Next Science Fiction Book – May 2024

Our Next Book

21st May – The Cries of Alaere by Barra Hart  (438p)

7 – 9pm (UK time) virtual meeting. Please follow and tweet, toot or email us for the link to join the discussion. We look forward to seeing you!

Book Description:

The sequel to A Kind Of Tomorrow, which we read in June 2022 (and discussed with the author, who joined us part-way through).

The year is 67 AR. An evolved humanity has expanded to the stars. The evils that have held it back for so long are in their last gasps, but the specter of an old terror remains, and threatens all that has been built. On Earth, a mysterious woman walks through bustling streets, anonymous among the masses. She is human, but hasn’t felt that way for 215 years. For 215 years, she has watched her species from afar, while defending the galaxy from a much greater threat, a threat that may have followed her here.

(Credits: cover text and image from https://barrahart.wixsite.com/barra/books)

MANCHESTER #SCIFI BOOK CLUB: NEXT BOOKS:

  • 18 Jun – Translation State by Ann Leckie (422p)
  • 16 Jul – The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren Janes (290p)
  • 20 Aug – A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock (384p)
  • 17 Sep – The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard (93p)

Contact Us

Keep up to date with us in the fediverse @mcrscifi@wandering.shop (Mastodon) or via X(ex-twitter) @mcrsf_madlab or by using the #mcrsf hashtag on either. If you would like to contact us, our e-mail address is mcrsf.madlab@gmail.com

Next Science Fiction Book – April 2024

Our Next Book

16th April – The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz  (304p)

7 – 9pm (UK time) virtual meeting. Please follow and toot or email us for the link to join the discussion. We look forward to seeing you!

terraformers_hi_comp_finalCover art by Raphael Lacoste

Book Description:

A book about literal world building, the tale spans multiple generations dipping into plate tectonics, social systems, worker rights, AI freedom, post humanism, public transport and many other topics. 

We are guided through the centuries by a likeable cast of wildly diverse characters.

Hard sci-fi with a socialist bite.

(Credits:  image from https://www.techsploitation.com/ )

MANCHESTER #SCIFI BOOK CLUB
NEXT BOOKS:

  • May 21st: The Cries of Alaere – Barra Hart

  • June 18th: Translation State – Anne Leckie

    .

Contact Us

Keep up to date with us in the fediverse @mcrscifi@wandering.shop (Mastodon) or via X(ex-twitter) @mcrsf_madlab or by using the #mcrsf hashtag on either.
If you would like to contact us, our e-mail address is mcrsf.madlab@gmail.com

Next Science Fiction Book – March 2024

Our Next Book

19th March –The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard  (336p)

7 – 9pm (UK time) virtual meeting. Please follow and toot or email us for the link to join the discussion. We look forward to seeing you!

redscholarswake_smaller

Book Description:

Xích Si: bot maker, data analyst, mother, scavenger. But those days are over now—her ship has just been captured by the Red Banner pirate fleet, famous for their double-dealing and cruelty. Xích Si expects to be tortured to death…

Rice Fish: sentient ship, leader of the infamous Red Banner pirate fleet, wife of the Red Scholar. Or at least, she was the latter before her wife died under suspicious circumstances…

(Credits: description and image from www.aliettedebodard.com )

MANCHESTER #SCIFI BOOK CLUB
NEXT BOOKS:

  • April 16th: The Terraformers – Annalee Newitz

  • May 21st: The Cries of Alaere – Barra Hart

  • June 18th: Translation State – Anne Leckie

    .

Contact Us

Keep up to date with us in the fediverse @mcrscifi@wandering.shop (Mastodon) or via X(ex-twitter) @mcrsf_madlab or by using the #mcrsf hashtag on either.
If you would like to contact us, our e-mail address is mcrsf.madlab@gmail.com

Next Science Fiction Book – February 2024

Our Next Book

20th Feb –Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K Dick  (208p)

7 – 9pm (UK time) virtual meeting. Please follow and toot/tweet or email us for the link to join the discussion. We look forward to seeing you!

9780881844368-uk

Book Description:

This small habitable moon is an insane asylum. Its patients, abandoned long ago by planetary superpowers, have formed clans based on their respective psychoses. But when Mary Rittersdorf, an over-zealous social worker, attempts to re-hospitalize them, all hell breaks loose.

