G.X. Todd's Blog

All the information is in the blog title, but if you didn’t quite catch it, this month we’ll be intrepidly exploring one of URSULA K. LE GUIN’s science fiction worlds. Now, I could list the extensive selection of awards this lady has won or been nominated for over the years to give you some idea of how important a writer Le Guin is, but we’re all busy people and no one needs to be reading a 2000 word essay, especially when her Wikipedia page covers all the bases.

Furthermore, because our “jump on, jump off” Read Along book group is called #ReadWomenSF, Le Guin’s Earthsea books are unfortunately out of the picture (they fall into straight-up fantasy), so here are our four SF options for May. (As ever, Amazon links are in the titles (and don’t forget to check your local library for a copy if you’d rather borrow it).)

The Dispossessed

[image error]Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life–Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Urras, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.

The Left Hand of Darkness

[image error]Genly Ai is an ethnologist observing the people of the planet Gethen, a world perpetually in winter. The people there are androgynous, normally neuter, but they can become male ot female at the peak of their sexual cycle. They seem to Genly Ai alien, unsophisticated and confusing. But he is drawn into the complex politics of the planet and, during a long, tortuous journey across the ice with a politician who has fallen from favour and has been outcast, he loses his professional detachment and reaches a painful understanding of the true nature of Gethenians and, in a moving and memorable sequence, even finds love…

The Lathe of Heaven

[image error]George Orr is a man who discovers he has the peculiar ability to dream things into being — for better or for worse. In desperation, he consults a psychotherapist who promises to help him — but who, it soon becomes clear, has his own plans for George and his dreams.

The Lathe of Heaven is a dark vision and a warning — a fable of power uncontrolled and uncontrollable. It is a truly prescient and startling view of humanity, and the consequences of playing God.

The Word for World is Forest

[image error]When the inhabitants of a peaceful world are conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens, their existence is irrevocably altered. Forced into servitude, the Athsheans find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters.

Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by Selver, to retaliate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations of their society. For every blow against the invaders is a blow to the humanity of the Athsheans. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back.

_________________________

Voting will be on my pinned tweet until 23:59 on 3rd May, but feel free to leave a comment on here or on my Facebook page if you don’t use Twitter. We’ll meet on Twitter (using the hashtag #ReadWomenSF) for our usual chat on the last Monday of the month, the 27th May at 8pm (BST). I think that’s everything. Go get voting!

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who entered or shared the competition to win four titles from our #ReadWomenSF’s reading list. I had some really great book recommendations come through. I’ve picked a winner, though, and it goes to a Twitter user by the name of @LM_Towton. Congratulations! I’ll be posting through your prize just as soon as I get down to the post office.

From the science fiction books recommended, I’ve made a list of four that we’ll vote on for our April book, and we will get cracking reading it as soon as it’s decided on. The poll will be up on my pinned tweet until tomorrow lunch–time(ish). Our Twitter chat for the book will be set for Monday 29th April at 8pm (UTC). So, without further ado, here are the four books to pick from (Amazon links in the titles):

[image error]The Children of Men by P.D. James

Under the despotic rule of Xan Lyppiatt, the Warden of England, the old are despairing and the young cruel. Theo Faren, a cousin of the Warden, lives a solitary life in this ominous atmosphere. That is, until a chance encounter with a young woman leads him into contact with a group of dissenters. Suddenly his life is changed irrevocably, as he faces agonising choices which could affect the future of mankind.

PD James is the world’s pre-eminent crime writer, most famous for her Adam Dalgliesh mysteries and for her bestselling titles Death Comes to Pemberley and The Murder Room. Children of Men was adapted into a hit film in 2006, directed by Alfonso Cuarón the film starred Clive Owen, Michael Caine and Julianne Moore.

[image error]The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North

My name is Hope Arden. I am the girl the world forgets.

It started when I was sixteen years old.

A father forgetting to drive me to school. A mother setting the table for three, not four. A friend who looks at me and sees a stranger.

