SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

The current plan is to use this to track progress on my 2025 TBR Cleanup challenge and also the not-yet-completed 2024 TBR Cleanup and Zodiac challenges. (The 2024 ones have both formally ended, of course.)

My selections for the 2025 TBR Cleanup challenge, copied and pasted from the main challenge thread:

✔️****1. Welcome to the Red Carpet - Vermilion Sands Vermilion is red
✔️***** 2. Suit Up - Have Space Suit—Will Travel
✔️**** 3. All That Glitters - The Gold Coast
✔️ **** 4. Let Your Hair Down - Space Chantey. loosely based on the Odyssey, but Lafferty was pretty informal
✔️*** 5. Special Effects - The Great Fire Of London ( replaces Experimental Film)
✔️****6. Six of One … Half a Dozen of the Other - The Spare Man Based partly on Hammett’s The Thin Man, which I recently reread. The idea of a second book that might be seen as a version of an earlier one seems to fit the prompt.
✔️*** 7. Strike a Pose - Skinflick Murder mystery from 1980 set in the world
✔️****8. Bohemian - The Dharma Bums Kerouac in 1950s bohemian San Francisco
✔️****9. Global Inspiration - Osama Notorious terrorist who may have been inspiring to some.
✔️ *** 10. Dime a Dozen - In Milton Lumky Territory - protagonist is a salesman
✔️**11. Slay - Deathworld 1
✔️**** 12. Twelfth - Station Eleven Start counting at 0
✔️ ***** 13. Cottagecore - This Census-Taker. Protagonist lives in an isolated house
✔️ *** 14. Oh! the Horrors - The Long Loud Silence. unpleasant scenes in post-disaster USA
✔️*** 15. Punk vs Prep - The Magic Walking Stick.
Privileged kid home from boarding school acquires magical object.
✔️**** 16. Organic vs Synthetic - The Simulacra. Humans and androids.
✔️*****17. Modern vs Traditional - Last Men in London Human descendant from the far future critiques humanity in 1932
✔️ **** 18. Avant-garde - Divine Invasions: A Life of Philip K. Dick . Was Dick an “avant-garde” writer? I don’t know, I’m sure a case could be made. I want to reread this biography.
✔️****19. Bold Look - The Blue Star. Individual in cover illustration has a bold look on his face.
✔️ *** 20. Loungewear - Scales of Justice. An old fashioned cozy English village mystery.

Books selected for the 2024 TBR Cleanup challenge, with a few recent substitutions. (Gentle Gemini and Reap What You Sow).

1. Authentic Aquarius - innovative, revolutionary

✔️****Galileo's Dream - Galileo was a revolutionary figure

2. Popular Pisces - dreamy, artistic

✔️The Other Side - The author was primarily a visual artist. The book involves a Dream Realm. I read an earlier translation in the 70s but I barely remember it.

3. Active Aries - optimistic, adventurous

✔️Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson - Radisson was nothing if not adventurous

4. Tender Taurus - soothing, dependable

✔️Wodehouse: A Life - Wodehouse was the consummate pro, reliiably turning out books for decades, and they can work well as comfort reading.

5. Gentle Gemini - adaptable, curious

✔️****Time for the Stars

6. Compassionate Cancer - emotional, imaginative

✔️Space Lords

It’s a long time since I read most of these stories. They are certainly imaginative and often moving.

7. Limelight Leo - dramatic, humorous

✔️The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens - Dickens was often dramatic and humorous

8. Veracious Virgo - attentive, analytical

✔️Stan's Kitchen - Includes essays as well as fiction and poetry

9. Lively Libra - diplomatic, harmonious

✔️The Gradual - A composer sent on a cultural tour of warring islands

10. Spirited Scorpio - complicated, powerful

Replacing Plutocrats with Big Men Fear Me. Replacing Big Men Fear Me with Henry VIII. replaced Henry VIII with

✔️The Loner: Three Sketches of the Personal Life and Ideas of R.B. Bennett, 1870-1947

11. Sweet Sagittarius - idealistic, wanderlust

The Islanders - Priest’s “Dream Archipelago”. Hopefully fits the prompt.

12. Capable Capricorn - protective, noble

✔️Hard to Be a God - The Introduction to my copy by Ken MacLeod says the authors did a “noble deed” in publishing this book, i.e. resisted political evil and corruption

13. A breath of fresh air

✔️The Planetbreaker’s Son

14. Playing with fire

✔️Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

15. From the ground up

✔️The Overstory - involves trees

16. In deep waters

✔️****Starfish

17. Spring into action

✔️Lenin on the Train - Lenin’s return from exile in April 1917 - “into action”?

18. Sweet summer child

✔️Cat's Eye - I believe this involves a woman’s unpleasant childhood.

19. Reap what you sow

✔️ **** Greener Than You Think

20. On thin ice

Austral - set in warming Antarctica

Selections for the 2024 Zodiac challenge, with a substitution for MONKEY.