(Credits: description and image from AbeBooks )

MANCHESTER #SCIFI BOOK CLUB
NEXT BOOKS:

  • March 19th : The Red Scholar’s Wake – Aliette de Bodard

  • April 16th: The Terraformers – Annalee Newitz

  • May 21st: The Cries of Alaere – Barra Hart

  • June 18th: Translation State – Anne Leckie

    .

Contact Us

Keep up to date with us in the fediverse @mcrscifi@wandering.shop (Mastodon) or via X(ex-twitter) @mcrsf_madlab or by using the #mcrsf hashtag on either.
If you would like to contact us, our e-mail address is mcrsf.madlab@gmail.com

Next Science Fiction Book – January 2024

Our Next Book

16 Jan –Venomous Lump Sucker by Ned Bowman  (304p)

7 – 9pm (UK time) virtual meeting. Please follow and toot/tweet or email us for the link to join the discussion. We look forward to seeing you!

vls

Venomous Lump Sucker Book Description:

The venomous lumpsucker is the most intelligent fish on the planet. Or maybe it was the most intelligent fish on the planet.

Because it might already be extinct. Nobody knows. And nobody cares.

Except for two people. Mining executive Mark Halyard has a prison cell waiting for him if that fish has gone for good. And biologist Karin Resaint needs it for her own darker purposes.

They don’t trust each other, but they’re left with no choice but to team up, pursuing the lumpsucker across the strange landscapes of near-future Europe. On the way, they are drawn into a conspiracy far bigger than one ugly little fish. Gripping and singular, Venomous Lumpsucker is a comedy about environmental devastation that asks: do we have it in us to avert the tragedy of mass extinction?And also: do we really need to bother?

(Credits: description from Bert’s Books and image from Cappelens Forslag)

MANCHESTER #SCIFI BOOK CLUB
NEXT BOOKS:

  • 20 Feb – Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K Dick.

Contact Us

Keep up to date with us in the fediverse @mcrscifi@wandering.shop (Mastodon) or via X(ex-twitter) @mcrsf_madlab or by using the #mcrsf hashtag on either.
If you would like to contact us, our e-mail address is mcrsf.madlab@gmail.com

Next Science Fiction Book – November 2023

Our Next Book

21 Nov –
Moonday Letters by Emmi Itaranta (368p)

7 – 9pm (UK time) virtual meeting. Please follow and tweet/toot or email us for the link to join the discussion. We look forward to seeing you!

Book cover for Moonday Papers by Emmi Itaranta

Moonday LetteRs Book Description:

Sol has disappeared. Their Earth-born wife Lumi sets out to find them but it is no simple feat: each clue uncovers another enigma. Their disappearance leads back to underground environmental groups and a web of mystery that spans the space between the planets themselves.

Told through letters and extracts, the course of Lumi’s journey takes her not only from the affluent colonies of Mars to the devastated remnants of Earth, but into the hidden depths of Sol’s past and the long-forgotten secrets of her own.

Part space-age epistolary, part eco-thriller, and a love story between two individuals from very different worlds.

MANCHESTER #SCIFI BOOK CLUB
NEXT BOOKS:

  • 16 Jan 2024 – Venomous Lump Sucker by Ed Bowman
  • 20 Feb – The Cries of Alaere by Barra Hart

Contact Us

Keep up to date with us via twitter @mcrsf_madlab, or in the fediverse @mcrscifi@wandering.shop (Mastodon) or by using the #mcrsf hashtag on either.
If you would like to contact us, our e-mail address is mcrsf.madlab@gmail.com

Next Science Fiction Book – October 2023

Our Next Book

17th October

Citizen Of The Galaxy by Robert A Heinlein (262p)

7 – 9pm (UK time) virtual meeting. Please follow and tweet/toot or email us for the link to join the discussion. We look forward to seeing you!

IMG_0886

Book Description:

Thorby, the slave boy from nowhere, survived a gruelling and far-reaching education at the hands of ‘Pop’ Balsam, which proved invaluable when he became a Free Trader roaming the nine worlds and the Hegemony, and finally discovered his true identity and purpose. An enthralling science-fiction story from Robert Heinlein.


This is a YA book (published as a ‘peacock paperback’) that manages to address several interesting moral and societal questions in a short book, whilst never being preachy or dull.