No matter what I do, the words I say, the crimes I commit – you will never remember who I am.

That makes my life tricky. It also makes me dangerous . . .

The Sudden Appearance of Hope is the tale of a girl no one remembers, yet her story will stay with you for ever.

[image error]The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

‘I believe in the resistance as I believe there can be no light without shadow; or rather, no shadow unless there is also light.’

Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead, a religious totalitarian state in what was formerly known as the United States. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford – her assigned name, Offred, means ‘of Fred’. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs.

Masterfully conceived and executed, this haunting vision of the future places Margaret Atwood at the forefront of dystopian fiction.

[image error]Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is a bold vision of a dystopian future, frighteningly real, perfect for fans of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.

What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.

One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in North America. The world will never be the same again.

Twenty years later Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling Symphony, performs Shakespeare in the settlements that have grown up since the collapse. But then her newly hopeful world is threatened.

If civilization was lost, what would you preserve? And how far would you go to protect it?

________________________________

May will be our Ursula K. Le Guin month, so we’ll be picking from one of her science fiction novels (most likely from her Hainish Cycle), so you don’t want to miss that! But, for now, happy voting.

#ReadWomenSF

Hallo! I’m BACK. The break over Christmas turned into a three month hiatus (because writing and deadlines), but I’m pretty confident all will be forgiven because I return with a BOOK GIVEAWAY.

To mark #ReadWomenSF’s 1st year anniversary, I’ll be giving away four titles from our current Reading List (which you can find here). Three are books we’ve already read as part of our #ReadWomenSF Read Along, and the fourth is a book I’m shamelessly adding because I wrote it and I’m running this giveaway so I can do what I want. All you have to do to enter is reply to me on here, on Twitter, or on my FB author page with one science fiction book written by a female author that you love and tell me the reason why you’ve chosen it. Extra brownie points go to anyone who names a book that isn’t already on our Reading List. One entry per person, but feel free to tag a friend or family member in to have a go, and you can share (fight) over the books between yourselves when you win! I will pick the winner based on entirely subjective and biased reasons.

Closing date is 1st April 23:59 (GMT), so you haven’t got long. It’s open internationally, even though it’s going to cost me an arm and a leg to post such a heavy package overseas. Consider it my apology for making you all wait so long to get this reading group going again. SPEAKING OF WHICH, everyone reading this is very welcome to join our Read Along #ReadWomenSF group! More info about it here. From the comp entrees, I will pick out four books that we’ll take a vote on for our April read. I’ll write a blog post detailing said book choices (inc their blurbs) and stick the voting poll on my pinned tweet on the 2nd April.

I hope that all makes sense. Here are the lovely books you could win:

(Nb. That’s just a photo of Octavia Butler. You don’t get to win her.)

For November’s #ReadWomenSF, we’ll be reading Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson (see blurb below). We had three top books to choose from, though, all picked out for us by @janeoreilly, and they’re definitely worth a look; I’ve left their blurbs and whatnot below, too, if you’d like to add them to your TBR lists.

We’ll be meeting for our Twitter chat at 8pm (GMT) on Monday 26th November – simply follow the hashtag #ReadWomenSF or follow me @gemtodd. This will be our last meet up of 2018 as we’ll break for Christmas and meet again in the new year. Anyone without Twitter, feel free to leave your comments on this blog post, on my twitter, or over on my Facebook page and I’ll be sure to add your thoughts to our discussion.

Happy reading!

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson

[image error]The rich and privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways–farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother. She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends.

_______________________

The Quantum Rose by Catherine Asaro

[image error] Nebula Award-winning book.

Available blurb: A new chapter in the Saga of the Skolian Empire finds Kamoj Quanta Argali, a young noblewoman, agreeing to marry a powerful stranger in order to save her people from starvation, in a novel that first appeared in serial form in Analog. Reprint.

