September 2009 -- Someplace To Be Flying By Charles De Lint

September's selection in Charles De Lint's "Someplace to be Flying"

Nobody does urban fantasy better than Charles de Lint. He has a gift for creating engaging, fully realized characters, totally believable dialogue, and a feeling that magic is just around the corner.

Someplace to Be Flying is set in Newford, a town familiar to readers of de Lint. (He set two prior novels (Memory and Dream and Trader) and two anthologies (Dreams Underfoot and The Ivory and the Horn) in Newford.) One late night, as Hank drives his gypsy cab, his reliable though perilous city is transformed. He encounters the mythical "animal people," and the experience leaves him--and the reader--questioning accepted reality.

"Hank just wanted away from here. He'd sampled some hallucinogens when he was a kid and the feeling he had now was a lot like coming down from an acid high. Everything slightly askew, illogical things that somehow made sense, everything too sharp and clear when you looked at it but fading fast in your peripheral vision, blurred, like it didn't really exist." Fans of Emma Bull and Terri Windling (as both an editor and an author) will enjoy de Lint. He can make you believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast." --Nona Vero

"The [Newford] books have all been written in such a way that you should be able to pick up any one and get a full and complete story. However, characters do reoccur, off center stage as it were, and their stories do follow a sequence."

The Obscure References Book Group will meet at Linebaugh Library in Murfreesboro, TN on Wednesday, September 23 at 6:30 p.m.

August 2009: "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin

August's selection is the epic first installment in the "Song of Fire and Ice" series, "A Game of Thrones."

From a master of contemporary fantasy comes a novel of imaginative power unlike any you've ever encountered...

In A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin has created a genuine masterpiece, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill the pages of the first volume in an epic series sure to delight fantasy fans everywhere.

In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom's protective wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

The Obscure References Book Group will meet at Linebaugh Library in Murfreesboro, TN on Wednesday, August 26 at 6:30 p.m.

June 2009: "Santiago" by Mike Resnick

June's selection is "Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future" by Mike Resnick

Here's the summary from GoodReads: "Bandit, murderer, known to all, seen by none....has he killed a thousand men? Has he saved a dozen world? His legend is as large as the Rim itself, his trail as elusive as a wisp of starlight in the empty realms of space. The reward for him is the largest in history."

The Obscure References Book Group will meet at Linebaugh Library in Murfreesboro, TN on Wednesday, June 24 at 6:30 p.m.

Thoughts on "The Stars, My Destination"

Overall, the group liked "The Stars, My Destination." The informal count taken found all but one member happy with the book. For many, this was the first time reading this classic of science-fiction.

Discussion centered on jaunting, the character of Gully Foyle and Bester's portrayal of female characters in the story. And, of course, there were the usual side tangents and obscure references that got us off topic more often than not.

If you liked this book, you may want to give Bester's other "big" book, "The Demolished Man" a try. It's short and if you're a fan of "Babylon Five," you will see elements of Bester's portrayal of telepathic powers carry over to "B5."

"The Stars, My Destination" Links

Here are a few entries for Alfred Bester's "The Stars, My Destination."

Wikipedia Entry (includes summary with SPOILERS)
Wikipedia Entry on Alfred Bester
Good Reads Entry
Library Thing Entry
Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Experience

IMDB Entry (book optioned for a film)

Reviews
Tal Cohen's Bookshelf
Infinity Plus Review
SF Site Review
Cyberpunk Review
Heretical Ideas Review
Slashdot Review
SciFi Weekly

May 2009: "The Stars, My Desination" by Alfred Bester

May's selection is the Alfred Bester classic, "The Stars, My Destination."

When it comes to pop culture, Alfred Bester (1913-1987) is something of an unsung hero. He wrote radio scripts, screenplays, and comic books (in which capacity he created the original Green Lantern Oath). But Bester is best known for his science-fiction novels, and The Stars My Destination may be his finest creation. First published in 1956 (as Tiger! Tiger!), the novel revolves around a hero named Gulliver Foyle, who teleports himself out of a tight spot and creates a great deal of consternation in the process. With its sly potshotting at corporate skullduggery, The Stars My Destination seems utterly contemporary, and has maintained its status as an underground classic for forty years. (Bester fans should also note that Vintage has reprinted The Demolished Man, which won the very first Hugo Award in 1953.)

The Obscure References Book Group will meet at Linebaugh Library in Murfreesboro, TN on Wednesday, May 27 at 6:30 p.m.

April 2009: "Altered Carbon" by Richard K. Morgan

April's selection is Richard K. Morgan's debut novel, "Altered Carbon." The novel won the Philip K. Dick award in 2003 and is the first of the Takeshi Kovacs trilogy.


In the twenty-fifth century, humankind has spread throughout the galaxy, monitored by the watchful eye of the U.N. While divisions in race, religion, and class still exist, advances in technology have redefined life itself. Now, assuming one can afford the expensive procedure, a person’s consciousness can be stored in a cortical stack at the base of the brain and easily downloaded into a new body (or “sleeve”) making death nothing more than a minor blip on a screen.

Ex-U.N. envoy Takeshi Kovacs has been killed before, but his last death was particularly painful. Dispatched one hundred eighty light-years from home, re-sleeved into a body in Bay City (formerly San Francisco, now with a rusted, dilapidated Golden Gate Bridge), Kovacs is thrown into the dark heart of a shady, far-reaching conspiracy that is vicious even by the standards of a society that treats “existence” as something that can be bought and sold. For Kovacs, the shell that blew a hole in his chest was only the beginning. . . .

The Obscure References Book Group will meet at Linebaugh Library in Murfreesboro, TN on Wednesday, April 22 at 6:30 p.m.