I was under the weather for this month's meeting of the Sky-Fi Bookclub, but we did get a report of the meeting including the constellations forming around Strange Stars by Jason Heller. I have to say that this was not a book I was able to get into. While it dives deep into the parallels between the growth of Science Fiction in literature and music during the 60's, 70's and 80's (maybe more but I gave up reading at some point). The content is interesting, and broadly researched, but the writing is repetitive and drawn out.
A fee strange stars of the more science variety.
Since I have not much else to share on this one, here are some notes from Paul:
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Minutes are going to be pretty slim because, well, the meeting was pretty slim. Seth, Viktoria, and Myself in attendance, with only one of us having cracked the book.
I actually am really enjoying it (though, admittedly, I'm only halfway in). I like the story being broken up into annual chapters and I'll basically jump at any excuse to revisit "Starless and Bible Black" & "Space Ritual 2." In fact, that's what I enjoy so much about it - listening along. There are a lot of things I was only familiar with tangentially (looking at you Pearls Before Swine & Emerson Lake and Palmer) and I like piecing them together with the other more familiar characters.
Currently digging into the Kraftwerk/ Krautrock section and would kindly refer everyone to Julian Cope's "Krautrocksampler" and Rob Young's "All Gates Are Open" for a deeper dive. Also, I have become very curious about one Mr. Michael Moorcock, whom I've never read. I especially like his characterizations of Hawkwind as "barbarians who got hold of loads of electrical gear"
We talked a lot about TV and Gainesville and working with shitty people. We were going to pick one of Nate's suggestions, all of which looked interesting - but after the conversation diverted itself to Los Angeles we settled upon Steve Erickson's Shadowbahn, in which the Twin Towers magically reappear in the Badlands and Elvis' stillborn twin brother is a main character. Time to get weird.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/steve-ericksons-shadowbahn-is-the-best-kind-of-experimental-novel/2017/02/06/599d67d0-e724-11e6-b82f-687d6e6a3e7c_story.html?utm_term=.1faec11977e5
We had some virtual input from Joe:
For some reason, Shadowbahn reminded me of Bubba Ho-tep.
For those that haven’t seen it: https://film.avclub.com/bubba-ho-tep-1798198980
John in Denver’s at the end may be correct.
Take the leap into the unknown,
Robert