The Gate to Women’s Country by Sheri S. Tepper

[image error]The Gate to Women’s Country tells of a society that exists three hundred years after our own has nearly destroyed itself. Now, male warriors are separated from women at an early age and live in garrisons plotting futilely for the battles which must never be fought again. Inside the women’s towns, education, arts and science flourish. But for some like Stavia, there is more to see. Her sojourn with the man she is forbidden to love brings into sharp focus the contradictions that define their lives.

And when tragedy strikes, Stavia is faced with a decision she never thought she would make – a decision that could forever change their world …

The Gate to Women’s Country is a novel that rivals Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in scope, impact, and the sheer power of its storytelling.

____________________

For November’s #ReadWomenSF book choice, we’ll be voting on three top books picked out for us by @janeoreilly. I’m sure you know how it works by now: voting will be on my pinned tweet on Twitter (@gemtodd) until 00:59 on Tuesday 30th October. Anyone without Twitter, feel free to leave your choice in the comments below or on my Facebook post

For this month’s #ReadWomenSF, the lovely Carol (@JupitersGhost) picked three great books for us to choose from (and I urge you all to add them to your TBR piles). As fate would have it, the author we’ve voted to read for October was on the very panel that inspired this reading group! Very fitting. So we’ll be getting stuck into Gemsigns by Stephanie Saulter over the next four weeks. All blurb information is below, and you can find Amazon links in the titles. Gemsigns is only 99p on Kindle right now, too! So get clicking.

We’ll be meeting on the last Monday of the month for our Twitter chat, so that’ll be at 8pm on Monday 29th October – please stick it in your diaries.

__________________

Gemsigns by Stephanie Saulter (October’s read)

[image error]They were created to save humanity. Now they must fight to save themselves.

For years the human race was under attack from a deadly Syndrome, but when a cure was found – in the form of genetically engineered human beings, Gems – the line between survival and ethics was radically altered.

Now the Gems are fighting for their freedom, from the oppression of the companies that created them, and against the Norms who see them as slaves. And a conference at which Dr Eli Walker has been commissioned to present his findings on the Gems is the key to that freedom.

But with the Gemtech companies fighting to keep the Gems enslaved, and the horrifying godgangs determined to rid the earth of these ‘unholy’ creations, the Gems are up against forces that may just be too powerful to oppose.

_______________________

Osiris: The Osiris Project by E. J. Swift

[image error]Nobody leaves Osiris.

Adelaide Rechnov

Wealthy socialite and granddaughter of the Architect, she spends her time in pointless luxury, rebelling against her family in a series of jaded social extravagances and scandals until her twin brother disappears in mysterious circumstances.

Vikram Bai

He lives in the Western Quarter, home to the poor descendants of storm refugees and effectively quarantined from the wealthy elite. His people live with cold and starvation, but the coming brutal winter promises civil unrest, and a return to the riots of previous years.

As tensions rise in the city, can Adelaide and Vikram bridge the divide at the heart of Osiris before conspiracies bring them to the edge of disaster?

Empire of Dust by Jacey Bedford (Please note, I can’t seem to find an ebook version of this title.)

[image error]To combat manipulative megacorporations with telepathic technology, two heroes must rebel, overthrowing the enemy’s oppressive influence in the first book in this exciting sci-fi adventure

Mega corporations, more powerful than any one planetary government, use their agents to race each other for resources across the galaxy. The agents, or psi-techs, are implanted with telepath technology. The psi-techs are bound to the mega-corps — that is, if they want to retain their sanity.

Cara Carlinni is an impossible thing – a runaway psi-tech. She knows Alphacorp can find its implant-augmented telepaths, anywhere, anytime, mind-to-mind. So even though it’s driving her half-crazy, she’s powered down and has been surviving on tranqs and willpower. So far, so good. It’s been almost a year, and her mind is still her own.

She’s on the run from Ari van Blaiden, a powerful executive, after discovering massive corruption in Alphacorp. Cara barely escapes his forces, yet again, on a backwater planet, and gets out just in time due to the help of straight-laced Ben Benjamin, a psi-tech Navigator for Alphacorp’s biggest company rival.

