Scheduled Meetings

Our meetings are open to the public at no charge, although donations to help cover the costs are appreciated.

---- 2008 ----

April 30, 2008

• Guest/program: Author Jude-Marie Green
  
  Jude-Marie Green has been an astronaut**, plumber**, show-horse trainer*, PTA mother*, recognized fabrics artist*, marathoner*, sky-jumper**, and astronomer**. Still she manages to write fiction that is even more fantastic than her life.
  
  Living in Southern California with her cats and books, she watches too many movies and reads too many books, resulting in stronger eyeglass prescriptions every year. She is considered an emerging fantasist, with short-fiction sales to
  'Say, Why Aren't We Crying?',Abyss & Apex,
  Ideomancer, Visual Journeys,
  Legends of the Mountain State, and Desolate Places.
  She longs to be Stephen King when she grows up.*
  
  *Very true. **Not so true.
  
  
• READING ORBIT- OCSFC Book Club:
  This month's book is "Songs of Distant Earth" by Arthur C. Clarke
  
  Published 1986 (241 pages) When asked for his favorite work, Arthur mentioned this book.
  
  It is the story of the last ship to leave a doomed earth making a pit stop for some water on the previously colonized ocean world of Thalassa, before heading on further to the barren world of Sagan 2.
  
  Availability: Cheap Amazon, Local Library

May 28, 2008

• Guest/program: Author Stephen Woodworth
  
  Stephen was the 1st Place winner of the "Writers if the Future Contest" in 1992.
  His publications include a dozen short stories, two novellas, and four novels.
  
  His most recent novel is "From Black Roooms" released on Halloween of 2006 by Bantam Books.
  
  Visit his MySpace web-site for more current information.
  
  
• READING ORBIT- OCSFC Book Club:
  This month's book is Nebula Award winner "Stories of Your Life" by Ted_Chiang
  
  Collected here for the first time, Ted Chiang's award-winning stories--recipients of the Nebula, Sturgeon, Campbell, and Asimov awards--offer a feast of science, speculation, humanity, and lyricism. Chiang has the gift that lies at the heart of good science fiction: a human story, beautifully told, in which the science is an expression of the deeper issues that the characters must confront.
  
  Availability: Cheap Amazon, paperback, may have difficulty finding it in libraries.

June 25, 2008

• Guest/program: Author Shauna Roberts
  
  We will have a publication party with signing for Shauna's latest..
  
  
• READING ORBIT- OCSFC Book Club:
  This month's book is "Paris in the Twentieth Century" by Jules Verne
  
  In 1863, Jules Verne was a young writer with one published novel under his belt and a new multibook contract with a prominent French publisher in hand. The publisher, however, rejected Verne's second manuscript, opting to bring out his Journey to the Center of the Earth instead. That manuscript apparently disappeared into a drawer, not to see the light of day again until it was rediscovered and published in 1994. Now it has been rendered into English by the eminent poet and translator Richard Howard. Verne's early books tend to feature adventure plots and a positive attitude towards technology. This novel, however, shows Verne in a darker, frankly dystopian mood. His mid-20th century Paris is an enormously wealthy society, a place of technological wonders, but, like Huxley's Brave New World, it is also a society without meaningful art.
  
  Availability: Amazon $10.00, paperback, In libraries.

July 30, 2008

• Guest/program: TBD
  
  TBD.
  
  
• READING ORBIT- OCSFC Book Club:
  This month's book is "The Anubis Gates" by Tim Powers (400 pages)
  
  Author Tim Powers evokes 17th-century England with a combination of meticulously researched historic detail and imaginative flights in this sci-fi tale of time travel. Winner of the 1984 Philip K. Dick Award. Steeping together in this time-warp stew are such characters as an unassuming Coleridge scholar, ancient gods, wizards, the Knights Templar, werewolves, and other quasi-mortals, all wrapped in the organizing fabric of Egyptian mythology.
  
  Availability: Amazon $13.95, paperback, may have trouble finding a library

August 27, 2008

• Guest/program: TBD
  
  TBD.
  
  
• READING ORBIT- OCSFC Book Club:
  This month's book is Nebula Award winner "Stations of the Tide" by Michael Swanwick
  
  As the planet Miranda slowly drowns under the weight of its own tides, a bureaucrat from the Division of Technology Transfer conducts an investigation into the life of a local celebrity, a "magician" who possesses proscribed technology and whose personal powers hold much of the dying planet in thrall. Swanwick demonstrates his mastery of understated drama in a novel that brings a surrealistic approach to "hard" sf.
  
  Availability: Amazon paperback, In libraries 252 pages Published 1991

September 24, 2008

• Guest/program: TBD
  
  TBD.
  
  
• READING ORBIT- OCSFC Book Club:
  This month's book is "Nightwings" by Robert Silverberg (240 pages)
  
  This is a classic Silverberg fantasy, considered his best work.
  
  Availability: Amazon paperback, ICurrent paperback, may have trouble finding it in libraries.

Where we meet..

See you at a meeting soon!