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Selections from the Hoboken Public Library’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club 2015 Part 1: Starship Troopers, Oz, On Basilisk Station, Practical Demonkeeping, and Ubik

1 Jul

The HPL’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Club returned in 2015.  We’ve had some great discussions this year.  Along with the selected works, group members discussed other favorite science fiction/fantasy books, TV shows, and movies.  We would love to have you join us for the second half of the year!  You can also check out my previous posts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) to see what the group read in 2014.  We will be discussing George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones in July, Frank Herbert’s Dune in August, Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park in September, and Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin in October (we read a classic horror novel each year in honor of Halloween)!  Come to the upcoming meetings and you can help decide what we read for the rest of the year.  We will be showing films before some of the Book Discussions.  You can email hplwriters AT gmail DOT com, to be added to the mailing list for the group and find out more information and get reminders about the books being discussed.

Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers

starship-troopers
Starship Troopers was our first book of the year and is a science fiction classic.  This is the second Heinlein book the group had discussed.  In February of 2014, we discussed Stranger in a Strange Land.  I was curious to read Starship Troopers since it is the basis for one of my husband’s favorite movies as well as an inspiration for the Halo video games.  Starship Toopers centers around one recruit’s experiences training for the military in a society where only those who serve have the right to vote in elections.  Military service starts as a way to impress a girl he likes, but becomes for Juan a moral and philosophical imperative.  Those who have only seen the movie may be surprised how much focus is put on the training rather than the battling “the bugs.”  Heinlein’s pro-military novel, which was originally marketed as for Young Adults, was so controversial at the time that it lead him to being dropped by his current publisher.  The group had a lively discussion about the book.  Starship Troopers is available as an audiobook from Hoopla.

Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Marvelous Land of Oz, and Ozma of Oz

wonderful-wizard-of-oz

In May, The Wizard of Oz turned 115. In celebration the book discussion group read the first three of L. Frank Baum’s books in his Oz series. Some of the group also watched the cult classic Return to Oz movie, which is based on The Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz. The books have been called the first American fairy tale and their quirky sometimes unnerving characters are very different at times from those of the Judy Garland Musical, but the timeless charm of them is undeniable. The group enjoyed the book and movie and felt that they were ahead of their time in some ways.  The group was impressed by the books, which were unusual for the early 1900’s in that they primarily feature female protagonists who rather than staying at home are instead brave, clever, and actively explore the world around them.  The group was split on which was their favorite of the three books.  I think my favorite was The Marvelous Land of Oz with its twist ending.  Some of the Oz audiobooks, as well as the film Return to Oz, are available from Hoopla.  Or you can read the The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as an ebook from eBCCLS or eLibraryNJ.

David Weber’s On Basilisk Station

on-basilisk-station
On Basilisk Station is the first in the Honor Harrington series.  Honor was conceived as CS Foster’s Horatio Hornblower rewritten as a female spaceship captain.  Honor is sent with her ship to a distant outpost and despite her crew at first feeling demoralized by what they see as a punishment, they are able to turn things around and Honor proves to be a brave and capable leader.  The group enjoyed the clever references to naval history and the twists and turns the plot took.  My favorite character was Nimitz, Honor’s “pet” treecat who through a telepathic link can tell how she is feeling.  There are currently thirteen books in the series so if you are looking for a new series to immerse yourself in over the summer months this might be an enjoyable choice.

Christopher Moore’s Practical Demonkeeping

practical-demonkeeping

Image via Amazon

Practical Demonkeeping is Christopher Moore’s first novel.  Several characters and the town of Pine Cove, California occur in two of his later works, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove and The Stupidest Angel so it is a perfect place to start to get a sense of his quirky, darkly humorous sensibility.  Practical Demonkeeping primarily focuses on a hundred year old immortal, Travis, who accidently released Catch, a human eating demon, and has been trying to minimize the damage Catch causes ever since.  He heads to Pine Cove in hopes of finally banishing Catch.  There are cast of other quirky townies who make the best out of their bad situations, as well as a salt loving genie.  The group felt that the book had a very cinematic quality and several members who were new to his work said they planned to read more of his novels in the future.

