Anonymous Rex by Eric Garcia

We had a wide variety of participation at this meeting. Thirteen people attended in person, two people emailed reports, and one person phoned in comments. Anonymous Rex is a humorous mystery novel. In this book’s world, a secret society of dinosaurs exists in the 21st century. The dinosaurs disguise themselves as humans and participate in society under fake identities. The book tells the story of Los Angeles private investigator Vincent Rubio, a velociraptor looking for his partner’s killer. Eleven of us had read the book.

Many of us liked this book a lot, and one even called it “a hoot!” The secret society was cleverly constructed, and we were amused when celebrities from our world turned out to be dinosaurs. Rubio?s amusing and sympathetic narrator helps make the book a successful noir detective story. Three members of the

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Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter

Eleven people attended the discussion of Manifold: Time. This book tells the near-future story of Reid Malenfant, a tycoon dedicated to bringing mankind into space. The book invokes several classic SF themes: space exploration, the education of gifted children, time travel, and first contact with aliens. Seven of us at the meeting had read the book, and the rest had not started it.

We enjoyed reading a traditional hard SF novel. It was fun to read about people building spaceships, going into orbit, visiting the moon and asteroids, and exploring time and space. We liked the use of intelligent squids as space pilots. The time travel element is cleverly used to explore recent theories about how

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Dinner With Aaron Allston

We took local author Aaron Allston, author of Sidhe Devil, out to dinner on August 27. Eleven of us gathered for a nice meal at Tien Hong. Since Aaron was formerly a member of our Reading Group and still reads a lot, we discussed books we’d read recently. It turned out that Aaron also liked The Club Dumas. Aaron talked about his experiences writing Star Wars novels, several of which had been on bestseller lists. He mentioned that despite his success, a reader had only recognized him in public once. He said that he started writing Sidhe Devil over three years ago, and that his editor at Baen was ArmadilloCon 23 Editor Guest Toni Weisskopf. We all had a nice evening, and we appreciated Aaron giving us the opportunity to visit with him.

— A. T. Campbell, III

Sidhe Devil by Aaron Allston

Twelve people attended this meeting, and two submitted comments by email. One of the email participants was a person in Tennessee who has never attended one of our meetings in person, but who was a personal friend of one of our group’s regulars. Sidhe Devil is an action-packed fantasy novel that takes place mostly in a fairy world that greatly resembles Earth in the early 20^th century. The heroic Doc Sidhe and his band of competent assistants travel to an international sports competition to foil a fiendish supernatural plot. All ten of us who started this book finished it.

We had a lot of fun with this book. It has characters we quickly grew to like, gripping action, and an intriguing setting. Several people compared this book’s urban fantasy world with the world in Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams. The plot was firmly in the pulp fiction tradition of such classic characters as the Shadow and Doc Savage. There was a lot of good humor. The rules of magic were well established in this book, and the author followed them consistently. Lots of things blew up in this book. Doc’s vehicles (particularly the outrigger

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Meet Me at Infinity by James Tiptree, Jr.

Thirteen people attended this discussion, including one first-time participant. Also, one person submitted comments by email. The book under consideration was a recent collection of short stories and essays by James Tiptree, Jr. Only one person at the meeting was able to finish the book.

For those unfamiliar with the author, a brief introduction is in order. James Tiptree, Jr. was one of the major SF writers of the 60s and 70s, writing such award-winning stories as “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” and “The Women Men Don’t See.” Tiptree was a recluse who never appeared in public, and no in the SF community knew anything about the author. Finally it was revealed that Tiptree was the pseudonym of Dr. Alice Sheldon, a psychologist who worked for

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Infinity Beach by Jack McDevitt

Fourteen people attended this meeting, and one person contributed comments by e-mail. The topic of this meeting, Infinity Beach by Jack McDevitt, is a science fiction mystery set hundreds of years in our future. Despite centuries of space travel and the colonization of many solar systems, humans have still not encountered other intelligent life. Kim Brandywine, a fundraiser working on a last-ditch project to find extraterrestrials, discovers that her long-lost older sister was involved in an exploratory mission that may have actually made first contact. The plot details her search for what really happened. Eight people at the meeting had finished the book, and three were about halfway finished.

