Glasshouse by Charles Stross

13 people attended the discussion of Glasshouse by Charles Stross. Everybody but 1 person has read Stross before. 11 people started the book, about half of the people finished it.

Glasshouse is set in the same universe as Stross’ earlier far-future novel Accelerando. To quote an Amazon.com review, the protagonist Robin “is one of millions who have had a mind wipe, to forget wartime memories that are too painful — or too dangerously inconvenient for someone else. To evade the enemies who don’t think his mind wipe was enough, Robin volunteers to live in the

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On February 11, the FACT Reading Group took local author Maureen F. McHugh to dinner at Mongolian Grille. We’d recently read her collection Mothers and Other Monsters, and earlier had read her novel Half the Day is Night. Between the Reading Group, the author, and her husband, we had sixteen people at dinner.

We talked with Maureen about a variety of things: her writing, travels in China, dogs, and her day job as a writer for alternate reality games. She told amusing anecdotes about the alternate reality games she created for Halo 2 and Nine Inch

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Mothers and Other Monsters by Maureen F. McHugh

Seven people attended this meeting at the North Village library. Our topic was Mothers and Other Monsters, a recent collection by Austin writer Maureen F. McHugh. Six of us had read McHugh before. We all started the book, and three of us finished.

Several stories stood out. “The Lincoln Train,” set during the Civil War, was moving and effective as it examined prejudice. “The Cost to Be Wise,” a cautionary tale about what can go wrong when one civilization gives another too

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The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester

13 people attended the FACT reading group discussion of Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination. Almost everyone has read something by Bester before. Most of the group has read this book when it first came out. Almost all of them re-read it anew before the discussion. Only one person did not finish the book.

This novel is set in the 24th century, when most humans have developed an ability to “jaunt”, or to teleport. The protagonist, a bad-guy antihero named Gully Foyle, seeks to avenge an injustice done to him in the past. His corporate masters

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The Demon and the City by Liz Williams

Ten of us gathered at the North Village library for this meeting. Our topic was The Demon and the City, second in the Detective Inpector Chen supernatural crime. While the first novel, The Snake Agent, focused on the human Chen, this book concentrates more on Chen’s partner, the demon Zhu Irzh. Nine of us had read Liz Williams previously. We all started the book, and eight of us finished.

The Demon and the City was one member’s first Liz Williams book. She started reading it but felt lost until she realized that there was a prior book. So she found The Snake Agent and read it, then returned to the newer book. She enjoyed it much more on the second try.

We liked a lot about this book. The setting and mythology, taken from China and

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