The Secret Library: Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan
When we found Ed Dale roaming through the The Secret Library stacks in a daze, we naturally assumed that one of the test subjects from the Cerebral Transference Laboratory had wandered in after the Matter Phase-Shift Emitter prototype in the adjacent lab proved more powerful than we originally anticipated, rendering many of the walls and floors on three sublevels temporarily immaterial. It was only after a minion pointed out Mr. Dale’s lack of cranial sutures that we realized our misapprehension.
As it happens, Mr. Dale was seeking the discussion group for Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan. In a moment of uncommon benevolence, we decided to let Ed join in the discussion rather than turning him over to our new android librarian, who shushes noisy patrons with depleted uranium bullets and singularity grenades and collects overdue fees with a 7 gauge hypodermic needle.
The Discussion
Addenda
Chris’ Recent Reads
Ed’s Recent Reads
Kris’ Recent Reads
Series We Can’t Seem to Finish
Next Time on The Secret Library
Our next selection from The Secret Library comes to us courtesy of Ken Newquist, host of the Nuketown Radio Active podcast. Regular listeners will recall our interrogation of Mr. Newquist from Episode 0006, though it is highly unlikely that Mr. Newquist will.
Mr. Newquist has chosen The Sky People, by S.M. Stirling. Our intelligence reports indicate that the book is a combination of three genres that hold a strange allure to your overlords: alternate-history science fiction and pulp.
From the front flap of the hardcover edition:
Marc Vitrac was born in Louisiana in the early 1960s, about the time the first interplanetary probes delivered the news that Mars and Venus were teeming with life—even human life. At that point, the “Space Race” became the central preoccupation of the great powers of the world.
Now, in 1988, Marc has been assigned to Jamestown, the U.S.-Commonwealth base on Venus, near the great Venusian city of Kartahown. Set in a countryside swarming with sabertooths and dinosaurs, Jamestown is home to a small band of American and allied scientist-adventurers.
But there are flies in this ointment—and not only the Venusian dragonflies, with their yard-wide wings. The biologists studying Venus’s life are puzzled by the way it not only resembles that on Earth, but is virtually identical to it. The EastBloc has its own base at Cosmograd, in the highlands to the south, and relations are frosty. And attractive young geologist Cynthia Whitlock seems impervious to Marc’s Cajun charm.
Meanwhile, at the western end of the continent, Teesa of the Cloud Mountain People leads her tribe in a conflict with the Neanderthal-like beastmen who have seized her folk’s sacred caves. Then an EastBloc shuttle crashes nearby, and the beastmen acquire new knowledge…and AK-47s.
Jamestown sends its long-range blimp to rescue the downed EastBloc cosmonauts, little suspecting that the answer to the jungle planet’s mysteries may lie there, among tribal conflicts and traces of a power that made Earth’s vaunted science seem as primitive as the tribefolk’s blowguns. As if that weren’t enough, there’s an enemy agent on board the airship…
Minions in the new Dirigible Assault Division should note that The Sky People is required reading. We will be discussing the book sometime in May. Check out our community and official group on GoodReads to participate in the online discussion.
And another thing…
Thanks to Troy over at GoodReads, we have our first graphic novel selection: Shooting War by Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman . This graphic novel was originally published as a serialized web comic, which was greatly expanded for the hardcover edition from Grand Central Publishing. The Eisner-nominated web comic is still available online.
Shooting War is the near-future story of Jimmy Burns, a video blogger who is in the right place at the wrong time and becomes an overnight Internet celebrity. Soon, Jimmy is blogging from a war-torn, occupied Iraq instead of the Starbucks around the corner.
The Secret Library Nominated Novels
The Secret Library Nominated Graphic Novels
Podcasts We Like
Miscellany
Congratulations
Special Thanks
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Episode 0048: The Great Old Pumpkin