Our reads in August 2025

Another month another pile odfbooks.What are we all reading this month?

Dusty's TBR for August
Patricia Briggs - Soul Taken✔
Simon R Green - Dead Man Walking✔
Simon R Green - Very Important Corpses✔
Robert E Howard - Pigeons From Hell✔
Dr Seuss - Green Eggs and Ham ✔
Simon R Green - Death Shall Come✔
Simon R Green - -Murder in the Dark✔
Margery Allingham - More Work for the Undertaker✔

Just started The Incandescent, seems good so far.

I've just started The two lies of Faven Sythe.

Currently Reading
Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert

On Deck
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Kothar and the Demon Queen by Gardner F. Fox

I've started Theodore Roszak's Flicker, which I'm told is sfnal, if not sf. About four chapters in, and it reads like a cross between Cinema Paradiso and The Da Vinci Code (although far, far better written).

This month's lot consists of Semiosis, The Martian Contingency, Where the Axe is Buried, When the Moon Hits Your Eye, and The City in Glass.

I kind of expect Kowal, and to a lesser degree Scalzi, to annoy me; the question is how much. Kowal's last "Lady Astronaut" book really underwhelmed me, and I think that Scalzi went a high concept too far this time.

I wrote up my last set of Hugo finalists on my blog this week: comics, movies, tv shows.

>6 RobertDay:

I'm a fan of Roszak's non-fiction and through that aware he wrote fiction but have not read any. Very curious to get your reactions. That it's well-written tracks with his non-fiction; I suspect it also overlaps with many of his cultural and metaphysical preoccupations.

I just noticed we've moved 900 years into the future. :)

Managed to read the novella The Creator by Aliya Whiteley from the recent story bundle this afternoon. I wouldn't really describe it as science fiction, though it certainly fits most definitions, but either way it was well-written and had me entertained for about an hour.

Still on my Wheel of Time reading project. This week I finished Lord of Chaos and started A Crown of Swords. I’m still enjoying it though it seems to take me 3-4 weeks to read a volume in the series.

>9 elenchus: I also first encountered Roszak through his non-fiction, but it's many years since I read The Making of a Counter-Culture, and frankly I don't even remember exactly what context I was reading it in. Flicker has been sitting on my shelf unread for a very long time so I'm sort of coming to it fresh.

Had a great time rereading Robert E Howard's Pigeons from Hell Fantastically melodramatic Southern Gothic horror.Howard's style is much more direct fast paced and visceral than Lovecraft with his elaborately ornate style and reserved stiff upper lip characters. I loved how in Pigeons the main character is a very ordinary normal sort of man,absolutely terrified of the evil creature that murders his friend and almost does him in too. He is so frightened he literally and repeatedly vomits and runs away in total terror,could probably win the 100 metres race in the Olympics. Good stuff.
And the pigeons?The local people claim that at twilight if you see a flock of pigeons around the decaying ruined plantation house,someone is going to die.The pigeons are the souls of the evil family released from hell for the night! lol.

Planned SF&F reads planned for August:

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick

I started Ballroom of the skies (1952), by John D. MacDonald, with the expectation that I'd quickly ditch it, but the geopolitics proposed intrigued me enough to go on (for now). Briefly, it's near-future after another war in the 1970s, the US is down and India and "Irania" are up. The Indians are de facto rulers of the US and the USians second class citizens.

Dingy little restaurants serve soy steaks.

>2 dustydigger: Pigeons from Hell??!!?
I wonder if Howard lived in a city.

>13 dustydigger: I should have read this thread before the Fantasy one. All is explained now. Sounds like an important document.

>16 rshart3: I wonder if Howard lived in a city.

No, a few Western boom towns during his childhood. But it was Cross Plains, Texas from age 13 until his death at 30.

An old LT discussion of "Pigeons from Hell."

I just finished up the most recent InCryptid novel, Installment immortality, which spent more time with the ghost Mary. The additional novella Mourner's waltz was a lot more sfnal, with mainly cryptid and human characters, not ghosts.

Next: The moonday letters for a book group. Likely up after that, checked out from the library: Navigational entanglements, The night guest, Interstellar megachef, and Ocean's Godori (discussing in a couple of months).

>18 paradoxosalpha: thanks for the link to the Weird Tradition.PA.I often pop over there when I want a new weird tale to explore. You guys over there must be one of the oldest groups on YT
I have often been tempted to join you there but you are all so erudite and have read EVERYTHING,lol.
My very unerudite off the cuff comments are not really reviews as such ,but I always find some interesting nuggets ,and dont really fit in there when I check in,so thanks!
Wish more people knew about you.

>14 ChrisG1: I read Doomsday Book a couple of years ago (last year?) and really enjoyed it despite the dated technology. I got past by thinking of it as being in an alternate reality. What impressed me with Willis’ writing is how much I grew to care about the characters. She really develops them well.

Started The Galactic Gourmet last night in continuation of my Sector General read through.

>21 Neil_Luvs_Books: By 'dated technology,', I assume you mean landline telephones rather than the time travel apparatus!

Personally, that aspect of the book didn't put me off, because in my experience, there are enough mobile phone dead spots (I live in one) and people who leave their phones in their car or let their batteries run down for individuals who have gone off into the wild blue yonder to be uncontactable, technology or not.

Finished non-SF U is for Undertow and started YA SF Marsbound.

>23 RobertDay: Yes, landline phones is what I was thinking of. Didn’t put me off either. I really enjoyed it.

Finished The Martian Contingency and liked it better than I thought I would. To be fair, it was Kowal's The Spare Man that I didn't care for, and that's not in the "Lady Astronaut Quartet." Kowal's still suffering from a bit of series fatigue though, and it doesn't help the urgency of the plot that the real antagonists are always off stage. Though Irma York's long-running foil Stetson Parker can be a jerk, he does want to make a positive difference.

>25 Neil_Luvs_Books: Yesterday I read Connie Willis's Fire Watch, the short story that this is apparently a prequel to. That was pretty good, so I added Doomsday Book to my wishlist.

edit: corrected the title

Finished the second Ishmael Jones book Dead Man Walking This time Ishmael Jones is going to a remote fac to evaluate whether a man with numerous plastic surgeries and facial implants is actually a former spy colleague who went rogue decades ago ,becoming an infamous murderous mercenary,or is he just a well informed ringer.I was settling down for a great mashup of the interrogation of the unmasked spy in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in a similar place,and a modern reworking of Algis Budrys Who? when he was killed in a locked cell knife in the heart,in the second chapter! :0).Big disappointment,it became just a typical killer in a locked house tale fun and gory but I would have loved ore of a Budrys vibe.
Now onto Soul Taken

OK, so who else has spotted the prophetic nature of this thread's title?

>29 RobertDay: ...in the year 2925. If man is still alive...

Meanwhile, I finished On Basilisk Station and enjoyed it greatly. On to the next Honor Harrington volume!

>29 RobertDay: At least @igorken in >10 igorken:

>31 anglemark: Oh, yes, indeed. But on August 1st? I've been to sleep since then... :-)

im reading MERUand enjoying it

>29 RobertDay: me and yes I did think 2525

Just finished This virtual Night, which was a return to the world of This alien Shore.
I like C S Friedmans science fiction, and this is fine, but not up to her usual standard. So, fun to revisit The Outworlds, but This alien shore is a lot better.

>33 cindydavid4: I enjoyed that too!

Finished The two lies of Faven Sythe which was good although I got a bit confused in the final chapters. I thought it was better than The blighted stars but not as good as the Protectorate trilogy.

Started Skyward Inn which I happened to have on my kindle app on a train ride, based off recently finishing and enjoying her The Creator.

>37 igorken:

Haven't become an ereader as yet, so that "happened to have" gave me pause. Was it pushed there by Amazon? Or just a phrase indicating you weren't planning to read it just then, but you did purchase it with a general intent to read eventually?

>38 elenchus: Not speaking for @igorken, obviously, but the friends I have who've gone over to reading on an ereader usually pick up free or cheap books by the hundreds. Amazon has loads of promotional offers where the books are free or 99p each, there are Humble Bundles, if you vote in the Hugos you get the Hugo Voters' Package, etc etc. They have hundreds or thousands of unread books on their ereaders that they picked up here and there, so the phrase "happened to have" seems very apt.

>39 anglemark: I stumbled over Humble Bundles because someone had tagged a book with it and I hadn't heard of "Humble Bundle" before. I checked out a couple of them with interesting programming books, but gave up again because they were hard to judge without spending some time on them. I.e. self-published stuff with no publication year :-)

I'm currently downsizing my library, but I am an ink-and-paper guy to the end.

