There are strictly limited places available for one single meeting to discuss…
Just like the previous four years we will be having only one December meeting, on our usual second Monday of the month, and I am very pleased to announce that once again it`s chosen by our President the late great Mr Iain M. Banks.
Mary Doria Russell`s THE SPARROW is one of the most widely praised & awarded SF works in the English language over the last 20 years. Layered with religious and cultural symbolism it defied peoples people`s expectations of SF, has became a popular piece of SF cannon over that time and has been in print continuously since it`s first publication twenty years ago in 1996.
Father Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit linguist, heads a team of scientists and explorers on an expedition to the planet Rakhat, where contact has been established with two apparently primitive races, the Runa and the Jana`ata. Beyond all expectations one of these peoples have started transmitting by radio but while the UN debates the moral issues of cultural contamination that any investigation would bring, the Vatican equips a ship and sets off.
They meant no harm.
The narrative shifts back and forth between 2016, when contact is first made, and 2060, to a Vatican inquest interrogating the maimed and broken Sandoz. A palaeoanthropologist, Russell makes the descriptions of the inhabitants of Rakhat both convincing and unsettling.
Every penny of all dues paid to this meeting is being donated to Macmillan Cancer Care, who do amazing work supporting and caring for people with cancer and their families. The organiser, Your Glorious Leader ®, will be making up the PayPal Dues.
Please help support Macmillan by reading a great book.