Philip K. Dick’s Ubik

ubik
Even if you have not read any of Philip K. Dick’s books, if you are a fan of science fiction you probably have encountered one of the movies based on his work.  In June, we saw another of my husband’s favorite films, Blade Runner (we even have a poster from the movie in our basement hallway), before our Ubik discussion.  Blade Runner is based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and both it and Ubik are set in a near future, and both question the nature of humanity.  Dick is infamous for his mental health problems which included anxiety, paranoia, and hallucinations.  He was able to successfully channel these issues into his works which often have a sense of unease and the possibility that reality is not what it seems. Ubik deals with a group who can block psychics from reading their minds and telling the future, as well as people who are placed in a type of half life, in a surreal limbo between living and death so they can continue to communicate with those they left behind.  The group praised the quality of writing and creativity in the novel.  Ubik is available as an audiobook from Hoopla.

I hope you’ll check out these great science fiction and fantasy works (all are available in print from our library or as an ebook on one our eReaders for loan at the reference desk) and join us on July 20 at 6 PM, when we will be discussing George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones! You can sign up here.  We will even have Game of Thrones themed snacks (not including poisoned wine, of course).

-Written by Aimee Harris, Head of Reference

Staff Picks – British Edition

24 Jun

Greetings! I’m Clay, a part-time library assistant in the Circulation Department of the Hoboken Public Library. I didn’t really intend this staff picks to be a celebration of British pop culture, it just turned out that way. (All items mentioned are available in the BCCLS system.)

Sherlock

sherlock

BBC television series, 2010-continuing

The iconic character Sherlock Holmes is updated to modern-day London, in a world where there is no Arthur Conan Doyle character to emulate–this is an original Sherlock, insufferably arrogant and inarguably brilliant. Creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, who were also behind the successful re-launch of Dr. Who, have created a delightfully sinister London, crawling with evil geniuses a la Holmes’ nemesis Dr. Moriarty (who appears in altered form). The character interplay remains faithful to the original pairing of Holmes and Watson, with every episode making subtle allusion to the Conan Doyle canon without descending into straight homage.

Only nine episodes have appeared–three seasons of three episodes each since 2010–a pace grown all the more leisurely after the show made film stars out of Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock turned dragon) and Martin Freeman (Dr. Watson turned hobbit). Just repeat “quality over quantity” through a British stiff upper lip, while marveling at the mind-blowing end of Series 2 and trust that Gatiss and Moffat can escape from the intriguing corner they painted themselves into at the end of Series 3.

Life on Mars

life-on-mars

BBC television series, 2006-2007

A modern-day cop crashes his car and is thrown back into the 1970s. If that sounds familiar, it’s because this BBC TV series spun off a U.S. version (with a different ending). But this is the superior model.

Chief Inspector Sam Tyler, played by John Simm, is rushing to save his girlfriend from a serial killer when he is hit by a car, as David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” trickles out from his car’s iPod. Coming to, Tyler finds himself sporting a leather jacket and rocking a collar the size of a New York slice–not on Mars but somewhere almost as foreign: the blighted smokestacks and shabby wasteland of industrial Manchester, 33 years in his past. Bowie is still playing, but on an 8-track player in a 1973 model car: He’s been literally knocked into the 1970s.

Stranded without a cell phone or web connection, Tyler must cope with dodgy tape decks and noisy rotary phones. The anachronisms aren’t used as cheap gags, as in the show’s inferior, Tyler-less sequel Ashes to Ashes, but are smoothly incorporated into the gritty action. Besides solving the essential mystery, Tyler must eventually make a wrenching decision–in which world do his true loyalties lie, and what makes for an authentic life, anyway?

It works on many levels: Besides being a conventional good cop-bad cop police procedural, it’s also an ambiguous, sometimes surreal science-fiction mystery and a humorous fish-out-of-water tale with strong, appealing characters. It tells its story in 16 tight episodes over two seasons, topped with perhaps the single most fitting final scene since the dawn of television.