Even the books that I self-publish: I make them available as ebooks, because I understand some people prefer or even need that medium. But I charge the same for ebooks as for print books. I hope that people who acquire my books will actually read them, and failing that, put them in a place where someone else will. I take no pleasure from having my work salted away digitally and forgotten about, pending some "happened to have" moment.

Finished Marsbound and started Fires of Azeroth.

>38 elenchus:
>39 anglemark:
>40 bnielsen:
>41 paradoxosalpha:

Yeah, no judgment on what works for others but I've come to see the value of avoiding piles of digital or paper titles, collected on the grounds I have an hypothetical interest in reading them. There was a time I thought it useful to have these around when the whim strikes. While whim remains a very good method for my reading timeline, it's actually undermined by having too many lower-priority options. They take up physical shelf space for the paper editions, and headspace for the digital.

My challenge currently is recognising that most books open to whimsical selection can be had via library loan or one of these digital bundles at the time I'm going to read it, and purge them from my shelves in the meantime. Still worth keeping TBR titles on hand when they are difficult to source, but that's rare.

I say this and fully acknowledge it describes my intent more than my lived reality, at the moment. Still have plenty of titles to prune from my shelves and various drives, but it helps to have discussions like this to hone my resolve.

>43 elenchus: "it describes my intent more than my lived reality" LOL :-)

>44 bnielsen: So say we all!

Reading Honor Harrington book 2, The Honor of the Queen

Its driving me mad seeing how I mistyped the thread this month. Feel like an idiot every time I see it. :0)
I was supposed to have a cataract op weeks ago,but it got cancelled. My previously done eye is fine I see miles away but my other eye the one I use for reading, is almost totally occluded,its as if there is frosted glass or a net curtain blocking my eye.Thank heavens for zoom on the laptop for reading online .
Editing my mistakes means propping the laptop up 10inches inches away and closing one eye to even see what I'm writing.. But surprisingly I;ve managed to read quite a bit.but its getting harder.I have a preparatory appointment on 21st,op itself may be a few weeks after. Looking forward to being able to see again. Reading is my only hobby and a solace in tough times. Cant bear audio books so bring on the op.
Read a couple of Robert Bloch short stories this week,and may reread a bit Robert E Howard.I enjoyed my reread of Pigeons from Hella lot.

Just heard about the passing away of Jim Lovell,,aged 97. Talk about the Right Stuff
Ifeel yet another watching of Apollo13 coming on.
55 years ago Where does time go?

>43 elenchus: I understand your problem with accumulations, but I have solved it with a Little Free Library. I do collect paper books on a hypothetical interest in reading them. I have two bookcases filled with them. Some I get to, and some I pass over when they sit there too long, and I lose interest. At that point, they go out in my Little Free Library for others to enjoy.

>6 RobertDay: I've now finished Flicker; it is, indeed, a novel about films, media, and their fans; but also about cultures, sex and conspiracies centred around the Cathar heresy. For a 1991 novel, it's quite prescient, though some might find it a bit too much so. It employs a lot of sfnal ideas, and I suspect the main characters' milieu will seem quite familiar to many of us. My review:

>47 dustydigger:

I like the year 900 years hence! It's sfnal anticipation of the far future.

>50 RobertDay: centred around the Cathar heresy

Whaa? Wishlisted, probably an interlibrary loan request.

>47 dustydigger: I was wondering, as the effect was very disconcerting!

Just finished Where the Axe is Buried. A tough-minded dystopian thriller with heart and pity; Nayler is going from strength to strength as a writer.

>49 vwinsloe:

The LFL tactic is key for me, as well, though in my case there are enough within walking distance I simply donate to those rather than maintain my own. I may still do my own in the future. Of course, I also run the temptation of picking up titles from the various LFLs!

>38 elenchus:
>39 anglemark:
>40 bnielsen:
>41 paradoxosalpha:

These are all fair observations.
All printed books I purchase i fully intend to read (even though I occasionally abandon one).
All e-books I indvidually purchase I also fully intend to read. I prefer holding a paper book but I have limited shelf space and there are situations were e-books are more convenient to me.
As @anglemark guessed, I do quite regularly pick up a bundle of e-books: they tend to cost around the price of a single book and those I pick up usually contain 2-3 books I certainly want to read, a few more that also interest me but that I wouldn't immediately buy, and a number that I'll probably never look at again.
I happened to have this one (it was in the "also interest me" category), and even if the author may not be thrilled that's how I came across the book, and it's unlikely to earn her any money, perhaps they may appeciate the fact that I am enjoying it and may pick up one of her future works as a result. And if not, that's also perfectly fine to me.

