SF Book Club disaster
So, two months ago, a group of us lecturers had our inaugural SF book club get-together, and it was a rousing success. We tackled Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora, which, although we all disagreed with its main theme vehemently (i.e., focus completely on ecologically self-improvement and waste no time on space exploration), it generated a fantastic discussion.
Not so much this iteration's SF selection, C. J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station.
On the surface, Cherryh's book looked quite promising. Won a Huge in 1981, shortlisted for a Locus award, nominated as one of the top 50 SF books of all time, and written by an author whom (while I've not read her previously) has been widely praised to the skies by various SF enthusiasts. So, we gave it a go.
Unfortunately, out of the 5 of us who attended, none actually finished the book. I came closest at 80% of the way through; no one else came close to that, and a few of us didn't even make it 50 pages in.
Most of the problem was just readability, I suppose -- Downbelow Station just throws you into things without any explanation, and the sense of confusion never really gets better. For myself, I did have a number of positives to note. For example, once things get going, Cherry does handle the plot quite nicely , full of twists and turns, and the intrigue is quite fast-paced. My main objection was literary -- her book just didn't seem to be about anything. While I don't require a good guys / bad guys scenario, obviously, I just couldn't figure out the stakes on why either the Union, Mazian, the Pell Stationers, etc, should come out on top. The plot just seemed like pure plot, a lot of things going on, like a mainstream thriller. And while there were a few tidbits to praise (some feminism, some anti-colonialist sentiment, although I hated the Hisa, who were basically just dumbed-down Ewoks), the book didn't contain anything much else intellectually substantial. The Konstantin family seemed like the good guys, at least in a Lawful Good Atreides-of-Dune sort of way, but that wasn't enough to convince me that what they were fighting for mattered to anyone but them. I would have liked to discussed the female anti-hero, Capt. Signy Mallory, who sexually assaults one of her male prisoners, but no one had gotten far enough along in the book to even discuss that.***
Anyway, all in all, the session was a bust, and very disappointing. One positive: this fiasco convinced us to only choose books for which someone can vouch. (Previously, the idea was to pick books that none of us had read.) So our next selection will be N. K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy.
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The whole Mallory thing is why I went looking for Mercedes Lackey's songs the other day. Her Signy Mallory song can be found here.
Not so much this iteration's SF selection, C. J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station.
On the surface, Cherryh's book looked quite promising. Won a Huge in 1981, shortlisted for a Locus award, nominated as one of the top 50 SF books of all time, and written by an author whom (while I've not read her previously) has been widely praised to the skies by various SF enthusiasts. So, we gave it a go.
Unfortunately, out of the 5 of us who attended, none actually finished the book. I came closest at 80% of the way through; no one else came close to that, and a few of us didn't even make it 50 pages in.
Most of the problem was just readability, I suppose -- Downbelow Station just throws you into things without any explanation, and the sense of confusion never really gets better. For myself, I did have a number of positives to note. For example, once things get going, Cherry does handle the plot quite nicely , full of twists and turns, and the intrigue is quite fast-paced. My main objection was literary -- her book just didn't seem to be about anything. While I don't require a good guys / bad guys scenario, obviously, I just couldn't figure out the stakes on why either the Union, Mazian, the Pell Stationers, etc, should come out on top. The plot just seemed like pure plot, a lot of things going on, like a mainstream thriller. And while there were a few tidbits to praise (some feminism, some anti-colonialist sentiment, although I hated the Hisa, who were basically just dumbed-down Ewoks), the book didn't contain anything much else intellectually substantial. The Konstantin family seemed like the good guys, at least in a Lawful Good Atreides-of-Dune sort of way, but that wasn't enough to convince me that what they were fighting for mattered to anyone but them. I would have liked to discussed the female anti-hero, Capt. Signy Mallory, who sexually assaults one of her male prisoners, but no one had gotten far enough along in the book to even discuss that.***
Anyway, all in all, the session was a bust, and very disappointing. One positive: this fiasco convinced us to only choose books for which someone can vouch. (Previously, the idea was to pick books that none of us had read.) So our next selection will be N. K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy.
-----
The whole Mallory thing is why I went looking for Mercedes Lackey's songs the other day. Her Signy Mallory song can be found here.
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