(Description from the back cover and @steely-glint )

MANCHESTER #SCIFI BOOK CLUB
Subsequent BOOKS:

  • TBD suggestions welcome…

Contact Us

Keep up to date with us via twitter @mcrsf_madlab, or in the fediverse @mcrscifi@wandering.shop (Mastodon) or by using the #mcrsf hashtag on either.
If you would like to contact us, our e-mail address is mcrsf.madlab@gmail.com

Next Science Fiction Book – September 2023

Our Next Book

19th September

The Algebraist by Iain M Banks (434p)

7 – 9pm (UK time) virtual meeting. Please follow and tweet/toot us or email us for the link to join the discussion. We look forward to seeing you!

IainMBanksTheAlgebraist

Book Description:

The Nasqueron Dwellers inhabit a gas giant on the outskirts of the galaxy, in a system awaiting its wormhole connection to the rest of civilisation. In the meantime, they are dismissed as decadents living in a state of highly developed barbarism, hoarding data without order, hunting their own young and fighting pointless formal wars.

Seconded to a military-religious order he’s barely heard of – part of the baroque hierarchy of the Mercatoria, the latest galactic hegemony – Fassin Taak has to travel again amongst the Dwellers. He is in search of a secret hidden for half a billion years. But with each day that passes a war draws closer – a war that threatens to overwhelm everything and everyone he’s ever known.

As complex, turbulent and spectacular as the gas giant on which it is set, this novel from Iain M. Banks is space opera on a truly epic scale.

(Description from https://uk.bookshop.org/)

MANCHESTER #SCIFI BOOK CLUB
Subsequent BOOKS:

  • 17/10: Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A Heinlein

Contact Us

Keep up to date with us via twitter @mcrsf_madlab, or in the fediverse @mcrscifi@wandering.shop (Mastodon) or by using the #mcrsf hashtag on either.
If you would like to contact us, our e-mail address is mcrsf.madlab@gmail.com

Next Science Fiction Book – August 2023

Our Next Book

15th August

Semiosis by Sue Burke (304p)

7 – 9pm (UK time) virtual meeting. Please follow and tweet/toot us or email us for the link to join the discussion. We look forward to seeing you!

9780765391377Book Description:

Colonists from Earth wanted the perfect home, but they’ll have to survive on the one they found. They don’t realize another life form watches…and waits…

Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet’s sentient species and prove that humans are more than tools.

The Verge says:
Throughout its history, science fiction has imagined how humanity might meet its cosmic neighbors. How would the first contact with aliens go? Authors have imagined a variety of scenarios, from the desire for amicable partnership between humanoid species, to genocidal hostility between lifeforms that we barely recognize. In Sue Burke’s debut novel Semiosis, she imagines contact in a unique way: first contact not with animal-like life, but between humans and a planet full of intelligent plants.

MANCHESTER #SCIFI BOOK CLUB: NEXT BOOKS:

  • 19/09: The Algebraist by Iain M Banks
  • 17/10: Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A Heinlein

Contact Us

Keep up to date with us via twitter @mcrsf_madlab, or in the fediverse @mcrscifi@wandering.shop (Mastodon) or by using the #mcrsf hashtag on either.
If you would like to contact us, our e-mail address is mcrsf.madlab@gmail.com

Next Science Fiction Book – July 2023

Our Next Book

18th July – Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone (480p)

7 – 9pm virtual meeting. Please follow and tweet us or email us for the link to join the discussion. We look forward to seeing you!

40380954
Empress of Forever

Book Description:

A wildly successful innovator to rival Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Vivian Liao is prone to radical thinking, quick decision-making, and reckless action. On the eve of her greatest achievement, she’s trying to outrun those who are trying to steal her success.

In the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, Viv sets her ultimate plan into motion. A terrifying instant later, Vivian Liao is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine.

The end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought. Rebellion is literally impossible to consider–until Vivian arrives. Trapped between the Pride, a ravening horde of sentient machines, and a fanatical sect of warrior monks who call themselves the Mirrorfaith, Viv must rally a strange group of allies to confront the Empress and find a way back to the world and life she left behind.

MANCHESTER #SCIFI BOOK CLUB: NEXT BOOKS:

  • 15/08: Semiosis by Sue Burke
  • 19/09: The Algebraist by Iain M Banks
  • 17/10: Citizens of the Galaxy by Robert A Heinlein

Contact Us

Keep up to date with us via twitter @mcrsf_madlab, or by using the #mcrsf hashtag. If you would like to contact us, our e-mail address is mcrsf.madlab@gmail.com (we are currently seeking a home in the Fediverse too)

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