Cara and Ben struggle to survive a star-spanning manhunt, black-ops raids, and fleets of resource-hungry raiders. Betrayal follows betrayal, and friends become enemies. Suddenly the most important skill is knowing whom to trust.

_____________________

For this month’s #ReadWomenSF, the lovely Carol (@JupitersGhost) has picked three great books for us to choose from. As fate would have it, one of the authors she’s picked was on the very panel that inspired this reading group!

Anyhow, please see the blurbs below (Amazon links, as ever, are in the titles) and vote on the book you’d most like to read on my pinned tweet @gemtodd. Don’t use Twitter? Just comment on here. We’ll be meeting on the last Monday of the month at 8pm, so that’ll be the 29th October.

Gemsigns by Stephanie Saulter

[image error]They were created to save humanity. Now they must fight to save themselves.

For years the human race was under attack from a deadly Syndrome, but when a cure was found – in the form of genetically engineered human beings, Gems – the line between survival and ethics was radically altered.

Now the Gems are fighting for their freedom, from the oppression of the companies that created them, and against the Norms who see them as slaves. And a conference at which Dr Eli Walker has been commissioned to present his findings on the Gems is the key to that freedom.

But with the Gemtech companies fighting to keep the Gems enslaved, and the horrifying godgangs determined to rid the earth of these ‘unholy’ creations, the Gems are up against forces that may just be too powerful to oppose.

Osiris: The Osiris Project by E. J. Swift

[image error]Nobody leaves Osiris.

Adelaide Rechnov

Wealthy socialite and granddaughter of the Architect, she spends her time in pointless luxury, rebelling against her family in a series of jaded social extravagances and scandals until her twin brother disappears in mysterious circumstances.

Vikram Bai

He lives in the Western Quarter, home to the poor descendants of storm refugees and effectively quarantined from the wealthy elite. His people live with cold and starvation, but the coming brutal winter promises civil unrest, and a return to the riots of previous years.

As tensions rise in the city, can Adelaide and Vikram bridge the divide at the heart of Osiris before conspiracies bring them to the edge of disaster?

Empire of Dust by Jacey Bedford (Please note, I can’t seem to find an ebook version of this title.)

[image error]To combat manipulative megacorporations with telepathic technology, two heroes must rebel, overthrowing the enemy’s oppressive influence in the first book in this exciting sci-fi adventure

Mega corporations, more powerful than any one planetary government, use their agents to race each other for resources across the galaxy. The agents, or psi-techs, are implanted with telepath technology. The psi-techs are bound to the mega-corps — that is, if they want to retain their sanity.

Cara Carlinni is an impossible thing – a runaway psi-tech. She knows Alphacorp can find its implant-augmented telepaths, anywhere, anytime, mind-to-mind. So even though it’s driving her half-crazy, she’s powered down and has been surviving on tranqs and willpower. So far, so good. It’s been almost a year, and her mind is still her own.

She’s on the run from Ari van Blaiden, a powerful executive, after discovering massive corruption in Alphacorp. Cara barely escapes his forces, yet again, on a backwater planet, and gets out just in time due to the help of straight-laced Ben Benjamin, a psi-tech Navigator for Alphacorp’s biggest company rival.

Cara and Ben struggle to survive a star-spanning manhunt, black-ops raids, and fleets of resource-hungry raiders. Betrayal follows betrayal, and friends become enemies. Suddenly the most important skill is knowing whom to trust.

The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley [WILDCARD (WC)]

[image error]

Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is travelling in the seams between the stars. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion. Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family. She is told she is their salvation – the only person capable of boarding the Mokshi, a world-ship with the power to leave the Legion. But Zan’s new family is not the only one desperate to gain control of the prized ship. Zan must choose sides in a genocidal campaign that will take her from the edges of the Legion’s gravity well to the very belly of the world. Zan will soon learn that she carries the seeds of the Legion’s destruction – and its possible salvation.

