SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Sci Fi Exclusive Themes

First contact
John Campbell Award Winners -- given to recent authors
Post-apocalyptic
Stories set in the future that are now in the past
Time travel
Experimental drugs/gene modification-type stuff
SF pre-1940
Gender bending Sci-Fi
Philip K Dick Award
Prometheus Award

Fantasy Exclusive Themes

Any Horror novel by Ray Bradbury
Dragons
International Horror Guild Award or Bram Stoker Award
Magical Talismans or riddles
Historically inspired fantasy

Both

Novels about to become movies
Hugo Award Winners from the 1950s (can include retro Hugos)
Any novel first published in paperback in 2008
Parody/Spoof
Published Since 2000
Book Picked By A Member
Nebula Award Winners
Dramatic transformations good to evil, evil to good
First book in a series
Sequels to books we've already read
Novels in which fish play a major role
Novels with cats in them
Recently deceased author
Ecological/the environment out of control
Books addressing symbiosis with animal or machine
YA Book

Philip K Dick Award
Prometheus Award
Ecological/the environment out of control (i.e. Greener Than You Think) (re-word that however you want ;))
Parallel Worlds
Mind Control

Ecological themes is a great idea.

Books addressing symbiosis with animal or machina...
Cats are good.
Ace Doubles.

One theme we could eventually do is read a young adult Sf book. I am sure we all have a faovirte from our early SF reading.

The Four Horsemen - a family line that controls the fate of the world.

TL,
Do you know the author of The Four Horsemen? I may be interested if the synopsis grabs my attention.

Jackie wrote: "TL,
Do you know the author of The Four Horsemen? I may be interested if the synopsis grabs my attention."


I wrote a four horsemen theme story. It is called The MPire. You can check out my website for sample chapters and book trailers. www.authortljames.com

I read the exerpt, Sexy Stuff.

YOu read chapter's one excerpt. That one is kinda steamy. The second, Death Cometh shows more conflict of the family.

Jackie wrote: "I read the exerpt, Sexy Stuff."

SF themes:
SF by female authors
Nanotechnology
Near Future SF
Biology SF (something like Blood Music or Blindsight)
Hard SF (such as Clarke, Niven, Baxter, etc)

Both:
Short story collection

SF by non-SF authors

Like Never Let Me Go, Oryx and Crake, The Road.

Doesn't matter to me but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't call themselves sf writers ;)

I'd argue that Oryx and Crake was preceded by The Handmaid's Tale, though Margaret Atwood would disagree. She disputed the sci-fi label vigorously. I was amazed when she wrote Oryx and Crake.

Michael Chabon says that the apocalypse novel (a category into which you could put both the Handmaid's Tale and the Road) is one of the few "genre" variations that a writer of literary fiction can stray into without losing any of their literary legitimacy.

I'd like to add the fantasy categories "Adapted Fairytale or Fable" and "Contemporary/Urban Fantasy".

just a quick fyi,,,

piers anthony wrote a series based on the four horsemen. the first was 'on a pale horse'. its the only one i ever read because i read it when it first came out but sort of got into other genre reading and didnt return to the series. i do recall that i enjoyed the book at the time.

T.L. wrote: "Jackie wrote: "TL,
Do you know the author of The Four Horsemen? I may be interested if the synopsis grabs my attention."


I wrote a four horsemen theme story. It is called The MPire. You can ..."

Pete, the Piers Anthony series (Incarnations of Immortality) wasn't specifically about the four horsemen of the apocalypse. It starts with Death, and does include War later in the series, but the other books focus on Time, Fate, Nature, Good, and Evil as sort of supernatural jobs that humans end up holding for a certain amount of time.

ok cool...

Sci Fi Exclusive Themes
AI
Alternative History
Campbellian SF
Clones
Golden Age
Literary SF
New Wave
Space Opera

Both
Dystopia
Psi or ESP
Utopia
Collaborations
International (ie from a non English speaking part of the world)

The Getaway Special by Jerry Oltion is one of my fav.

Canadian Authors:


Robert J. Sawyer
Phyllis Gotlieb
Terence M. Green
Julie E. Czerneda
Nalo Hopkinson
Matthew Hughes
Danita Maslan
Guy Gavriel Kay (I'm pretty sure)

Nick wrote: "Sci Fi Exclusive Themes

First contact
John Campbell Award Winners -- given to recent authors
Post-apocalyptic
Stories set in the future that are now in the past
Time travel
Experimental drugs/gene..."

For Gender-bending Sci-Fi, Octavia E. Butler's work is prime, particularly Lilith's Brood, and Fledgling. Actually, Fledgling is more to do with bisexuality.

As far as themes, I'm suggesting a yearly Random Month, where one book off each master list gets pulled at random. That maximises the chance of a more obscure book popping up, or one that is not U.S./UK in origin, and may be a pleasant surprise.

I also suggest a modification to the definition of "International" - non-U.S./UK authors. There's anglophone Canadian, Australian, anglophone South African, to name a few perhaps lesser known sources who would still write in English.

James W Tiptree Jr Award winners
Oceans (ocean worlds, story takes place on or under water, etc.)
Retellings (eg. Mists of Avalon/King Arthur, The Serpent's Tooth/King Lear, Not Wanted on the Voyage/ Noah's Ark)

Peregrine wrote: "
For Gender-bending Sci-Fi, Octavia E. Butler's work is prime, particularly Lilith's Brood, and Fledgling. Actually, Fledgling is more to do with bisexuality."

For gender-bending, there's The Sex Gates. Been on my TBR list for years.

Whoa, sounds great, Random, thanks!

For fantasy how about "outstanding urban fantasy". I want to plug this as I feel this a sub genre with something to offer.

Sci-fi themes:
Alien POV
Biological Uplift
Technological Singularity
Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality

Greyweather wrote: "Sci-fi themes:
Alien POV
Biological Uplift
Technological Singularity
Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality"

I like your list, especially number two on your list.

Post-apocalyptic Utopian.

It doesn't have to be so sad!!!

How about Medieval/Feudal Futures as a theme? It encompasses alot of the Post-apocalytic theme as well as including alot of the colonized/teraformed planet themes.

Fantasy Themes:

-Through the Looking Glass Theme (character moved from normal "real" world to a fantasy realm)
-Historical Fantasy (either alt-history or a fantasy realm based on a historical location/time period)
-Stand alone fantasy theme (one book only)
-Point of View from a villian's eyes
-Discworld
-Fantasy anthology/collection (could even have a theme on the collection)
-Tolkien rip-offs (might make for interesting or heated discussions)

Fantasy Themes:

-- Strong Female Leads (verging on Amazonian?)
-- Heist-like (think Leverage)
-- Lost and Confused (amnesia?)

Themes for either:
-Animal as main character
-Chimaeras
-your favourite (SF or Fantasy) book from high school

Fantasy:
-reverse Looking Glass (where a character from a fantasy world gets stuck in ours)
- favourite fantasy book from when you were under 12 years old

Fantasy:
The New Weird (i.e. VanderMeer and Mieville)
Lovecraftian (i.e. Lovecraft, Howard, Smith)

Fantasy or Sci-Fi:
Revolution: stories in which the protagonist(s) attempt to overthrow their ruling government or social order
Fantasy example would be Mistborn: The Final Empire
Sci-Fi example would be V for Vendetta

Fantasy: Unique systems of Magic

Brad wrote: "Fantasy: Unique systems of Magic"

How do you define that?

I figure there is the classic magic system of spell casting, and its closely related variants, which include projecting the casting through wands or the D&D mode of studying to regain a spell once cast.

But then there are those systems which occur in some fantasy that are distinctly magical but have no connection to "casting" or take offer serious alterations to classic casting. The Mirror of Her Dreams and A Man Rides Through come to mind as fine examples of the former. In those books magic is all conjuration, and the gateway of the conjuration is the mirror. All the magic is channeled through mirrors, or it could be said that it is mirrors. Tigana pops into my mind as an example of the latter (but I know I am forgetting a much better example), wherein true casting power requires a serious sacrifice and the casting itself is not so much a series of spells but a malleable expression of force. Tigana also adds a parallel system of magic that is engaged with through a dreamstate.

I'm not sure that it is easy to define, but those are the things I was thinking of when I threw it out there.

Brad wrote: "I figure there is the classic magic system of spell casting, and its closely related variants, which include projecting the casting through wands or the D&D mode of studying to regain a spell once ..."

Thanks, Brad. That helps me to imagine it.

Either Category: Shorter works, 300 pages or less

Time travel will be a real interesting theme. As far as originality and credibility are concerned, it will sort the men and woman authors from the boys & girls.
In the fantasy genre, an author can get away with just
making the time travel, worm-hole, whatever, just happen, without a need to explain any of the mechanics.
A bit harder for sci-fi, as conventional scientific understanding of quantum mechanics, sort of kills the prospect of linear time travel. H.G. Wells got away with it through originality,but the same novel (The Time Machine) would suffer considerably due to contemporary understanding of physics, if written today. Modern time-travel sci-fi needs a credible, even though fictitious, quantum cosmology, such as parallel dimensions, to carry the interest of the modern sci-fi buff..So, let's hear it for time-travel.
Let the battle begin! Have any novels been penned recently which even come anywhere near having a plausible explanation as to how a particular time-shift works?

The Proteus Operation, by James P. Hogan. Travel to the past, but the past of a different branch of the Universal tree, so to speak. Also the lateral time travel of H. Beam Piper's Paratime stories, especially Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. These got continued by later authors, and Charles Stross based his Merchant Princes series on many of the same ideas. Not especially plausible but artistically well done is Jack Finney's Time and Again and its sequels.

What about Sci-fi or Fantasy by a Latin American author? Daina Chaviano (Cuba), Angélica Gorodischer (Argentina), Elia Barceló and Domingo Santos (Spain), and Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina) come to mind.

We've had some great books that came in a very close second in the voting, that I believe could stand another shot in both categories.

I usually only really like SciFi that has to do with space.

If it's part of a series of books, all the better... the story doesn't end with one book! :)

What about Alternative SF?
This is a huge area which needs to be farmed :-)
Fahrenheit 451
1984
...

"Alternative SF" isn't a very descriptive name. From the two titles you suggest, perhaps you mean "dystopian fiction"?

Maybe we already do this but could be have a category where we read a book by a member of this group? A member would nominate their own book, if they choose to do so.

I suggest the theme of "Debut novel from the past 12 months."

Jacinda wrote: ""Alternative SF" isn't a very descriptive name. From the two titles you suggest, perhaps you mean "dystopian fiction"?"

I'm all for dystopian fiction ....

Has anyone ever suggested books by Haruki Murakami? He is hard to classify; but I think he's definitely sci fi/fantasy worthy. Just finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and previously read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. He's fantastic, funny, mind-bending. But I don't know where he falls; somewhere in between the two, I guess.

What about "Shades of grey", i.e. books in which main character (one of main characters) is neither good nor bad?

Perhaps "Magic in SF", either with true magic in SF world (not contemporary world, which means no urban fantasy / paranormal romance), or something like magic (e.g. The Witches of Karres, The Wizard of Karres, Five-Twelfths of Heaven), or perhaps SF books with fantasy-like plot (most of "SF" books by Andre Norton). I think that psychics could also be included in this.