Utopia

[close] I'd love to connect with people interested in utopian fiction. Specifically, I am interested in speculative fiction that does NOT rely on scifi and fantasy. I love that stuff, but there are plenty of places to talk about scifi and fantasy utopias. I'm thinking about the classic utopias that used to rely on some cheap premise to justify some really cool world building. We definitely, definitely, definitely don't need to confine ourselves to those classic genres sticking close to the form of an outsider visiting an isolated utopia then returning to tell the story, but this is where it begins: More's Utopia, Perkins-Gilman's Herland, Skinner's Walden Two, Bellamy's Looking Backward, Morris's News from Nowhere, Hilton's Lost Horizon, Huxley's Island, etc... In fact, I am here to find out if there are some fresher takes on utopia. Let's talk about it.

[close] This January 19, 6-8 p.m. (MST), I am hosting a discussion on why we read and write science fiction. Like many voracious readers, I loved this field as a teenager, and I am sure the genre helped shape my thinking about the world. But then I stopped reading science fiction for many decades. This seems a common pattern. Now my own debut eco sci-fi about panpsychism and a Paleoterrific future, Knocking on Heaven’s Door (Yucca/Skyhorse Publishing), is just out, and I have five of the best science fictions from 2015 on my kindle, waiting and whispering to me in the night. My favorite recent sci-fi are Station 11 and The Water Knife. I think the genre is about to have a renaissance! Feel free to post your thoughts before or after the discussion date, although I will likely wait for that Tuesday.

[close] I feel there is the need for a forum where we can discuss literature. Not just rate books and say how much we like them, but anything to do with literature, great authors, periods, social context, styles, influences, movements. If all the words tumbled from a famous tome, And could be carefully reassembled in the fullness of time, Who would be the best person to be sure, If the new work in hand was literature? (By Goodreads Author Amelia Stark) A united minority is stronger than a divided majority. (Quotation by Goodreads Author Adriano Bulla)

[close] Extension of the Facebook group, If it's Leftist, Speculative, and Fiction, we read it.