set in the world of the podcast of the same name, which a fair number of us are completely enamored of. It's a twice-monthly show, a bit like "The X-Files Home Companion": a small community radio broadcast from a town where the strange and supernatural are commonplace. It's a very weird mix of the surreal, horrific, and mundane, that somehow adds up to astonishingly comedic. For some! Not everybody at group is into it.

We found the adaption of that show to a novel format fairly problematic--particularly given the importance of narrator Cecil Baldwin and the music of Disparition to the show's tone. Nonetheless, we had a fruitful discussion, with much attention paid to listening vs. reading. Spoilers below!

Chicago Nerds: To Say Nothing of the Dog

This last Monday the Chicago Nerd Social Club met to discuss "To Say Nothing of the Dog" (1997), a comedic time travel story (and Hugo Winner) by Connie Willis. While the novel takes place within a fictional universe Willis has created, centered around time travel, with significant chunks of it touching on World War II, "To Say Nothing of the Dog" can very much be read as a stand-alone novel.

We had a surprisingly low completion rate for the novel, but those who did finish it all seemed to enjoy it. There may be SPOILERS BELOW: