Five Bubble Book Club discussion

May newsletter 🦠

This is a difficult time, an unprecedented time, a challenging time, and an uncertain time, as we are told by the news and Spotify.

I was busy being laid off this week (I'm fine), so I didn't have much time to preview our choice of the month:
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire. It is a Hugo finalist so it's gotta be good, let's find out how good.

One good news: our bookclub will become stronger. This month we will have our first virtual book meeting. I will need to do some research on which platform to use (zoom? meet?), but keep an eye on the Goodreads email later this month.

Our theme for next month is: Defend. I picked this one partly because we are in defense mode against the plague right now, partly because it sounds like a challenge: not a lot of wars are won by defense, right? I'm interested to see what ideas you have.

Stay safe and keep reading, we will make it through this!

Eric

Hang in there. I left Trip for Toast only to get hit by the Covid layoffs there. Starting a new job at Indigo on Monday.

One suggestion for an upcoming theme. A lot of times people have visions of post-apocalyptic worlds inhabited by survivalists who can do it all. But one thing this pandemic has driven home is the need for community. When I was still at Toast I hosted morning coffee time over zoom. I’m told Indigo does something similar.

Some of my favorites in post-apocalyptic fiction are really about the communities which form. The Walking Dead quickly moved from a few survivors in an RV to a group living in a prison to a fortified community to a coalition of communities. The Passage is about the last few settlements of humanity clinging to survival. Foundation even fits, showing how a group struggles to minimize the impact of the fall of the Empire. I’d love to explore science fiction centered around communities. Not necessarily in a pandemic or post-apocalypse - first settlements on alien worlds fit for that as well.

Thanks, Daniel

I'm fine and grateful, I'd like to elaborate on that but it will quickly turn into a LinkedIn post :)

As for the theme "defend", I have some interesting perspective from where I came from: there is an ancient Chinese philosopher, Mozi, who was so famous that he is often listed as a peer of Confucious.
Turns out, one of Mozi's talent is defending cities, a highly sought after skill in an era when city-states are on each others' throats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozi

"He taught that defense of a city does not depend only on fortification, weaponry and food supply; it is also important to keep talented people close by and to put trust in them."

Also, I tried Google meet this morning, I'm impressed.

"Defend" is a tough one for me: I can think of lots of books that more or less fit -- I mean most of military SF will -- but I can think of few that are excellent.

The obvious choice would be The Andromeda Strain. It's kind of old though and maybe cuts too near the bone right now.

My son suggests this fantasy: Blue Moon Rising. I haven't read it, but I think it might fill the bill nicely with a lot of humor.

Other options include:
Lucifer's Hammer -- a fairly communitarian post-meteor-strike novel: there's not one "great man," but a lot of competent people working together. Not a great book, but it's OK; it may say something that I've never reread it. (The Mote in God's Eye by the same authors could also work, and is a far better story.)

This Alien Shore -- self-defence, defence of community, and finding your tribe, all set against a rich backdrop of interstellar travel, human speciation, and cybersecurity.

Seveneves -- again with the meteors, only this time the whole moon is falling down in pieces. It's a complex and thinky novel of ideas, but I really disliked its deep cynicism about the human capacity for cooperation. But it is about defending... if often badly.

Pandora's Star -- I hesitate to bring this one up, because while it's as good as Hyperion, and is about defending humanity against alien threats, the story doesn't wrap up until the second volume. It doesn't even leave you at a good mid-point the way Hyperion did: this volume leaves two of the protagonists literally falling off the edge of a world.

I look forward to hearing others' ideas!

No concrete book idea yet, but isn't the Spartan 300 a good topic to explore?

Eric wrote: "No concrete book idea yet, but isn't the Spartan 300 a good topic to explore?"

Not a lot directly written about the battle of Thermopylae in SFF. Lots of incidental references in military sf, but little that's substantive.

There is Atlantis Gate. It's thematic. But good? I'm sceptical.

A couple of chapters into Middlegame. Kinda reminds me of the institution

Also, the Three-Body Problem can also be counted under "defend", considering the earth's position in the conflict.
Though I don't like its authoritarian message.

This list dropped recently and is pretty good -- the books on it that I've read (11 of 22) are among my "best of the best:" https://www.wired.co.uk/article/best-...
Although, as usual, the list is biased to recent darlings. I don't think Margaret Atwood belongs on the list twice -- and Alastair Reynolds, Clifford D. Simak, and Arthur C. Clarke should have been included, among others.

I'm presently devouring Network Effect, the new Murderbot novel, and it would definitely fit the theme of "Defend."

Have you guys seen the invites for the virtual book meeting event?
I might have done it wrong, need to resend, just want to make sure I won't accidentally spam people twice.

Eric wrote: "Have you guys seen the invites for the virtual book meeting event?
I might have done it wrong, need to resend, just want to make sure I won't accidentally spam people twice."

I got email about the invitation from Goodreads. I can see it on the Goodreads website, but clicking the Google Calendar urls just give me "Could not find the requested event."

Maybe you just have to edit the invitation to contain the right Calendar URL?

OK, I see.
So Google assumes everyone uses Gmail.
nvm, looks like this meet link is permanent, I will just resent invite with the video conf link meet.google.com/rhi-gfwr-brh

For the monthly theme, Tor has this shortlist of "siege" books
https://www.tor.com/2015/03/06/five-b...

Eric wrote: "For the monthly theme, Tor has this shortlist of "siege" books
https://www.tor.com/2015/03/06/five-b..."

That's a good list, if not always of A-grade books. It includes The Drawing of the Dark, which I never expected to see in print again. It's a charming, if minor, book by the great Tim Powers. "The Dark" in question is a beer.

And OMG, the real author of the Thraxas series is none other than the eternally weird Martin Millar!

I'm going to check some of these out just for fun.

The price I paid for not vetting the monthly book is that we chose a 500-pager without noticing it.
Anyway, I'm about exactly 50% in the middlegame (middlegame of middlegame), the first quarter is interesting, second a bit slow, but I'm seeing the tempo getting significant faster and there might be some meta stuff happening which could justify the slow part. Overall optimistic.

I finished the Middlegame yesterday.
Overall a positive experience, the book can probably be 30% shorter. There are plenty of witty quotes and interesting details though.
Look forward to talking about it with you guys.

Awesome discussion today, thanks folks.
My notes below
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May meeting

Author is hugo veteran

interview podcast https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/new-...

favourite character (Leigh)
almost used wizard of oz (yet another reference, we have seen it playing out in lady astronaut series)

middlegame -> middleton (Roger) -> alchemy is the middgle ground -> ohio is the middle of US
middle between human and gods

10 years of preparing, 6 weeks in writting

36 books a year, writing scripts for Marvel

"Olympic athlete" mindset

Siblings theme
Similarly to the institution