Oh,
hi.
Sorry I didn't see you there.
You just caught me in the middle of my Station Eleven
reread because I am preparing for something very exciting.
Something I've been talking about for years.
Probably.
And it is the launch of my sci-fi podcast,
The End of the World Book Club.
The first two episodes have been recorded.
There are a few in the making still,
and for one of those I need your help.
The very first episode is going to be about Station Eleven.
I mean,
how could it not be?
And I am looking for a short audio clips, 30 to 45 seconds where
you talk about your personal reading experience of Station Eleven.
Did you read it during the pandemic or before it?
Or have you actively avoided it?
What was your experience like?
What did you love about the book?
Did it help you in any way?
Maybe if you haven't read it,
would you consider reading it in the future?
And why would you or why would you not or anything else that you think would be interesting to share in a
30 to 45 second voice clip,
you can email them to books and quills at gmail dot com.
Until I set up a proper email address for the podcast and all the information will be in the
description.
I basically just wanted a space where I could just talk about Sci-fi all the time and also just make
Sci-fi a bit less daunting.
If maybe you've been a bit intimidated by it,
I'll be talking to some of my online friends,
some of my in person friends and to some authors as well.
You can also go to Instagram @endoftheworldbookclubpod.
If you want to get updates on when everything goes live.
Oh,
you can go back to watching the actual video.
I've spent a lot of time recently planning for my sci-fi/
apocalyptic, dystopian book podcast,
and in the process of planning this,
I've actually bought quite a few books.
But of course I have to make some sort of selection,
decide which ones I want to read first,
and I recently saw Jack Edwards do a video where he read the first lines of books that he wants to read,
and Ariel Bissett has also made a few videos where she judges classics based on the first
sentence.
I really liked the idea.
So I've pulled 10 books from my shelves that are either sci-fi or
apocalyptic.
Specifically.
I'm going to read the first sentences just to get a better idea of them,
like I've read the summaries of them before.
But I want to get a little taste of the writing style.
The first one is Wild Seed by Octavia E.
Butler.
I've read The Parable of the Sower and Kindred by this author,
and I would like to read everything she's ever written.
I'm trying to get my mind around the different series.
This says that it's a Patternist novel,
and it's the first on the list,
So I'm not like launching into the middle of a series.
So it starts by saying Book one, Covenant, 1960
Chapter one. Doro discovered the woman by accident when he went to see what was left
of one of his seed villages.
I mean,
the book is called Wild Seed.
It's quite simple,
but it's intriguing,
and it gives you an impression of some sort of bigger plan.
I love the quote from Viola Davis on the front,
"a book that shifted my life. Epic, game changing,
moving and brilliant."
Then there is Virus.
This was a very expensive book to buy.
It's very hard to find by Sakyo Komatsu.
The subtitle is The Day of Resurrection,
and it's translated by Daniel Huddleston.
And it is a classic of Japanese science fiction from 1964
about astronauts on a space mission who discover a virus and bring it back to earth.
OK,
there's an interesting introduction in there.
The first sentence is almost nothing as is the second one.
So I'm just going to do the first,
like very small paragraph,
"Blow" ordered Captain McLeod. "Da Capitain"
said Petty Officer Ivan Mahelovich.
Mahelovich.
red of hair and large of nose, nostrils white like those of some Chinese lion,
had made a conscious choice to answer
in Russian.
He smirked.
It was his way of snubbing his strict American captain,
a man hard in both mind and body.
Interesting writing style,
very direct,
does not seem like it is going to be very difficult to read.
I wonder if it's quite a recent translation.
Yes,
the English translation is from 2012. Then I have Lagoon
By Nnedi Okorafor.
I forgot that I had a proof copy.
It's from 2014.
It's called Lagoon.
I've had this for a long time.
I love this cover.
I think it's great.
Uh,
and it says: a star falls from the sky.
A woman rises from the sea and the world will never be the same.
Got a little octopus there.
"Welcome to Lagos,
Nigeria.
The city takes its name from the Portuguese word for lagoon.
The Portuguese first landed on Lagos Island in the year 1472.
Apparently,
they could not come up with a more creative name,
nor did they think to ask one of the natives for suggestions.
And so the world turns masked by millions of names,
guises and shifting stories has been a beautiful thing to watch.
My designs grow complicated."
Chapter one,
Act one.
Welcome. Prologue,
"Moom M o o m. Exclamation mark.
She slices through the water imagining herself a deadly beam
of black light.
I really like that."
Then we have The War with the Newts.
The author was born in 1890 in a village that was part of the Austro
Hungarian Empire.
One of the key creative figures in the Czechoslovak Republic.
He was a journalist,
travel writer,
novelist and playwright.
This is about the discovery of a giant species of newts that they find in Sumatra and they're really
intelligent and they can use tools.
And then the rest of the world discovers about them.
Chapter one,
The strange behaviour of Captain J. Van Toch. If you were to
look for the little island of Tana Masa on the map,
you would find it right on the equator a bit to the west of Sumatra.