Series 1
Series 2

Watership Down

watership-down

1972 novel

The novel by British author Richard Adams is about a group of bunnies who leave their warren. From that benign description emerges a profound tale that contains everything you could ever want in an adventure story–action, suspense, horror, even a mythos relayed through tales passed generation to generation (and given these are rabbits, that’s a lot of generations), delivered at a thumping pace. Adams’ rabbits could have easily been silly or twee, but the characterizations feel right–like actual rabbits, not humans in fuzzy suits, with their own language and worldview, and a puzzled hatred for a humankind that seems to want to wipe them off the earth. The animated movie is quite impressive too, though definitely not for young children. Hrududu!

Hot Fuzz

hot-fuzz

2007 film

This British comedy throws a control-freak policeman–exiled from London for being too dedicated to his job–into a mercilessly quaint English village that harbors a secret, deadly conspiracy. It’s the middle entry of director Edgar Wright’s thematically connected “Cornetto Trilogy” (named after the cameos made in each of his movies by that British-based frozen treat) alongside Shaun of the Dead and The World’s End.

Your favorite may depend on your favorite genre: Shaun for zombie fans, Hot Fuzz for police procedural/cozy mysteries, The World’s End for a Big Chill type pub-crawl reunion that abruptly turns into….er, something else. They’re all involving, grisly, and hilarious, but while I found Shaun a little short and The World’s End a little long, Hot Fuzz was just right. The director commentaries are well worth the listen, as Wright and his pet actor Simon Pegg (who stars in all three) points out all the little loving, enriching details you took in only subconsciously the first time around.

Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.

clothes-music-boys

2014 autobiography by Viv Albertine

Albertine was guitarist for The Slits, the influential (deep breath) British-reggae-feminist-punk-girl-band, back at a time and place–1970s England–when girls did not play guitars in bands. Albertine escaped an abusive childhood through music, and taught herself to play, albeit crudely. Enthusiasm and energy, not musical virtuosity, was all you needed in the punk era.

The Slits, led by singer Ari Up, still in her teens when the band formed, are a respected obscurity now, best known for their ground-breaking 1979 debut LP Cut. But while never quite making the punk pantheon, Albertine was present during the creation, dating Mick Jones of The Clash and being in a band with Sid Vicious before he joined the Sex Pistols.

Albertine names names in Clothes…Music…Boys, even telling off her (former) manager for insisting she employ a ghostwriter for this autobiography. We’re the beneficiaries: Clothes…Music…Boys is feisty and direct, peppered with earthy, scabrous wit and graphic, brutal self-effacement, and Albertine is blessed with either voluminous diaries or a photographic memory. Sometimes it’s even touching, as when she describes seeing her brutal father, thin and wizened in his coffin, with Albertine and her young daughter the only ones at the funeral: “How sad to be lying there, all dressed up in your Sunday best, and no one wants to come and see you, no one wants to say goodbye.”

Alice in Sunderland

alice-in-sunderland

2007 graphic novel by Brian Talbot

For fans of Lewis Carroll or hard-core Anglo-culture afficionados, this veddy British project makes the case–via an overwhelming collage of fact and opinion delivered by cartoon pastiche, whimsical homage, and historical scrapbook–that it was the industrial Northern town of Sunderland that inspired Carroll’s wondrously nonsensical Wonderland, not the academic atmosphere of Oxford, where he taught and the milieu with which he’s identified. It’s a dizzyingly erudite dose of scattershot history, and if you don’t mind having your brain feel full to bursting, it might be your cup of tea.

Shameless Plug (also British-based):

Death in the Eye, my self-published murder mystery in the cozy Agatha Christie tradition, is available as a Kindle book and a paperback, and through the Hoboken Public Library’s Technology Lending program.

Death in the Eye

From the back of the print edition:

The year is 1924. Gwendolyn Parks, the blind young heiress of Pibble, a grand house outside London, has miraculously regained her eyesight after a tumble down the stairs after a dinner party. But it’s no cause for celebration. For Gwen did not fall — she was pushed, by someone at the party. Yet she tells no one, relying upon the miracle of her reclaimed eyesight to solve the mystery herself.

-Written by Clay Waters, Library Assistant

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