_____________________

Voting will be open on my pinned tweet until 23:59 on 2/10/18. Pick wisely, fellow readers. And don’t forget to mark your diaries with the date Monday 29th October at 8pm for our Twitter chat.

As the Man Booker Prize shortlist is being announced on the 20th September, this month’s #ReadWomenSF will be The Water Cure – the only sci-fi novel written by a woman nominated for this year’s longlist. The Amazon link is provided in the title below, but please do pop to your local library if you can’t purchase a copy.

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh (226 pages).

[image error]

Imagine a world very close to our own: where women are not safe in their bodies, where desperate measures are required to raise a daughter. This is the story of Grace, Lia and Sky, kept apart from the world for their own good and taught the terrible things that every woman must learn about love. And it is the story of the men who come to find them – three strangers washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent, trailing desire and destruction in their wake.

The Water Cure is a fever dream, a blazing vision of suffering, sisterhood and transformation.

______________________

Our Twitter chat is scheduled for 8pm BST on Monday 1st October 2018. It’s a short book, so will be a nice couple of afternoon reads with a cup of tea; if you’ve been wanting to jump aboard our #ReadWomenSF “Read Along” but didn’t have the time or the space in your TBR pile, then this is the book for you!

To follow reading progress or for general updates, please do follow me on Twitter @gemtodd. If you don’t have Twitter, you can always leave a comment on here or on my facebook page. Thanks, and let’s get reading!

We’re running late this month for book voting, so I’m going to keep the choices to short works, if possible. I was looking at the Not the Man Booker Prize list for 2018 and found two that met our #ReadWomenSF criteria, and those are:

The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh (226 pages) – longlisted.

[image error]

Imagine a world very close to our own: where women are not safe in their bodies, where desperate measures are required to raise a daughter. This is the story of Grace, Lia and Sky, kept apart from the world for their own good and taught the terrible things that every woman must learn about love. And it is the story of the men who come to find them – three strangers washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent, trailing desire and destruction in their wake.

The Water Cure is a fever dream, a blazing vision of suffering, sisterhood and transformation.

Sealed by Naomi Booth (157 pages) – shortlisted.

[image error]

“We came out here to begin again. We came out here for the clear air and a fresh start. No one said to us: beware of fresh starts. No one said to us: god knows what will begin.”

Timely and suspenseful, Sealed is a gripping modern fable on motherhood. A terrifying portrait of ordinary people under threat from their own bodies and from the world around them. With elements of speculative fiction and the macabre, this is also an unforgettable story about a mother s fight to survive.

Heavily pregnant Alice and her partner Pete are done with the city. Above all, Alice is haunted by the rumours of the skin sealing epidemic starting to infect the urban population. Surely their new remote mountain house will offer safety, a place to forget the nightmares and start their little family. But the mountains and their people hold a different kind of danger. With their relationship under intolerable pressure, violence erupts and Alice is faced with the unthinkable as she fights to protect her unborn child.

______________________________

To meet the more “hard” sci-fi elements for our reading, I’ve also chosen a classic Anne McCaffrey book.

The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey (255 pages)

[image error]The brain was perfect, the tiny, crippled body useless. So technology rescued the brain and put it in an environment that conditioned it to live in a different kind of body – a spaceship. Here the human mind, more subtle, infinitely more complex than any computer ever devised, could be linked to the massive and delicate strengths, the total recall, and the incredible speeds of space. But the brain behind the ship was entirely feminine – a complex, loving, strong, weak, gentle savage – a personality, all-woman, called Helva…

____________________________

And our Wild Card choice (a book highlighted in a previous month but didn’t get voted in):

The Female Man by Joanna Russ (228 pages)

[image error]A landmark book in the fields of science fiction and feminism.

Four women living in parallel worlds, each with a different gender landscape. When they begin to travel to each other’s worlds each woman’s preconceptions on gender and what it means to be a woman are challenged.

