Annalee Newitz @ Women & Children First

pic by CNSC member
Paul Callan (Flickr)

Back in September, Annalee Newitz did a reading at Women & Children First from her newly-launched novel, Autonomous. Brief notes below!

Newitz was joined by partner, fellow io9-cofounder, and All the Birds in the Sky author Charlie Jane Anders for the discussion. After reading  some introductory sections from Autonomous, which follows a scientist-turned-pharmacy-pirate and the robot/human pair of agents sent to stop her, Newitz took questions from the audience:

Taking a few questions about the process of writing the novel, and writing fiction instead of nonfiction:

• Autonomous started while both Newitz & Anders were still working on io9. She started working on it kind of as if it were nonfic, interviewed scientists in relevant fields. The novel is set in a definite near -future (2144), and relies on a fairly well-defined central device, the fictional concentration drug "Zacuity", so Newitz turned to a few different specialists to try to both flesh out the ideas and also avoid "smack your own face" fact errors. She also talked about her own disenchantment with the academic research world informing the novel.

Classic Sci-Fi- I, Robot

For the last Classic Sci-Fi Meetup, we discussed I, Robot (1950) by Isaac Asimov.

One of the most classic works we've read in a while, I, Robot is a fix-up novel stitching together nine of Asimov's robot-focused short stories, with a fairly flimsy frame story of a journalist interviewing robopsychologist Susan Calvin about the development of robotic technology over the decades. It's most famous for introducing the 3 Laws of Robotics.

Easily the most well-attended Classic Sci-Fi meeting I've been to! Brief dsicussion notes below.

Chicago Nerds- Central Station

For June's meeting of the Chicago Nerd Social Club, we discussed "Central Station" (2016) by Lavie Tidhar. It's a "fix-up" novel, stringing together a number of his previously-published short stories.

This should come with a disclaimer if you don't already know: there's no over-arching plot here, so don't hold your breath for one. But at the same time, it's not just an unrelated collection--Tidhar uses a series of interconnected anecdotes to sketch out a setting and his cast of characters with surprising depth.

With the exception of the "no plot" caveat, this was a really well-received book. Possible spoilers below!

Midnight Literary Society: Robopocalypse

The Midnight Literary Society formed a little bit ago as a book club for folks with late-night or variable schedules, making the usual early-evening clubs hard to get to. A laudable goal! I was able to meet up with them for their discussion of Daniel H. Wilson's 2011 novel "Robopocalypse".

As many reviewers (including us) have mentioned, "Robopocalypse" is very, very much in the vein of Max Brooks' "World War Z" (2006), only with robots replacing zombies. The novel uses the framing device of a surviving human soldier looking through the holographic memory of a captured AI. These memories--supplemented with Cormac's commentary--tell the story of a genocidal AI's escape from its lab, the clues leading up to its master plan, the near-destruction of humanity in the initial robot uprising, and then the survivors' eventually-victorious fight back against the machines.

We know that the robots rose up, but that the humans eventually win, on the first page, but nonetheless there may still be SPOILERS BELOW: