Book Club

Morlock comes to the Inner Worlds

Last night, Blood of Ambrose author James Enge participated via phone call with the Inner Worlds Sci-Fi/Fantasy Reading and Discussion Group.

Enge talked via phone to a group of about 11 folks, who meet once a month in Barnes & Noble. While there, he spilled some beans about the direction his novel-in-progress The Wolf Age is taking:

“It’s getting a little dark. I thought it would be a lighthearted romp–Morlock, werewolves, ghost-powered zeppelins–how could you lose? And I think it will be. Well, I don’t want to go into too many details because I’m still in the thick of it, but there are some very dark passages in that book so far.”

This lead to a discussion about authors who can be funny and horrific in the same context (as he can):

“I was thinking of Dorothy L. Sayers just the other day. She does that in the Lord Peter Wimsey books. They are about murder–she takes murder as a moral act very seriously; some of those sections about the murders are really grim–but its awfully laugh out loud funny. It’s like PG Wodehouse sometimes, and Raymond Chandler, I think, is the same way in the US though. In the middle of this dark case where everything is evil and everyone is bad and Philip Marlowe just got beat up again, he makes some wisecrack that just makes you laugh out loud. Detective novels are good at that sometimes.”

From there they went on to discuss crows as Enge’s favorite bird.

“They are the only bird that will talk back to me. I can imitate a crow pretty well, and they’ll talk back to me. I don’t know what they are saying, of course.”

Good time had by all.

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io9’s Book Club Discussion Starts

io9’s firs book club meeting is up, discussing Paul McAuley’sThe Quiet War. Editor Annalee Newitz writes, “One of the things I liked the most about this novel was the way McAuley described the geoengineering projects on all the outer planets and their moons. The descriptions were vivid and felt realistic; and I liked watching Macy at work in the lab. What did you guys think about the science in the book? Too much? Too little? Relevant or irrelevant to the plot?”


Join the discussion here.

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io9 Book Club Selects The Quiet War for Inaugural Read

io9 have announced that they are starting a book club, and choosing as their first selection, Paul McAuley’s Clarke award nominated The Quiet War,conveniently just out from Pyr this month. They write:

The Quiet War explores the tensions between two factions in the solar system. The Outers, who live on the outer planets and their moons, are post-humanists by default. They’re reengineering their bodies and environments to make it possible for human societies to spread far beyond Earth. But the Earth governments of Greater Brazil want to stop the Outers’ blasphemy against pure, untrammeled Nature. Of course, the real threat is the Outers’ greater productivity, scientific innovation, and success as a society. A series of skirmishes escalate into a war, and that’s when things get explosive. We picked this novel because it’s packed with great ideas and fascinating science.

The book club will discuss the book online Thursday, October 8th, at which time io9 readers will be asked to provide questions for Paul McAuley for a special Q&A follow-up session. So if you were thinking of checking the novel out, now’s a good time!

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