Since this was our group’s fifth discussion of a Jack McDevitt book (most of any author), we had a good idea of what to expect from Infinity Beach. It was a fun mystery with interesting SF elements. We enjoyed following all the twists of

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The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Réverte

This book and discussion were a bit unusual for us. The Club Dumas was originally written in Spanish, and it was published as a mainstream novel. The plot involves a rare book scout named Lucas Corso who is looking for several manuscripts by Alexandre Dumas and one supposedly authored by the devil. The Club Dumas had recently been filmed as The Ninth Gate, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Johnny Depp and Frank Langella. We kicked off our coverage of this book with a DVD viewing party Lori and I held at our house on the Sunday before the meeting. Ten people and two dogs showed up to watch the film, and we faithfully agreed not to talk about the book or movie until the regular meeting on Tuesday. We had dinner after the movie at Don Pablo’s.

When we held the book discussion at Adventures in Crime & Space, fourteen people showed up. Ten people at the meeting had finished the book, and twelve had seen the movie. Only one person had read other books by the author.

We liked a lot about this literary mystery. The details of rare book dealing were fascinating. We learned a lot about Dumas and his work. We appreciated how

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Galveston by Sean Stewart

The discussion of Sean Stewart’s latest novel drew thirteen attendees. Also, two people e-mailed in comments. Galveston is a fantasy novel set in the near future, after another big hurricane has caused great damage to the island off the coast of Texas. The complex and multi-layered plot of this book involves poker, witchcraft, famous Texas families, Mardi Gras, piano-playing ghosts, cannibals, historic mansions, the devil, first aid, and giant shrimp men.

We had a lot of familiarity with this author and topic. Ten people at the meeting had read Galveston, and eight had read prior books by Sean Stewart. Seven of us had visited Galveston and had seen many of the historic sites mentioned in

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The Prophecy Machine by Neal Barrett, Jr.

Twelve people attended the discussion of The Prophecy Machine, a recent novel by Austin writer Neal Barrett Jr. This fantasy novel is set in a world where many of the world’s animal races have been magically evolved into “Newlies”, creatures with human levels of intelligence and a more-or-less human appearance. The book follows a human inventor named Finn and his Newlie lady love Letitia on a vacation that goes horribly wrong. They get stranded on a strange island, which leads them to get involved with a clan of strange men who have a bizarre invention.

We found this book easy to read. All eleven of us who’d started the novel finished it. Barrett’s playful use of language was fun, and we all had favorite sentences and phrases that we repeated. We enjoyed the interplay between Finn and his pet, an ornery robot lizard named Julia. The island society with its two dominant factions (the Hooters and the Hatters) was a clever invention, and we liked the way this concept was worked so strongly into the book. For example, a business named “Bar” accepted only customers from one group, while the other

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Accidental Creatures by Anne Harris

Ten people attended this meeting, and one person submitted comments by e-mail. This meeting’s topic was Accidental Creatures, the second novel by Anne Harris. The book is set in a future Detroit where the auto industry has gone into decline, and biotech is the city’s big new industry. The story involves genetic engineering, labor strikes, mutants, evil corporate executives, artificial intelligence, and funny accountants. The large cast includes scientists, white-collar workers, blue-collar workers, fringe people, and some who aren’t really human. Nine of the people at the meeting had finished the book.

We liked a lot about this book. Harris convincingly portrays the passion of the biotech scientists for their work. We don’t want to give too much of the plot away, but we found the secret science project was fascinating. The depiction of people on the fringe evoked a cyberpunk atmosphere that many of us hadn’t

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