SF Book Discussion

The Apocalypse is upon us!  Well, at least in a fictional fashion.  Our newly formed Science Fiction Book Discussion group met for the first time on Groundhog Day (Feb. 2nd.)  We discussed William Forstchen's book One Second After.  My impression after the discussion was that generally the group liked the book and thought that Forstchen's portrayal of the breakdown of civil society was compelling and realistic.  As I read, I was most surprised by the author's take on the weaknesses in modern food supply for large populations and the potential - the certainty, really - that many, many people who are alive because of the marvel of modern medicine would very rapidly die off in the event of a major disruption in pharmaceutical production.

Our next book is Walter Miller's classic post-apocalyptic book, A Canticle for Leibowitz.  We'll discuss it April 5th at 7pm here in the Hutchinson Public Library.  Where One Second After warned of the dangers of EMPs to modern electronics (and civilization), A Canticle for Leibowitz warns us about the dangers of a more traditional nuclear holocaust.  The following is a description of the book I found at Amazon:

Walter M. Miller's acclaimed SF classic A Canticle for Leibowitz opens with the accidental excavation of a holy artifact: a creased, brittle memo scrawled by the hand of the blessed Saint Leibowitz, that reads: "Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels--bring home for Emma." To the Brothers of Saint Leibowitz, this sacred shopping list penned by an obscure, 20th-century engineer is a symbol of hope from the distant past, from before the Simplification, the fiery atomic holocaust that plunged the earth into darkness and ignorance. As 1984 cautioned against Stalinism, so 1959's A Canticle for Leibowitz warns of the threat and implications of nuclear annihilation. Following a cloister of monks in their Utah abbey over some six or seven hundred years, the funny but bleak Canticle tackles the sociological and religious implications of the cyclical rise and fall of civilization, questioning whether humanity can hope for more than repeating its own history. Divided into three sections--Fiat Homo (Let There Be Man), Fiat Lux (Let There Be Light), and Fiat Voluntas Tua (Thy Will Be Done)--Canticle is steeped in Catholicism and Latin, exploring the fascinating, seemingly capricious process of how and why a person is canonized. --Paul Hughes

Our third title, for discussion June 7th will be Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse.  This is a themed collection of short stories by authors such as George R.R. Martin, Stephen King, and Octavia Butler.  Here is a brief review from Booklist:

With this well-chosen set of postapocalyptic stories, editor Adams provides a bit of everything that is best about the trope, from bleak, empty worlds to beacons of hope in an otherwise awful situation. Only Jerry Oltion’s “Judgment Passed,” about what happens when a space expedition returns to an Earth to which Jesus has returned, and the rapture has come without them, is original to the collection. Stephen King’s bleak “The End of the Whole Mess” opens, John Langan’s much more recent “Episode Seven: Last Stand against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers” closes, and they are wildly different. Highlights in between include Octavia Butler’s “Speech Sounds,” in which civilization has ended because a disease has made most people unable to talk, read, or do any number of once-taken-for-granted things, and Elizabeth Bear’s “And the Deep Blue Sea,” a brilliant take on a world laid waste and a devil’s bargain that treads in Roger Zelazny’s manic footsteps. A well-chosen selection of well-crafted stories, offering something to please nearly every postapocalyptic palate. --Regina Schroeder

While we want our inaugural year - 2012 - of book selections to be based around the theme of the "end of the world", we hope to continue our discussion group into the future (barring and ACTUAL end to the world) and branch out into the many other areas of speculative and fantasy fiction.  If you are interested in joining us, please reply here in the comments with your email address and I will get you signed up!