>55 elenchus: Someone just put this in my LFL. Parable of the Sower graphic. It's in perfect condition, and I was thrilled.

I do love the serendipitous finds that seem selected just for my reading tastes. I've found quite a few relatively obscure books in LFLs which otherwise contained nothing but NYT bestsellers.

Since I just read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I'm now reading The Rolling Stones, to which it is (arguably) a prequel.

I'm just past the midpoint of Heretics of Dune, and enjoying it. I am on track to finish the six Frank Dune books before the end of September, after which I think I will pivot back to The Culture for sf series reading.

The Circle by Dave Eggers.

>60 paradoxosalpha: I thought Heretics of Dune was one of the best of the original 6 Dune novels that Frank wrote. So 2nd best behind Dune.

>47 dustydigger: Fixed, sorry for the delay, lots of stuff going on in RL this month.

>62 Neil_Luvs_Books:

I am only at about the 60% mark, but it reminds me a lot of Children of Dune. I am noticing an alternating open-shut pattern. The odd books show the emergence of an unprecedented power, and the even ones tell of that power's demise.

>64 paradoxosalpha: I never noticed that alternating rise and fall with pairs of Dune books. But now that I think of it, I think you are right! Very interesting.

I just finished The Galactic Gourmet in my read through of the Sector General books by James White. The exploration of food and how it affects so many in so many ways was fascinating.

really enjoyed Meru

but i could have done without her changing all the pronuns to zie no explanation and it didnt seem to be a big part of the story and it coused lots of confusiont here also needed a glossary for the multople unkown words and t6he end could have beeen tighter, not boringin bothered me enough that im rating a 4 rather than a 5

Finished The Rolling Stones, and am now onto another Heinlein juvenile, Between Planets.

Just finished a re-read of Area X and am now on to Absolution. Not sure the wonderfully creepy Southern Reach trilogy needed a sequel (prequel?) but am keeping an open mind.

I've finally given in and am reading A Memory Called Empire, as well as rereading Stiletto, which is sort of an SF/F mashup.

>67 cindydavid4: I suspect you intended to touchstone Meru there, not the book that you actually touchstoned.

>66 elorin:

Sector General is become a series I actively look for when visiting used bookshops. Though what are the odds I stumble upon the first in the series before any others? I sense an ILL from my local could be my first step, there doesn't appear to be a vital sequence to reading but I insist to myself that I begin with the first published.

>64 paradoxosalpha:
>65 Neil_Luvs_Books:

If that open-shut pattern holds over the six Frank novels, that may help decide whether I read through all of them (my original intent), or halt before finishing Chapterhouse Dune. At all events, it seems wise not to pause after Children of Dune, an option I was considering.

>71 anglemark: thank,, fixed!

>72 elenchus: I used this to guide my read through of the series.
https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/james-white/

After finishing Between Planets, I read all of Starman Jones, and now I'm reading the last inclusion in my SFBC Heinlein omnibus (To the Stars), The Star Beast.

Ive been in a bit of. slump, but just finished Ocean's Godori by Elaine Cho. It's the author's debut novel, and half the time I wasn't sure what was going on but I was entertained. However my enjoyment dipped toward the end. I'm not sure if I will read the sequel.

>76 Stevil2001: Lummie! One of my favorite Heinlein juveniles.

Just finished Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick. Can't really recommend it. It's a post nuclear holocaust tale, but was strangely unapocalyptic. It rather felt like he just wrote whatever popped into his (probably drugged) mind. Definitely not one of his best.

Ballroom of the skies abandoned the mildly interesting geopolitics for a trite and muddled tale about aliens selecting Earthling "potentials" and teaching them telepathy in the name of some future cosmic leadership role. Not surprised that MacDonald decided to stick to the mystery genre from then on.

Started a collection of Theodore Sturgeon stories, Without Sorcery (1948). So far so entertaining, and I do believe my copy's a first edition (as a collection), for that extra feel.

Finished Final Diagnosis in my Sector General read through. An interesting quandary - how does a multi species galactic hospital deal with an apparent hypocondriac?

Starting American Gods today. (I feel a bit weird about finally getting around to this book in 2025.)