______________________

There we have it: four books (all under 260 pages) to read for our next #ReadWomenSF Twitter chat, which is scheduled for 8pm BST on Monday 1st October 2018. The above book choices will be available to vote on until tomorrow (4th September, 23:59 BST) on my pinned tweet on Twitter (@gemtodd). If you don’t have Twitter, you can leave your nomination in the comments below or on my facebook page.

In celebration of the brand new instalment in the Wayfarers series (releasing on the 24th July), August’s #ReadWomenSF will be your choice of a Becky Chambers’ book.

Following the successes of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit, excitement levels are staggeringly high for book three. So here’s your chance to jump on this month’s #ReadWomenSF Read Along – everyone is welcome and anyone can join in. From 31st July to 27th August, you’re invited to read one of Becky Chamber’s Wayfarer novels. You can start at the very beginning with The Long Way to Small, Angry Planet, continue your reading adventures with A Closed and Common Orbit, or get right on the new release of Record of a Spaceborn Few. Not sure what they’re all about? Don’t know who Becky Chambers is? BOY ARE YOU IN FOR A TREAT. Have a peek at the blurbs below (Amazon links to buy are in the titles – but don’t forget you can loan from your local library too!)

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (2015)

[image error]When Rosemary Harper joins the crew of the Wayfarer, she isn’t expecting much. The ship, which has seen better days, offers her everything she could possibly want: a small, quiet spot to call home for a while, adventure in far-off corners of the galaxy, and distance from her troubled past.

But Rosemary gets more than she bargained for with the Wayfarer. The crew is a mishmash of species and personalities, from Sissix, the friendly reptillian pilot, to Kizzy and Jenks, the constantly sparring engineers who keep the ship running. Life on board is chaotic, but more or less peaceful – exactly what Rosemary wants.

Until the crew are offered the job of a lifetime: the chance to build a hyperspace tunnel to a distant planet. They’ll earn enough money to live comfortably for years… if they survive the long trip through war-torn interstellar space without endangering any of the fragile alliances that keep the galaxy peaceful.

But Rosemary isn’t the only person on board with secrets to hide, and the crew will soon discover that space may be vast, but spaceships are very small indeed.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEY’S WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION

A Closed and Common Orbit (2016)

[image error]The stand-alone sequel to the award-winning The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Lovelace was once merely a ship’s artificial intelligence. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has to start over in a synthetic body, in a world where her kind are illegal. She’s never felt so alone.

But she’s not alone, not really. Pepper, one of the engineers who risked life and limb to reinstall Lovelace, is determined to help her adjust to her new world. Because Pepper knows a thing or two about starting over.

Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that, huge as the galaxy may be, it’s anything but empty.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 HUGO AWARD AND THE ARTHUR C CLARKE AWARD

Record of a Spaceborn Few (2018)

[image error]Centuries after the last humans left Earth, the Exodus Fleet is a living relic, a place many are from but few outsiders have seen. Humanity has finally been accepted into the galactic community, but while this has opened doors for many, those who have not yet left for alien cities fear that their carefully cultivated way of life is under threat.

Tessa chose to stay home when her brother Ashby left for the stars, but has to question that decision when her position in the Fleet is threatened.

Kip, a reluctant young apprentice, itches for change but doesn’t know where to find it.

Sawyer, a lost and lonely newcomer, is just looking for a place to belong.

And when a disaster rocks this already fragile community, those Exodans who still call the Fleet their home can no longer avoid the inescapable question:

What is the purpose of a ship that has reached its destination?

________________________________________

Arrrgh!! I’m VERY excited. I have Record of a Spaceborn Few ready to go and I cannot wait to get started. We’ll be meeting for our Twitter chat at 8pm (BST) on the last Monday of the month 27th August 2018. So you either follow me on Twitter @GemTodd or make sure to follow the hashtag #ReadWomenSF to keep track of all the reading fun. HAPPY SPACE EXPLORING.

(Do you like Stephen King, Neil Gaiman or M.R. Carey? Take a look at the Voices series. DEFENDER and HUNTED are available to buy now.)

[image error]