Sep

18

Posted by : atcampbell | On : September 18, 2001

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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Sep

04

Posted by : atcampbell | On : September 4, 2001

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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