Knocked off When the Moon Hits Your Eye. Scalzi did a better job with the absurd high concept of the Moon being inexplicably turned into "organic matrix" than I might have thought, but each of the absurdist novels he's recently been writing have been less and less with enthralling. Now to see if he can get back to writing straight-up space opera.

>80 LolaWalser: Wow. I hunted for years trying to find Without Sorcery. All I could get was the paperback Not Without Sorcery.

Finished Fires of Azeroth, started Mission to the Heart Stars.

>83 Shrike58: I'm looking forward to the next Old Man's War novel later this year!

>84 ChrisRiesbeck:

I had no idea it was that rare. But I too only have the paperback of Not without sorcery. I wonder what makes for such outcomes, different printing run sizes, maybe...

>88 LolaWalser: Prime Press was a fan-run small outfit that started the year I was born (1947) and lasted just a few years. According to Wikipedia, fewer than 3000 copies were printed (more than i would've guessed).

Every year when I finish reading Hugo finalists, I read the oldest Hugo-winning novel I haven't previously read. Here's my review of this year's:

>90 Stevil2001:
I first read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress last year, and followed it pretty directly with The Dispossessed. I agree that they make a noteworthy pair of approaches to similar questions, although the only comparandum my review mentioned for the latter was Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. Le Guin may well have been replying to Heinlein, but I think The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress needs to be read in the context of the two other Heinlein books you mentioned. I don't think it's an accident that the name "Mike" is recurrently given to characters of superhuman awareness and influence.

Yesterday I read The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, a good quick read. Getting into the the second lead's head made some things from the first book clearer. I'll be getting the third from the library at some point.

>90 Stevil2001: Hieinlein is one of my favorite authors from a junior high years and I love most of his books My favorite being Door into summer I haven't read this one before but I'm interested in Mike being able to solve all of these problems solve all these problems There is a term called Mary Sue who was awomen character who could do no wrong and everybody loves so I'm wondering if there's a term for that for the males although I think I've heard about something abou The male counterpart tis Stuart or something Like that anyway Thanks for the good review I might need to read that some time Thanks for the review

>93 cindydavid4: It was my impression that the term "Mary Sue character" is actually gender-neutral, though I can't think of an instance with a male protagonist right now.

The term comes from Star Trek fandom, where it was created to refer to a fan story where new Ensign Mary Sue joins the crew of the Enterprise and in short order wins the heart of Jim Kirk, earns the respect of Spock for her skill at 3-D chess and logical application of thinking, drinks Scotty under the table and, as a finale, saves the ship from certain destruction when no-one else can. It was generally felt to be a form of wish-fulfillment fantasy on the part of the author.

>93 cindydavid4:
Heinlein's novels often include accomplished, hypercompetent older men, and he has been accused of using these for alter-egos, but he strenuously denied it, remarking, "Some critics say that my stories always contain a wise and crusty old man who is my own concept of myself. Not true. They are all different, and they are not self-portraits; they are many men who did indeed live and who were my mentors—and now they are all gone to whatever Valhalla there may be for such men." (From correspondence quoted in Robert A. Heinlein in Dialogue)

I believe--and have maintained in presented papers--that Heinlein based the Jubal Harshaw character of Stranger in a Strange Land on Jack Parsons' idea of Aleister Crowley.

I'm not innately against the character of the competent man -- the professor in Moon is a Harsh Mistress is arguably *also* one, but he has a personality and dialogue that make him fun to read about. Mike less so, and he makes the novel too obvious.

Mike is deus ex machina, with all the good and bad that comes with that.

I found him echoed in the more compelling character of the emergent intelligence of the shipboard computer in KSR's Aurora.

Finished Mission to the Heart Stars, started Humanity Prime.

>98 ChrisRiesbeck: I read Mission to the Heart Stars so long ago that I barely remember it. I remember the first one, The Star Dwellers, better. At the time, I was younger than Blish's protagonists, but not by much.

>78 elorin:
>76 Stevil2001:
Me, too -- and in a different way, Podkayne of Mars.

Starting Mockingjay today. (It was some six years ago that I read the previous Hunger Games novel, so hopefully it is forgiving!) I saw the first Mockingjay movie though not the second, and I don't really remember it.

>99 haydninvienna: Haven't read The Star Dwellers yet, but I expect it's similar. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia refers to the series as "a short and rather didactic series".

