April New Books, plus a recap on from last meeting

Thanks to everybody who came out to Pizza Man last week! I thought it was a good meeting and lots of good conversation--plus I just loved both of those books.

Tom who could not be there, sent me a write up about Children of Time:

"Earth's progenitors, locked in a human seedpod spaceship, scavenge space desperately for tech from an enlightened past age.  They are searching for any way to find a fertile planet where they can repopulate the species..but pickings in space are lean. On the spaceship control is an issue and infighting threatens the spaceship's fragile existence. Before they kill each other they need to find a livable planet. Such is the fate of homo sapiens.

On a livable planet, terraformed by technologically advanced ancient humans, a race of accidentally uplifted spiders evolve rapidly. They are a sassy bunch of arachnids and got that way by figuring out how to talk back to their god.  For them, god orbits their planet in a satellite. She is actually one of those ancient "enlightened" humans.  Spider-world is one of her (god's) experiments, a bit gone wrong. Unfortunately for "god" she is bound up in a psychic tryst with an AI in that satellite.  In spite of this the spiders thrive and advance their own "spidy" tech and rush to deal with the impending human invasion.

Bottom line:  There is only one practicable planet.  The humans need it.  The spiders have it.  Shit happens."

Couldn't have said it any better.

Next book club will be back at the shop on May 8th, though I think we all agreed to try another outing in the future at another establishment.

Okay, so I haven't done a really bad job at posting new SF titles--so here is a quick 5 piece for you:

1) The Ship by Antonia Honeywell

"London burned for three weeks. And then it got worse... 

Young, naive Lalla has grown up in near-isolation in her parents' apartment, sheltered from the chaos of their collapsed civilization. But things are getting more dangerous outside. People are killing each other for husks of bread, and the police are detaining anyone without an identification card. On her sixteenth birthday, Lalla's father decides it's time to use their escape route--a ship he's built that is only big enough to save five hundred people. 
But the utopia her father has created isn't everything it appears. There's more food than anyone can eat, but nothing grows; more clothes than anyone can wear, but no way to mend them; and no-one can tell her where they are going."

Pub date 4/25/2017

2) Walkway by Cory Doctorow

"Hubert Vernon Rudolph Clayton Irving Wilson Alva Anton Jeff Harley Timothy Curtis Cleveland Cecil Ollie Edmund Eli Wiley Marvin Ellis Espinoza known to his friends as Hubert, Etc was too old to be at that Communist party.

But after watching the breakdown of modern society, he really has no where left to be except amongst the dregs of disaffected youth who party all night and heap scorn on the sheep they see on the morning commute. After falling in with Natalie, an ultra-rich heiress trying to escape the clutches of her repressive father, the two decide to give up fully on formal society and walk away.

After all, now that anyone can design and print the basic necessities of life food, clothing, shelter from a computer, there seems to be little reason to toil within the system.

It's still a dangerous world out there, the empty lands wrecked by climate change, dead cities hollowed out by industrial flight, shadows hiding predators animal and human alike. Still, when the initial pioneer walkaways flourish, more people join them. Then the walkaways discover the one thing the ultra-rich have never been able to buy: how to beat death. Now it's war a war that will turn the world upside down.

Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generation SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years and the very human people who will live their consequences."

Pub Date 4/25/2017

3) Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar

"Orphaned as a boy, raised in the Czech countryside by his doting grandparents, Jakub Prochazka has risen from small-time scientist to become the country's first astronaut. When a dangerous solo mission to Venus offers him both the chance at heroism he's dreamt of, and a way to atone for his father's sins as a Communist informer, he ventures boldly into the vast unknown. But in so doing, he leaves behind his devoted wife, Lenka, whose love, he realizes too late, he has sacrificed on the altar of his ambitions. 
Alone in Deep Space, Jakub discovers a possibly imaginary giant alien spider, who becomes his unlikely companion. Over philosophical conversations about the nature of love, life and death, and the deliciousness of bacon, the pair form an intense and emotional bond. Will it be enough to see Jakub through a clash with secret Russian rivals and return him safely to Earth for a second chance with Lenka? 
Rich with warmth and suspense and surprise, Spaceman of Bohemia is an exuberant delight from start to finish. Very seldom has a novel this profound taken readers on a journey of such boundless entertainment and sheer fun."

4) New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson

" As the sea levels rose, every street became a canal. Every skyscraper an island. For the residents of one apartment building in Madison Square, however, New York in the year 2140 is far from a drowned city. 
There is the market trader, who finds opportunities where others find trouble. There is the detective, whose work will never disappear --- along with the lawyers, of course. There is the internet star, beloved by millions for her airship adventures, and the building's manager, quietly respected for his attention to detail. Then there are two boys who don't live there, but have no other home-- and who are more important to its future than anyone might imagine.Lastly there are the coders, temporary residents on the roof, whose disappearance triggers a sequence of events that threatens the existence of all-- and even the long-hidden foundations on which the city rests."

5) The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi

"Our universe is ruled by physics and faster than light travel is not possible -- until the discovery of The Flow, an extra-dimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transport us to other worlds, around other stars.

Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war -- and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.
The Flow is eternal -- but it is not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well, cutting off worlds from the rest of humanity. When it's discovered that The Flow is moving, possibly cutting off all human worlds from faster than light travel forever, three individuals -- a scientist, a starship captain and the Empress of the Interdependency -- are in a race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse."


Last three are already out.