The Somerville Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club

For our May meeting we shall be discussing A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers.

Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

---------
This is an online meeting, but we do NOT share the Zoom link via Meetup. The Zoom link is sent out via a separate email list. If you're not on that email list for Zoom links, and want to be added, please send a *private message* (not a comment below) to Gary and explain briefly why you'd like to join the monthly meetings. Include your email address.

For our June meeting we shall be discussing Monkey King by Ming Dynasty author Wu Cheng'en and translated by Julia Lovell.

This is a new translation of a renaissance-era classic of fantasy literature, satire, and spiritual insight.

A shape-shifting trickster on a kung-fu quest for eternal life, high-spirited and omni-talented, Monkey can transform himself into whatever he chooses and turn each of his body's 84,000 hairs into an army of clones. But his penchant for mischief repeatedly gets him into trouble, and when he raids Heaven's Orchard of Immortal Peaches, the Buddha pins him beneath a mountain. Five hundred years later, Monkey King is finally given a chance to redeem himself—he must protect the pious monk Tripitaka on his journey in search of precious Buddhist sutras that will bring enlightenment to the Chinese empire.

---------
This is an online meeting, but we do NOT share the Zoom link via Meetup. The Zoom link is sent out via a separate email list. If you're not on that email list for Zoom links, and want to be added, please send a *private message* (not a comment below) to Gary and explain briefly why you'd like to join the monthly meetings. Include your email address.

For our July meeting we shall be discussing Merchanter's Luck by C.J. Cherryh.

(This book is free on Audible as part of the compendium "Alliance Space," and can be found readily in several other formats, as several group members have pointed out!)

The fateful meeting between the owner of a tramp star-freighter that flies the Union planets under false papers and fake names and a proud but junior member of a powerful starship-owning family leads to a record-breaking race to Downbelow Station--and a terrifying showdown at a deadly destination off the cosmic charts.

The writer of more than 80 books since the mid-1970s, Cherryh is known for her world building, supported by vast research on history, language, psychology, and archaeology.

For our August meeting we shall be discussing Going Postal by Terry Pratchett.

The 33rd entry in Pratchett's famous farcical fantasy series, Going Postal will be the 3rd Discworld book our group has read!

Moist von Lipwig was a con artist and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork's ailing postal service back on its feet. It was a tough decision.

But he has to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers' Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer. Maybe it'll take a criminal to succeed where honest men have failed, or maybe it's a death sentence either way...