Space Opera Fans discussion

Here’s a possible theme for an upcoming month, if it gathers enough interest: Humorous Alien Invasion

The first two books that came to my mind were Fair Trade: An Alien Invasion Story by Mackey Chandler and Pandora's Legions by Christopher Anvil. I’m pretty sure we have discussed those before but likely more than two years ago.

Then there’s the Niven and Pournelle book Footfall by Larry Niven where the aliens resemble baby elephants and attack from hang gliders, wearing platform sneakers. I don’t think we have discussed that one yet (and I’m lazy right now). Most of that book is serious but there’s enough humor that IMO it counts.

Can you think of another one?

We read Fair Trade in Dec 2021, and Pandora’s Legions in 2019. We have not yet discussed Footfall.

I think the ur-example of humorous alien invasion is Martians, Go Home by Frederic Brown. The Martians don’t actually *do* anything, they just watch humans. All. The. Time. And constantly comment on how terrible we are. It also sports one of the all-time greatest book cover paintings, by Kelly Freas.

Fun. The ones I recall were mostly planetary. Something onboard ship sounds interesting.

For the theme of humorous alien invasions, I'll probably go for one of the "Space Team" series by Barry J Hutchison

That Space Team series looks like it's worth a try, thanks for the rec!

Cheng wrote: "That Space Team series looks like it's worth a try, thanks for the rec!"

You're welcome, Cheng - I enjoyed the series, and he had the sense to end it before it it grew stale or repetitive. It'll be interesting to go back and re-read them now.

With everything that's going on in the world at the moment I think we could use some humour as a distraction, and I welcome Teresa's suggested theme. I'd also be more than happy to forget about nominations, and seconding, etc and just let Teresa pick the book for the month. Since we don't have a winner in the "LIMITED" category, why don't we make the "humorous Alien invasion" choice an October read?

So Teresa, why not "Make it so"?

The times in the past that we did a Themed Pick, I usually had to post several possible themes to get one that had a lot of comments. I’m not seeing enough traction on this one.

There was a time in the past when someone started a discussion in General Discussions or possibly on the currently reading thread and a dozen people chimed in about the same book. That time I said the heck with the schedule, we gonna discuss this book officially Right Now. It was some classic, probably Dune by Frank Herbert.

The reason the rules require at least one second is because we had too many picks where only one person commented, and a couple where NOBODY did. The discussion threads don’t get locked or expired, they just fall off the home page when nobody as commented in a while.

Teresa wrote: "The times in the past that we did a Themed Pick, I usually had to post several possible themes to get one that had a lot of comments. I’m not seeing enough traction on this one.

There was a time i..."

Understood Teresa - it did go quiet pretty quickly on the suggestion - although I thought it was a good one.

Would anyone be interested in a theme of "The Culture Series" from Iain Banks? The group has read a few of them in the past, but all more than two years ago I think. Although it's a series, it's not sequential, and every book in it can be read stand-alone. (It also includes a short-story collection).

There are only 10 books in the series if anybody decides to tackle them all.

So what do people think? If you are interested, please respond and say so. If you are not interested, please respond and say why, or what your preferred theme would be.

John, please start a new thread in General Discussions about this. Or find one of the books we already discussed and comment on that thread, to bump it to the home page.

Teresa wrote: "John, please start a new thread in General Discussions about this. Or find one of the books we already discussed and comment on that thread, to bump it to the home page."

Thanks Teresa, I've done that now. Apologies for using wrong thread.