Feb

19

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Posted by : atcampbell | On : February 19, 2002

Category: Uncategorized

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

This book continued our month of discussing literary works. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay recently won the Pulitzer prize. The story is about two young men (Sam and Joe) who are pioneers in the comic book industry during World War II. The writer (Sam) is a native New Yorker, and the artist (Joe) is a recent immigrant from Eastern Europe.

Since A. T. had to miss this meeting due to illness, Lori ran the meeting. Seven persons attended, of whom 5 had read at least some portion of the book. One person e-mailed comments. The opinions ranged from O.K. to Great, although the book had almost no fantastic elements and was merely associated with our field

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Feb

05

Blindness

Posted by : atcampbell | On : February 5, 2002

Category: Uncategorized

Blindness by Jose Saramago

Nine people attended this discussion. Blindness is a novel about a plague that causes people to go blind. Doctors can’t determine the physical cause of the blindness or determine how it spreads. The newly blind people are quarantined to try to prevent spread of the disease. Unusually, none of the characters have names or physical descriptions. They’re just referenced by their profession or role in the story (the Doctor, the Girl with Glasses, etc.) Everyone at the meeting had read most or all of the book. None had read anything else by Saramago.

It must be mentioned that our reading of this book was largely due to a review of it by Robert Silverberg in Asimov’s. Silverberg wrote passionately about this book being a great SF novel, and he mentioned that the author had won the Nobel

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