CYCLIC

RAT : 1924, 1936, 1948, 1960, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2008, 2020

✔️The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1984)

OX : 1925, 1937, 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, 1997, 2009, 2021

✔️The Memory of Whiteness: A Scientific Romance (1985)

TIGER : 1926, 1938, 1950, 1962, 1974, 1986, 1998, 2010, 2022

✔️****Ending Up (1974)

RABBIT : 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, 2011, 2023

✔️Old Babes in the Wood: Stories (2023)

DRAGON : 1928, 1940, 1952, 1964, 1976, 1988, 2000, 2012, 2024

Norstrilia 1964 (The Planet Buyer)

SNAKE : 1929, 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013 —


✔️The Ballad of Beta-2 / Empire Star (1965 original publication of The Ballad of Beta-2)

HORSE : 1930, 1942, 1954, 1966, 1978, 1990, 2002, 2014 —

The Road to Corlay (1978)

SHEEP* : 1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991, 2003, 2015 -

✔️The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979)

MONKEY : 1932, 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, 2016 —

✔️ ***** Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

ROOSTER : 1933, 1945, 1957, 1969, 1981, 1993, 2005, 2017 —

✔️Fourth Mansions (1969)

DOG : 1934, 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994, 2006, 2018—

✔️*****Titus Groan (1946)

PIG : 1935, 1947, 1959, 1971, 1983, 1995, 2007, 2019

✔️The Anome aka The Faceless Man (1971)

Nice lists, Stephen!

DivaDiane wrote: "Nice lists, Stephen!"

Thank you.

Oh, and I see you haven’t checked off two books that I have on my list as well: Gloriana and Titus Groan. I don’t think you’ll want to wait for me though, to buddy read. I wouldn’t be able to tackle them until April or May!

Thanks Diane. I do intend to read Titus Groan in the next few weeks. I’m not sure about Gloriana, but I’ve seen it suggested that it was influenced by Titus Groan, so I’ll definitely read TG first.

Ah, good tip! Thanks!

I finally finished Titus Groan. Remarkable book.

I succeeded in completing all 20 books in the 2025 TBR Cleanup challenge. Still have 2 books each left from the 2024 TBR Cleanup and Zodiac challenges.

I’ll copy the info for the 2026 TBR Cleanup challenge over here soon.

2026 TBR Cleanup Challenge:

1. Appetizer - Absolution by Jeff Vandermeer. Not really an appetizer perhaps, but at least a prequel.

2. Snack Food- The Wheels Of If And Other Science-Fiction by L. Sprague de Camp. Short stories. I’ve read one or two of them before and found them quite entertaining.

3. Kids Menu - Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein. One of Heinlein’s famous “juveniles”. I haven’t read it in many years.

4. Latin Flare - The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Set in Mexico. The author is Mexican Canadian I understand.

5. Asian Menu The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. Alternate history in which the black plague almost wiped out the European population.

6. European Fare - The Valkyrie by Kate Heartfield - based on northern European legend

7. Lean Cuisine - THE WATCH BELOW. by James White seems to be one of the thinnest spines on the TBR shelf. It’s a good many decades since I read the novel. It will be interesting to see what I make of it.

8. Bad Apple - The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Significant themes as I recall include marriage and the state of fallen humanity, which link (in my mind) to the Garden of Eden and therefore to the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; a Bad Apple? A stretch maybe, but I want to reread this one.

9. In a Pickle - Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. Three young Victorian British guys on holiday get into various scrapes.

10. Recipe for Disaster - A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?by Kelly Weinersmith - I suspect the answers to the questions in the title are negative. Hugo winner for Best Related Work in 2024.

11. Food for Thought - Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine by R.A. Lafferty- 1971 novel involving a philosophizing self-aware computer of some kind.

12. Piece of Cake - Murder Is Easy by Agatha Christie

13. “Dammit Doughnut” - The Game-Players of Titan by Philip K. Dick

14. Vegan - Animal Rights: A Very Short Introduction by David DeGrazia

15. Spicy - Herovit's World by Barry N. Malzberg. “Spicy” in the sense of “provocative”. This realistic novel about a science fiction writer caused some stir in the community when it was published, I believe.

16. Homemade - Gormenghastby Mervyn Peake. The title castle is home to most of the characters and the centre of the novel.

17. Comfort Food - The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison. This trilogy is something of a comfort read for me. I haven’t read this third volume yet.

18. Popcorn - The Last Days of John Lennon by James Patterson. Author Patterson has a reputation as a writer of fairly shallow suspense novels, i.e. “popcorn” reading. I don’t know what to expect from this one, but someone gave me the book a few years ago and I’m somewhat interested in Lennon.

19. Takeout - The Lenient Beast by Fredric Brown. Takeout in the sense of murder. Hopefully not too tenuous a connection to the prompt.

20. Dessert - The Urth of the New Sunby Gene Wolfe. Sequel to The Book of the New Sun which I read in 2025.

Oh! I really want to read Three Men in a Boat! I read To Say Nothing of the Dog last year.