[bksvol-discuss] Next Meeting of the Science Fiction Club, Thursday, October 9, 2014
- From: "Evan Reese" <mentat1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Bob Acosta" <boacosta@xxxxxxxxxxx>, "Bob Acosta" <boacosta@xxxxxxxxxxx>, <sfclub@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 20:14:13 -0400
Hello Folks,
Another great turnout at our most recent meeting, at least equaling record
numbers. Two new people joined us, welcome Bob and David. Hope you can make it
a habit.
This month marks the beginning of our eighth year of continuous operation. But
it wouldn’t have happened without the interest and regular attendance of people
who consider Science Fiction an important part of their reading lives. Thank
you all!
Most of us liked our book, Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton, and many of
us liked it a lot.
Our next book is a tale of one man’s survival on Mars, suggested by one of our
new members, Bob, The Martian by Andy Weir.
The next meeting of the Science Fiction club will be on Thursday, October 9,
2014.
Place: Book Nook at:
Time: 9 PM Eastern, 8 PM Central, 7 PM Mountain, 6 PM Pacific, and 01:00 UTC.
Our book, The Martian, is available from both Bookshare and BARD.
The Bookshare version is at:
https://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/771284
and the BARD version is at:
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.nls/db.78389
Here is Bookshare’s Long Synopsis for The Martian:
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on
Mars.
Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm
nearly
kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds
himself
stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's
alive--and
even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue
could
arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The
damaged
machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more
likely
to kill him first. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his
ingenuity,
his engineering skills--and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit--he steadfastly
confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his
resourcefulness
be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
And here is the NLS annotation:
Six days after becoming the first man to walk on
Mars, astronaut Mark Watney is caught in a windstorm. Though
his support crew thinks he died, Mark survived and now faces
abandonment, failed machinery, and a hostile environment.
Finally, here is a brief review from Booklist taken from Amazon’s page for The
Martian:
Remember Man Plus, Frederik Pohl’s award-winning 1976 novel about a cyborg
astronaut
who’s sent, alone, to Mars? Imagine, instead, that the astronaut was just a
regular
guy, part of a team sent to the red planet, and that, through a series of tragic
events, he’s left behind, stranded and facing certain death. That’s the premise
of
this gripping and (given its subject matter) startlingly plausible novel. The
story
is told mostly through the log entries of astronaut Mark Watney, chronicling his
efforts to survive: making the prefab habitat livable and finding a way to grow
food,
make water, and get himself off the planet. Interspersed among the log entries
are
sections told from the point of view of the NASA specialists, back on Earth, who
discover that Watney is not dead (as everyone assumed) and scramble together a
rescue
plan. There are some inevitable similarities between the book and the 1964 movie
Robinson Crusoe on Mars, but where the movie was a broad sci-fi adventure, the
novel
is a tightly constructed and completely believable story of a man’s ingenuity
and
strength in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Riveting. --David Pitt
Looking forward to another great get-together next month to talk about this
book, along with whatever else we’re reading lately, or would like to read. So
come join us!
Evan
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