The Apolyton Science Fiction Book Club.

[David Floyd]

I'll nominate "World War" by Harry Turtledove.

Also, if it counts as SciFi, "Decipher", by Stel Pavlou

[Rogan Josh]

Originally posted by molly bloom
and China Mieville - Perdido Street Station

Oh yes! I will second that one!

[Jon Miller]

are we suppose to be putting on books we have already read?

or ones we have heard are good and would like to try?

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

I have read an awful lot of the suggestions here

why don't we try and keep it to books that all or most of the people in the group have not read (or have not read recently)

Jon Miller

[Immortal Wombat]

I second Diaspora. I have it out from the library at the moment...

[JohnT]

jon miller,

To answer your question, I'm going to cross-post something I wrote for another message board and I'll try to edit out non-pertinent information...

Here in Knoxville, I (co)-moderate a couple of discussion groups - a film discussion group and a science fiction novel discussion group, and have about 4 years experience doing this, all told. So, I do have a couple of questions, points that I think must be considered:

1. Given the interests of time and in trying to get as large a group as possible, should we limit the number of pages per novel to, say, 500-600?

2. I would like that to nominate a book and to second it, you must have actually read the entire book. Trust me - doing books nobody has read is an easy way to get burned.

3. Cost and Availability. No books that have not made it to paperback. No books that are so obscure that they will require shipping and Google. Preferably books that can easily be found in libraries and used bookstores - actually, I would prefer no new releases (either paperback or hardback) at all, giving the books time to percolate down to the used book stores. Otoh, the book must still be available in a current edition - for example, if this was a book club that focused on social issues,Unsafe at Any Speed, while an influential book, could not be a selection because it is out of print, but The Jungle would be OK as it is in print.

4. Moderators. If you like a book so much that you want to lead the discussion, please remember that you will lead the discussion, not just participate. A few hours of research on the net, reading other peoples thoughts on the book, will definitely increase the number of topics you can use to draw people into the subject.

Anyway, I think if we keep the above things in mind when we nominate books we'll have a nice group here with plenty of participants. The Handmaids Tale is, I consider, one of the more perfect books you can use for a book club - it's easily available in used and new editions, short but thematically deep (easy for mods!), popular (good turnout book), and can fit in a broad list of categories (sf, womens lit, popular fiction, etc).

So, in my opinion we shouldn't nominate books we haven't read. But, that's just my opinion: as a new discussion group we can form it any way we wish. I wouldn't be adverse to selecting a new author (defined as one who started publishing less than 5 years ago) every 3 months, leaving the other two months for the Canon. Do you think that will work, and do you think you could research and nominate the books for those months?

[JohnT]

Might as well bump this one too...

[loinburger]

Did we decide on Revelation Space, then?

[TCO]

No. I bought that one. It is long and boring. I dropped it after 10 pages. Go with the Herbert one.

And don't get a bunch of liquid courage and get feisting with me, burger.

[loinburger]

I can't go getting courageous two nights in a row -- too expensive.

[TCO]

Looks like the HErbert one.

[loinburger]

Herbert's only gotten one vote on the voting thread. Foundation's the one that's closest to Revelation Space at the moment...

[TCO]

Ooops. Thanks. Didn't know we needed to vote.

[TCO]

Just figured I could bully everybody in a thread.

[JohnT]

Well, Revelation Space is still winning GP. You need to fix the voting rolls or something - you might want to ask Ming/Rah: I'm sure their experiences of living in Chicago has taught them well how to fix races of this sort.