>102 ChrisRiesbeck: They would be called YA now, I think, and "didactic" is about right. I was actually wondering if The Star Dwellers, with its spacefaring diplomat, might have been a kind of answer to Keith Laumer's Retief, but I'm not sure that the dates work.

Just finished The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. Pretty good - the modern flu epidemic element actually triggered me a bit, remembering COVID. My only complaint is pacing - there was no need for this to be a 570 page book, in my view.

Just finished Mind Changer, the latest in my read through of Sector General. This story tells the tale of O'Mara, chief psychologist of Sector General, and his history and rise to the top of the SG leadership.

I finished Double Contact and with that I have finished my read through of James White's Sector General books.

Finished Semiosis, which is a demonstration that cool ideas often don't survive first contact with unrelentingly clunky dialogue and schematic characterization; particularly for the duration of a novel. That I have some sense of bad faith of not totally being fair to Burke means I'll probably give her another try in the future.

>107 Shrike58:

Agree the concept is great, I'll follow reviews and such for that reason but will keep your cautionary review in mind before picking up for a read, if ever I'm tempted.

I finished off my read of the 2009 edition of Christopher Priest's The Dream Archipelago (somewhat delayed by my coming into possession of a large photographic collection that took me about a week to triage, taking up valuable reading time). The 2009 edition adds two stories, 'The Trace of Him' (which I'd already read in Interzone and which is also included in The Islanders), and 'The Discharge', which is new to this collection (unless you happened across it in the original French).

Otherwise, I can find no other changes between the 1999 and 2009 editions other than the superficial ones I mention in my review. (I reviewed the 1999 edition some time before.)

>107 Shrike58: Nice review! Good to know you weren’t impressed.
I gave it up as a bad job a few chapters in. The writing! The characters! The lack of internal logic and worldbuilding! Just, no.

>110 amberwitch: If Burke had stuck with her first set of characters I probably would have felt more of a sense of commitment, but she didn't. And the dialogue just kept getting more and more wooden. Right now this book is in the bottom five novels/novelettes I've read this year, and the only reason it isn't on the bottom is that I have some sense that Burke had real ambition when she wrote this.

I'm about halfway through The Tainted Cup. Liking it so far.

About SF rather than SF itself, but I'm reading Track Changes by Abigail Nussbaum. I'm always in awe of people who have Things To Say about whether or not a piece of media works; so often I finish a book with only a sense of "yeah, that was pretty good".

Reading Stories of Your Life and Others, though my edition is called Arrival, and has Jeremy Renner in a space helmet on the cover.

>107 Shrike58: I enjoyed Semiosis, myself. The dialogue wasn't an issue for me, but that of course could just be me. IIRC the second and third books take place in different contexts, so they might be worth checking out, for you, eventually.

My old fart SF book group enjoyed it, especially the scientists. We tend to read everything that Sue Burke writes, eventually -- we discussed the third book, out in 2024, earlier this year.

>115 karenb: Point taken. I cut less slack for issues of characterization, dialogue and plot than I would have, say, ten years ago.

Finished The City in Glass; polished and economical at the same time. Even though the sort of "enemies to lovers" plot promised is not usually my thing, Vo continues to be one the best authors I know of in terms making optimal use of her page counts.

>114 Stevil2001: I just got back from discussing Exhalation with my fiction bookgroup - I nominated it because I love his work (not every story, but I like reading how he is thinking!), and it seemed many had seen Arrival without ever reading his work. Anyways, I loved most of Stories of Your Life and Others, and I look forward to seeing what you think! I think Chiang's thoughts about language are really interesting to think about.

Sadly, my local library is discontinuing hosting (with mentor/leader) its Science Fiction book club, so I'm going to turn to reading what others in our house have lying around. First up: William Gibson with Neuromancer.

Following the passing earlier this year of Damian Broderick, I've picked a couple of his novels out of the TBR pile. First up, The Sea's Furthest End. An old-fashioned novel from 1993, it seems to be tackling galactic empire stuff in all of 193 pages. No bloat here!

>120 RobertDay: Thanks for mentioning this. Somehow I either missed that he'd died, or forgot. I'll have to pull one out & reread it in memory.

I finished this one a little while ago. And now I'm about midway through Chapterhouse: Dune (which I expect to be my final Dune read).

Those of you who a fan of RF Quang might be interested in an article in the New York Times August 25th It talks about her earlier books but it also was talking about her katabasis It's a satire on academic life. Interesting to read about her