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Bsky Book Club
@bskybookclub.bsky.social
780 followers 130 following 99 posts
our June book:

The Left Hand of Darkness
by Ursula K. Le Guin

As always please join us at #bskybc
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The fancy cat reading the newspaper meme and it says WE SHOULD READ A BOOK ABOUT THE FAE
June 21, 2025 at 9:13 PM
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Appalling #bskybc
The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.
June 21, 2025 at 12:10 AM
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#bskybc to kick us off here’s the start of the wonderful introduction to the edition I have.

Discussion schedule is five chapters a week for four weeks starting… now!!
INTRODUCTION Science fiction is often described, and even defined, as extrapolative. The science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. "If this goes on, this is what will happen." A prediction is made. Method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds large doses of a purified and concentrated food additive to mice, in order to predict what may happen to people who eat it in small quantities for a long time. The outcome seems almost inevitably to be cancer. So does the outcome of extrapolation. Strictly extrapola-tive works of science fiction generally arrive about where the Club of Rome arrives: somewhere between the gradual extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life. This may explain why many people who do not read science fiction describe it as "escapist," but when questioned further, admit they do not read it because "it's so depressing." Almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic. Fortunately, though extrapolation is an element in science fiction, it isn't the name of the game by any means. It is far too rationalist and simplistic to satisfy the imaginative mind, whether the writer's or the reader's. Variables are the spice of life. This book is not extrapolative. If you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought-experiment. Let's say (says Mary Shelley) that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory; let's say (says Philip K. Dick) that the Allies lost the second world war; let's say this or that is such and so, and see what happens. ... In a story so conceived, the moral complexity proper to the modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be very large indeed. The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrödinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future indeed Schrödinger's most famous thought-experiment goes to show that the "future," on the quantum level, cannot be predicted-but to describe reality, the present world. Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive. Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurolo-gists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. All they're trying to do is tell you what they're like, and what you're like what's going on—what the weather is now, today, this moment, the rain, the sunlight, look! Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies. "The truth against the world!" —Yes. Certainly. Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth! They may use all kinds of facts to support their tissue of lies. They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Boro-dino, which really was fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology; and so on. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalisable region, the author's mind. In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed. Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists? But our society, being troubled and bewildered, seeking guidance, sometimes puts an entirely mis.-taken trust in its artists, using them as prophets and futurologists. I do not say that artists cannot be seers, inspired: that the awen cannot come upon them, and the god speak through them. Who would be an artist if they did not believe that that happens? if they did not know it happens, because they have felt the god within them use their tongue, their hands? Maybe only once, once in their lives. But once is enough. Nor would I say that the artist alone is so burdened and so privileged. The scientist is another who prepares, who makes ready, working day and night, sleeping and awake, for inspiration. As Pythagoras knew, the god may speak in the forms of geometry as well as in the shapes of dreams; in the harmony of pure thought as well as in the harmony of sounds; in numbers as well as in words. But it is words that make the trouble and con-fusion. We are asked now to consider words as useful in only one way: as signs. Our philosophers, some of them, would have us agree that a word (sen-tence, statement) has value only in so far as it has one single meaning, points to one fact which is comprehensible to the rational intellect, logically sound, and-ideally-quantifiable. Apollo, the god of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number-Apollo blinds those who press too close in worship. Don't look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar for a bit and have a beer with Diony-sios, every now and then. I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.
June 5, 2025 at 4:46 AM
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Heading into a surprising semifinals as Peter Watts is knocked out by Quifan Chen! These all look great, I’d read them each #bskybc
Tournament bracket "The Left Hand Of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin "Waste Tide" by Quifan Chen "Dhalgren" by Samuel Delany "A Fire Upon the Deep" by Vernor Vinge Vote
May 29, 2025 at 5:28 AM
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It’s time for round one, #bskybc! Polls will be open until tomorrow night. (Blindsight and The Left Hand of Darkness are getting a bye)
Tournament bracket 8 "The Tainted Cup" by Rc 9 "Gideon the Ninth" by Ta 4 "A Fire Upon the Deep" k 13 "Report on Probability A' 5 "The Diamond Age" by N 12 "Waste Tide" by Quifan ‹ 7 "Dhalgren" by Samuel Di 10 "The Mountain in the Se: 3 "Hyperion" by Dan Simm 14 "Exordia" by Seth Dickin 6 "Perdidio Street Station" L "Life During Wartime" by Round 1 7 8 9 10 1 2 Round "Blindsight" b "The Left Han
May 26, 2025 at 6:35 PM
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Good Evening #bskybc for our spies episode we are reading

Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett

Part 1 by 26APR
Part 2 by 01MAY
Part 3 by 07MAY
Part 4 by 11MAY
Part 5 by 15MAY
Part 6 by 19MAY

So Sunday 19MAY we can all chat about the ending

Link to remove ambiguity
www.goodreads.com/book/show/92...
April 22, 2024 at 5:11 AM
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Good morning good subterfuge morning I am taking moderators privilege for tie breaker and advancing ipcress, given that it defeated le carre so convincingly! Our finals are here, so vote!
The bracket continues
April 19, 2024 at 6:06 PM
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Good polling morning #bskybc the results are in with some shocking upsets, vote today for The Semifinal
Results of round 1
April 18, 2024 at 5:05 PM
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Good Morning #bskybc this episode we’re running spies. Here’s a link to the list of twelve yes twelve options for the book!

www.goodreads.com/review/list/...

Round 1 is four polls of three candidates. The highest performer in each bracket will advance to head to head semifinals!
A bracket of spy novels
April 17, 2024 at 4:51 PM