There is so much cool scifi/fantasy/speculative fiction out right now, I’d love to start a book club for it. Who’s with me? If I can get 5 people to commit to coming every month and buying the books for it, I bet I can convince Steph to carry our book list.

For the first month, we could do a little compare/contrast between classic scifi and modern interpretations of the same themes. For instance, we could read Asimov’s collection of short stories I, Robot, and then also Cory Doctorow’s stories I, Robot and I, Rowboat for a different take on both machine sentience and legislating technological development. Or some time travel development between The Time Machine and Connie Willis’ Blackout or To Say Nothing of the Dog, maybe.

I hear that the Old Firehouse Bookstore is courting Paolo Bacigalupi to make an appearance at their store in September or October. So September would be the perfect time to read The Wind-up Girl, which just came out in paperback. It was up for an award this year, a Hugo, I think.

Then we could do a little genre-pushing. Maybe some Michael Moore, like Fluke (with singing whales) or You Suck (a paranormal romance parody). Or Chuck Palahniuk’s Lullaby, where magic in the world is anything but sexy.

After that we’ll probably have a better idea what the group is into and what our tastes are. I’d love to talk about scifi marketed as mainstream, like The Time Traveller’s Wife or The Lovely Bones, which suck in people who pride themselves on not reading scifi. Compare notes on Heinlein’s Starship Troopers in today’s political context. Try a debut novel from somebody we’ve never heard of. See if Ursula K. Leguin’s communist moon in The Dispossessed lives up to The Communist Manifesto- and does it count as a utopia? Compare a movie and the book it was based on - or experiment with the novelization of a summer blockbuster.

Leave a comment here, and we’ll work out a time. I’ll put a sign-up sheet at the front of the store, too.

It’ll be awesome, you guys. I promise!