But We Digress!, Pt. 1
Posted by: Neil Hollands
I was nervous as the meeting of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group at Williamsburg Regional Library started earlier this week. Our theme this month was mad scientists and evil geniuses, but a quick scan of my readers indicated that several hadn’t finished a book and others were not happy with the book they had completed. It looked like a recipe for trouble.
But one of the many things I like about the thematic format for book groups is its flexibility. If people love what they read, we focus on it closely. When they don’t, we digress… and how!
Bud announced his new article on the Baen site about SF writer Murray Leinster, which led to discussion of how Leinster came by his awkward nom de plume, and a quick scan of strange pen names. Jim had been on a binge of Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels. He particularly recommended Ender’s Game, Ender’s Shadow, and the new Ender in Exile. This sequence is completely out of series order but works well as a reading order. We were off topic, but the discussion was great!
I touted Douglas Coupland’s new Generation A, inducing a discussion of the term Generation X and whether Coupland had 
originated or just popularized it, and Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World which led us to the influence of hard-boiled detective fiction on speculative writers. Bob had Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke. I love to see graphic novels come out at book group because they make engaging pass-arounds. Bolland’s artwork for this book is exceptional: bright and detailed. Our discussion of this book christened Moore as the best overall comic writer, just nosing out Frank Miller.
Crystal and Jim, had both been largely thwarted by Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space, a fat book strong on atmosphere but ponderously slow and ultimately a bit lacking in plot. Normally this much negativity from two of the group’s most dependable readers would have been 
a meeting killer, but instead it led to an interesting debate about why books were getting bigger and whether that was good for the genres or not.
Donald had The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells which led to a humorous discussion of the merits and failures of its different film adaptations. I didn’t even catch the title of Don’s book, but it led to another funny digression on why there were so many mad scientists and so few mad engineers. Mary introduced us to the truly odd ouevre of James Morrow, whose Towing Jehovah series takes literally the idea that God is dead (or is he?), stiff and being towed to an Arctic grave. Carolyn had just gotten started with
Peter Ackroyd’s new book, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, but it did start a discussion of Frankenstein spinoffs.
When it was all said and done, we hadn’t made a dent in the topic of mad scientists, but the meeting was still a success.
The question for book groups is when to encourage sidetracks and when to shut them down–but this post is long enough that your mind is probably digressing too. I’ll return to this topic next week.
