It’s so important to keep up on the science fiction news, especially when you’ve made it to Winter Break.
William Gibson, the author of Pattern Recognition and The Difference Engine, has a new book out entitled The Peripheral. It involves time travel, and rented bodies called “peripherals.” Um, it’s sort of hard to describe (no surprise when discussing Gibson); here is author Cory Doctorow‘s review on BoingBoing. We have quite a few of Gibson’s books; please help yourself.
In other science fiction news:
- HopSFA, which is JHU’s sci fi and fantasy club, has added a reading group to its many activities. All of the selections are short stories (so everyone has time to read them!). Recent readings have included Philip K. Dick‘s Second Variety; Ray Bradbury‘s Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed; and Kurt Vonnegut‘s stunning Harrison Bergeron, a classic that you’ll never forget.
- Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel), written this year and short-listed for the 2014 National Book Award, is a dystopia set after a pandemic. Twenty years after the Georgian Flu wipes out most of humanity, a troupe of actors and musicians travels what remains of America, giving shows and surviving.
- And speaking of pandemics, you may already have heard that Stephen King’s The Stand, written in 1978, will be divided into four movies. The book has about 823 pages, which comes to about 205 pages per movie — this is a risk, but certainly better than stretching the 317-page The Hobbit into three (not very good, IMHO) movies, at 105 pages per movie.
Okay, this has nothing to do with science fiction but it does involve libraries and how awesome they are: treat yourself to the hilarious video of the Nashville Public Library staff singing to All About That Bass.
Highly recommend Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie, available from Borrow Direct. Very original, quite interesting treatment of gender.