Upcoming Discussions
The books listed below are scheduled to be discussed at the group. We're always keen to see new faces so if any of the titles take your fancy please feel free to come along.
Hummingbird Salamander (Jeff VanderMeer)
29 March 2023 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
A speculative thriller about the end of all things, set in the Pacific Northwest. A harrowing descent into a secret world.
'Jane Smith' receives an unexplained envelope containing the key to a storage unit. And inside that storage unit is a taxidermy hummingbird and directions to a taxidermy salamander. Somehow, this bizarre treasure hunt, that Jane never expected or asked for, sets in motion a series of events that quickly put her and her family in danger.
As she desperately seeks answers, she discovers time is running out – for her and possibly for the world.
The Memory Police (Yoko Ogawa)
26 April 2023 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Hat, ribbon, bird rose.
To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.
When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn't forget, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?
Machines Like Me (Ian McEwan)
31 May 2023 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda's assistance, he co-designs Adam's personality.
This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever - and soon a love triangle forms, which leads Charlie, Miranda and Adam to a profound moral dilemma. Can you design the perfect partner? What makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives?
Aztec Century (Christopher Evans)
28 June 2023 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Britain has fallen to the technological might of the Aztec Empire whose armies have rampaged across the globe. Now, for the first time in a millennium, the British are a subject race.
Inevitably there is resistance - and among those determined to fight the invaders is Princess Catherine, elder daughter of the British monarch. But she is torn between her patriotism and her growing involvement, political and personal, with the Aztecs - and with one Aztec in particular. Then her sister is arrested and exiled for her part in an alleged terrorist attack - and Catherine finds herself walking a perilous tightrope...
Sweeping from occupied Britain to the horrors of the Russian front and the savage splendour of the imperial capital in Mexico, Aztec Century is a magnificent novel of war, politics, intrigue and romance, set in a world that is both familiar - and terrifyingly alien.
The Kaiju Preservation Society (John Scalzi)
26 July 2023 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Jamie’s dream was to hit the big time at a New York tech start-up. Jamie’s reality was a humiliating lay-off, then a low-wage job as a takeaway delivery driver. During a pandemic too. Things look beyond grim, until a chance delivery to an old acquaintance. Tom has an urgent vacancy on his team: the pay is great and Jamie has debts – it’s a no-brainer choice. Yet, once again, reality fails to match expectations. Only this time it could be fatal.
It seems Tom’s ‘animal rights organization’ is way more than it appears. The animals aren’t even on Earth – or not our Earth, anyway. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures roam a tropical, human-free world. And although Kaiju are their universe’s largest and most dangerous animal, they need support to survive.
Tom’s ‘Kaiju Preservation Society’ wants to help. However, others want to profit. Unless they’re stopped, the walls between our worlds could fall – and the consequences would be devastating.
The Book Eaters (Sunyi Dean)
30 August 2023 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
The last of their lines, they exist on the fringes of society and subsist on a diet of stories and legends.
Children are rare and their numbers have dwindled, so when Devon Fairweather’s second child is born a dreaded Mind Eater – a perversion of her own kind, who consumes not stories but the minds and souls of humans – she flees before he can be turned into a weapon for the family… or worse.
Living among humans and finding prey for her son, Devon seeks a cure for his hunger. But time is running out – for her family want her back, and with every soul her son consumes he loses a little more of himself…
This is a story of escape, a mother’s savage devotion and a queer love that will electrify readers looking for something beguiling, thrilling, strange and new.
Camp Concentration (Thomas M. Disch)
27 September 2023 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Louis Sacchetti is imprisoned for refusing to enlist in the war against Third World guerillas. In the underground Camp Archimedes, a military prison, he and other inmates are used in a perverse scientific experiment, and infected with a syphilis-like spirochete that raises intelligence to incredible heights while causing decay and death. Sacchetti himself tells his tale: “A difficult feat to bring off,” as David Pringle has written, “but the degree to which Disch succeeds is nevertheless astonishing.”
Deep Wheel Orcadia (Harry Josephine Giles)
25 October 2023 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Astrid is returning home from art school on Mars, looking for inspiration. Darling is fleeing a life that never fit, searching for somewhere to hide. They meet on Deep Wheel Orcadia, a distant space station struggling for survival as the pace of change threatens to leave the community behind.
Deep Wheel Orcadia is a magical first: a science-fiction verse-novel written in the Orkney dialect. This unique adventure in minority language poetry comes with a parallel translation into playful and vivid English, so the reader will miss no nuance of the original. The rich and varied cast weaves a compelling, lyric and effortlessly readable story around place and belonging, work and economy, generation and gender politics, love and desire – all with the lightness of touch, fluency and musicality one might expect of one the most talented poets to have emerged from Scotland in recent years. Hailing from Orkney, Harry Josephine Giles is widely known as a fine poet and spellbindingly original performer of their own work; Deep Wheel Orcadia now strikes out into audacious new space.
Conan - Blood of the Serpent (S. M. Stirling)
29 November 2023 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
As sword for hire for a mercenary troop, Conan finds himself in Sukhmet, a filthy backwater town south of the River Styx considered “the arse-end of Stygia.” Serving in the company known as Zarallo’s Free Companions, he fights alongside soldiers of fortune from Zingara, Koth, Shem, and other lands?a hard-handed band of killers loyal to anyone who pays them well.
In a Sukhmet tavern he encounters one soldier in particular?Valeria of the Red Brotherhood, a veteran of freebooters with whom Conan also sailed, launching raids out of the Barachan Isles on the Western Sea. Valeria’s reputation is that of a deadly swordswoman, a notoriety she quickly proves to be accurate. When she runs afoul of an exiled Stygian noble, however, things take a deadly turn, embroiling them both in the schemes of a priest of the serpent god Set.
The Starless Sea (Erin Morgenstern)
31 January 2024 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
When Zachary Rawlins stumbles across a mysterious book containing details from his own life among its pages, it leads him on a quest unlike any other.
Following the clues inside, he is guided to a masquerade ball, a dangerous secret club, and finally to an ancient library hidden far beneath the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians - it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes across time, and of stories whispered by the dead.
But when the library is threatened, Zachary must race through its twisting tunnels and sweetly soaked shores, searching for the end of his story.