Jun

20

Posted by : atcampbell | On : June 20, 2000

Mockingbird by Sean Stewart

We discussed Mockingbird at Elaine Powell’s house, where the meeting was combined with a pizza dinner and a pool party. Fifteen people showed up to partake of one or more of these activities. We had two first-time participants, including one out-of-state FACT member who’d been following our group through The FACT Sheet for years.

Mockingbird is an urban fantasy novel set in Houston. The narrator, Toni Beauchamp, is a thirtiesh actuary whose mother has recently passed away. Her mother had been involved with voodoo, and the spirits who once visited and possessed her mother are now turning their attentions to Toni. During the course of the novel Toni has to deal with voodoo spirits, her family, job stress, dating, a

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Jun

06

Posted by : atcampbell | On : June 6, 2000

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

A huge crowd of thirteen people showed up to discuss A Deepness in the Sky. Three of the participants were first-time visitors to our group. The start of the discussion was delayed a few minutes as we tried to find chairs for everyone.

A Deepness in the Sky is a space adventure novel set hundreds of years in our future. The story involves spacefaring humans sent to explore an anomalous star. Orbiting the star is a mysterious planet exhibiting signs of intelligent nonhuman life, with which the humans want to make contact. In addition to the difficult problems of investigating the star and making contact with an alien society, the explorers have another big problem. They come from two vastly different cultures

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