Swarthmore Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club

Our first "in person" meeting since the Pandemic!

This is a watch party for the first episode of Apple+ new series Murderbot - a book series well-loved by many club members. It's estimated the episode will be about 45 minutes.

This will be at Stacey's house in Glenside and if the weather is nice, a BBQ. If not, maybe we'll order a pizza.

If you can, please bring a side dish and we'll make it a proper Potluck!

For May, we're reading Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. There are currently 2 books in this series, with rumors of a third, as well as a movie, Mickey 17, that came out this month. The movie means this book is very popular at the moment. While many of our local libraries have many copies to cut down on hold waits, you'll still want to get in line now to have a hope of getting it before we talk about it. Otherwise, you might have to buy this one.

This seems like it will have similarities with MurderBot.

After several deaths punctuating a series of all-too-brief life spans, a clone reassesses his purpose – and his humanity – in Edward Ashton’s Mickey7, “a unique blend of thought-provoking sci-fi concepts, farcical relationship drama, and exotic body horror” (New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin).

Where to find the book (as of 03/28/2025):
(If there are other local sources I should add, let me know)

Hard Copies:
Delaware County Libraries - 1 of 6 copies available
Free Library of Philadelphia - 0 of 5 copies available
Montgomery County Libraries - 0 of 10 copies available

eBooks:
DCL - 0 of 0 copies
FLP - 0 of 30 copies (105 holds)
MCL - 0 of 0 copies

Audiobooks:
DCL - 0 of 2 copies (18 holds)
FLP - 0 of 24 copies (85 holds)
MCL - 0 of 2 copies (19 holds)

Also available to purchase from all major booksellers in all formats.

Summary:

EXPENDABLE \ik’spen-d’-b’l\ n. A human clone utilized for dangerous work on space exploration missions. An Expendable’s personality and memories may be transferred intact to a new body if and when the current host dies.

Mickey Barnes is an Expendable, now on his seventh iteration, living – and dying – among his fellow colonists on the near-uninhabitable ice world of Niflheim. Some consider him immortal. Others believe he’s a soulless monstrosity. For the past nine years, he has been deployed for hazardous assignments and subjected to experiments that test the limits of human endurance, his humanity sacrificed for the greater good.

While on reconnaissance, Mickey7 is injured and left for dead, only to be saved by Niflheim’s native species, thought to be insentient by the colonists. Returning to base, Mickey7 meets his next generation, Mickey8. Neither clone is willing to recycle himself, but if anyone discovers multiple Mickeys exist, they’ll both be executed – and there won’t ever be a Mickey9.

But Mickey7’s premature twin isn’t his only secret. He hasn’t uploaded his memories in a month, leaving his clone in the dark about his near death and close encounter with the planet’s inhabitants. Mickey7 also doesn’t know how all of his previous selves died, and those he remembers have left him traumatized and mistrustful of the colony’s mission. A mission that has Mickey Barnes questioning his moral and mortal existence...again...and again....

Published February 15, 2022
296 pages, 9h 16m

The sunny days of June will be tinged with horror! We're reading Saturnalia, by Stephanie Feldman. Feldman is another local author. She's written two books, Saturnalia and The Angle of Losses, as well as some short stories. She has a collection of short stories called The Night Parade coming in 2026. She teaches a fiction workshop through Penn's Creative Writing program, and has won the Crawford Fantasy Award. This book was a nominee for the Locus Aware for horror in 2023.

Where to find the book (as of 04/25/2025):
(If there are other local sources I should add, let me know)

Hard Copies:
Delaware County Libraries - 1 of 1 copies available
Free Library of Philadelphia - 6 of 8 copies available
Montgomery County Libraries - 8 of 8 copies available

eBooks:
DCL - 1 of 1 copies
FLP - 5 of 5 copies
MCL - 0 of 0 copies

Audiobooks:
DCL - 0 of 0 copies
FLP - 3 of 3 copies
MCL - 0 of 0 copies

Also available to purchase from all major booksellers in all formats.

Summary:
The Saturnalia carnival marks three years since Nina walked away from Philadelphia’s elite Saturn Club—with its genteel debauchery, arcane pecking order, and winking interest in alchemy and the occult. In doing so, she abandoned her closest friends and her chance to climb the social ladder. Since then, she’s eked out a living by telling fortunes with her Saturn Club tarot deck, a solemn initiation gift that Nina always considered a gag but has turned out to be more useful than she could have ever imagined.

For most, the Saturnalia carnival marks a brief winter reprieve for the beleaguered people of the historic city, which is being eroded by extreme weather, a collapsing economy, and feverish summers—whose disease carrying mosquitos are perhaps the only thing one can count on. Like Thanksgiving or Halloween, Saturnalia has become a purely American holiday despite its pagan roots; and nearly everyone, rich or poor, forgets their troubles for a moment.

For Nina, Saturnalia is simply a cruel reminder of the night that changed everything for her. But when she gets a chance call from Max, one of the Saturn Club’s best-connected members and her last remaining friend, the favor he asks will plunge her back into the Club’s wild solstice masquerade, on a mysterious errand she cannot say no to.

Tonight, Nina will put on a dress of blackest black, and attend the biggest party of the year. Before it’s over, she will discover secret societies battling for power in an increasingly precarious world and become custodian of a horrifying secret—and the target of a mysterious hunter. As Nina runs across an alternate Philadelphia balanced on a knife’s edge between celebration and catastrophe, through parades, worship houses, museums, hidden mansions, and the place she once called home, she’s forced to confront her past in order to take charge of her own—and perhaps everyone’s—future.

Published October 4, 2022
256 pages, 6h 26m