But if on board of the ship Kandong Bandoeng
you were to ask Captain J. Van Toch what is this Tana Masa,
before which he had just dropped anchor, he would curse for a while and then tell you that it is
the dirtiest hole in all of the straits,
even worse than Tana Bala and at least as damned a Pini or Banjak.
Is this all one sentence?
That's basically a whole page.
Wow!
OK,
we'll see where that goes.
I've just flipped to another page and the chapter is called: of the sexual life of the
newts.
I'm assuming there is going to be some like commentary on colonialism.
I have read H.G Wells'
The First Men in the Moon where they travel to the moon and they find
this species of ants that they try and communicate with and like,
go to war with. Very curious We shall see.
It's very fun to get,
like just a little taste of what a book is like. Then we have The Ones We're Meant
to Find. Again
Beautiful cover.
This is a YA book and it definitely has to do with
Climate. It says
If you loved We wWre liars or Black mirror.
Those are interesting comp titles.
I keep having to move a little bit.
Stay out of the sun.
OK,
let's go.
Chapter one. Oh it also has beautiful and papers.
"I wake on my feet. Wind tangled in my hair" I'm gonna give this one another
sentence. "The sand is cold beneath my arches and the tide is rising. White
foam and grey water frothing around my ankles before fizzing through
my toes."
Another water opening doesn't give you too much.
Then there is Blue Ticket.
I have read the previous book by this author.
I think she already has a new one out again.
Author's previous book was.. Yes,
The Water Cure,
which I loved.
One of my favourite books.
I think this one's a bit more like Handmaid's Tale-y
but it's all going to be about the execution,
I think,
And I mean,
the writing in The Water Cure was gorgeous.
Chapter one: Lottery, or part one.
"It began with the allocating of luck,
our bodies pinballs inside a machine.
It was the year of overlapping adolescences when the girls started to faint
and grow tall."
I like that, it works for me.
Her writing is very effective and intense.
I like that as a first start.
OK,
then we have another classic.
I'm reading this for a book club soon as well,
which is why I have it.
This is The Question mark by Muriel
Jaeger,
Written in 1926.
It says Muriel Jaeger,
Dissatisfied with the unrealistic utopian stories of H.
G.
Wells and Edward Bellamy,
Muriel set out to explore the question mark of what a future society might look like
if human nature were truthfully represented.
One of the things I find so interesting about
apocalyptic and dystopian novels is about what it
says that the author thinks about humankind.
It says Muriel helped inaugurate a new genre,
the modern dystopia.
OK,
"I called for Hero,
one who should be typical of the England of 1925 and there appeared
gradually developing out of the obscurity a very unheroic little figure
Guy Martin shoving and dodging his way along the Strand on a
rainy autumn evening."
Big setup.
I wonder if it's going to be very clearly,
almost like an essay like very much: Here's an idea I'm going to show you
instead of it reading more like an ordinary novel.
This is In the Watchful City,
which I was supposed to read for a Book Club,
but never did.
But I bought it anyway.
I know absolutely nothing about this book.
"Anima closes Aer eyes and sees the world,"
and it's the letter like A&E combined.
I'm guessing that's like a pronoun a neo pronoun.
Maybe I'm gonna give you one more sentence because it's good.
"AE borrows the body of a crow in flight."
Some of it is in verse.
OK,
the cover says stories within stories.
Then this is one that I read part of at Uni.
I don't remember too much of it.
Except that it was,
quite intriguing.
So it is The Drowned World.
I do not like these editions.
Uh,
but this is the copy I had at uni.
Great chapter title. "Chapter one: on the
beach at the Ritz.
Soon it would be too hot.
Looking out from the hotel balcony shortly after eight o'clock,
Karens watched the sun rise behind the dense groves of giant gymnosperms"
I'm guessing that's some sort of plant "crowding over the roofs of the abandoned department stores
400 yards away on the east side of the lagoon."
So this is set in a drowned London,
which I think is a very interesting setting.
And finally,
one last proof copy.
This,
came out last year.
It is called Lambda
and it's about aliens again.
Super short sentences
So I'm gonna give it,
two or three,
because the first one is Hello.
"Hello.
How are you?
I'm fine.
Thank you for asking.
Isn't this a lovely day to sit in the living room amongst all the sunlit plants?"
That is not giving me a lot.
Let's see which ones I'm most interested in from this
I think Lagoon is gonna be probably quite adventurous.
Blue Ticket,
Beautiful writing.
I just want to see what this author does with this kind of setup.
Just noticed the really beautiful and papers as well.
So that one. In the Watchful City,
because it seems very experimental and as my classic,
probably The Drowned World.
OK,
definitely think that's given me a bit more of an idea.
I think it's an interesting selection.
So let me know if any of those stood out to you If you've read any of them and I'm going back to my Notion,
Doc,
to keep working on the planning,
I'm hoping to read a lot of sci-fi This year.
I just posted my favourite books of 2022 video.
If you're looking for more recommendations,
that is definitely the one to watch,
and I'll talk to you soon. Does!