Charles Stross - third time at the Otherland

A recap of an evening with Charles Stross

by Wolf Tress

 

Wolf and unimpressed cartoon cat in Otherland

I remember quite well the first time Charlie walked in our Otherland. With a friendly hello he strolled by and entered the english book section. I was thinking: Wow, this guy looks like... and this guy is standing right in front of the books of ... and now he takes one of the books of ... so I walked over and asked: “Are you...” “Yes, I am Charles Stross - do you mind if I sign my books?” Well, yesterday was the third time he came to visit the Otherland and do a reading / Q&A-Session with us.

What's next at the Otherland Bookshop?

The Otherland is on FIRE... metaphorically speaking of course! We're thrilled to bring you one or two special guest(s) each month from now until the end of the year.

Here a short overview of the incredible events coming up, so mark your calendars:

Monday September 10th, 8 pm; SF author Charles Stross at the Otherland Bookshop
Thursday September 20th, 8 pm; SF author Alastair Reynolds at the DTK Wasserturm (Kopischstr. 7)
Wednesday October 17th, 8 pm; SF author Cixin Liu at the Kreuzkirche-Church (Zossener Str. 65) (This event isn't free unfortunately; please reserve tickets at service@otherland-berlin.de)
Friday October 19th, 8 pm; horror author Tobias O. Meißner at the Otherland Bookshop
Monday November 5th, 8 pm; SF author and activist Cory Doctorow at the DTK Wasserturm (Kopischstr. 7)
Thursday November 29th, 8 pm; Le Guin-translator Karen Nölle at the Otherland Bookshop
Thursday December 13th, 8pm;  horror/SFF author and aquaphile Nate Crowley at the Otherland Bookshop

Whew! On top of that we have our regular meetings - Book club, Gatherland and role playing evenings - going as usual (except for Gatherlands in September and October - those are cancelled).

As to our book club, here are the titles and dates for the next few months:

Friday September 14th, 7.30 pm; Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward
Friday October  12th, 7.30 pm;    The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
Friday November 9th, 7.30 pm;   La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman
Friday November 23th, 7.30 pm;   HORROR SPECIAL - A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

The fall and early winter will be insane at the Otherland!!! See you there, I guess.

The Zombie Novel You Never Knew You're Desperate to Read

Inci German on Nate Crowley's The Death and Life of Schneider Wrack

 

Nate Crowley will be visiting the Otherland on December 13th for a reading and QA event! Don't miss it!

 

This Friday we're breaking new ground with the “Otherland Speculative Fiction Book Club Horror Special”! We're not jumping in at the deep end by starting off with the heavy stuff though, like hardcore sadistic short stories or extreme horror that will give you nightmares. For starters we chose a horror comedy about a Zombie uprising; The Death and Life of Schneider Wrack by Nate Crowley. Exciting!

I didn't really know what to expect when we voted it, had never heard of Nate Crowley before and Zombies aren't exactly my kind of horror. But the premise sounded super interesting and the cover is very very cool (yes, sometimes I do judge a book by its cover). And yes, this book won me over at the drop of a hat.

True, this isn't your typical horror story that makes you piss your pants and leaves you all paranoid and shit scared for days after – but Crowley uses a traditional horror trope in an exceptionally creative way in order to tell a morbidly funny, fairly disgusting, partly horrifying, insanely absurd and yes, towards the end even surprisingly deep and heartwarming tale.

Spoilers from here on

Otherland Book Club - Fantasy is back baby!

We're finally back at reading fantasy in our book club after a l-o-o-o-ng long time and we'll pick up from where we left with Fonda Lee's kick-ass adult debut Jade City (Green Bone Saga #1).

In a universe where the warrior Green Bones' performance is enhanced by the ever so precious and magical jade, the city of Janloon is divided between two rival clans; No Peak and Mountain. Nothing stays as it is though; not only is the hard earned peace in danger because of increasing unrests between the two groups but also a new drug that allows everyone -not only green bone warriors- to carry the powerful jade stirs up the balance!

It's all here, people: Asian martial art meets high fantasy meets mafia!

A Gloranthan Night at the Otherland!

Otherland Bookshop is proud to host the release party for the brand-new edition of the role-playing classic RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha! We‘ll have the new edition‘s chief designers Jeff Richard and Jason Durall as guests, and a box or two of print copies of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and the accompanying Glorantha Sourcebook, published by Chaosium. This will be your first opportunity to get these in Germany. If all goes well, we will also have a few sets of the new RuneQuest dice sets, designed by Q-Workshop, available.

First released in 1978 by Chaosium, RuneQuest radically widened the scope not only of role-playing games, but also of fantasy world-building. Its setting Glorantha, created by Greg Stafford, owes much more to classic mythology than to the conventions of modern fantasy.

The release party takes place on August 11th, 2018 at 6.30 pm at the Otherland Bookshop. We look forward to seeing you there and chat about imaginary worlds, role-playing games and all kinds of Gloranthan goodness!

OBC Meeting Next Week

Dear Book Clubbers,

Ready for an extremely political discussion at our next meeting?
It is next week already: Friday, July 13th, 7.30 pm at the Otherland Bookshop. Admission is free as usual and there'll be drinks and snacks.

Infomocracy is a cyberpunk polit-thriller and the first book of Malka Older's "Centenal Cycle" as well as her debut novel.

The Locus Award finalist for Best First Novel is set in a world where the ever present "Information", a powerful search engine monopoly, has pioneered the switch from warring nation-states to global micro-democracy. The story revolves around the lives of three individuals in the wake of elections: Ken from the idealistic Policy1st party, the sceptic Domaine who works to overthrow the system and the Information operative Mishima.

Infomocracy has already propelled to the first place (together with Ben Aaronovitch's latest novella in the Peter Grant Series, The Furthest Station) on our top ten bestseller list! So I guess we are expecting lots of people, very excited about this!

OBC Horror Special in August and next meeting

Book Clubbers!

As I previously announced we'll have a horror special in August, so we don't have to wait too long for a horrific discussion at the Otherland. Of course our new (English) horror section comes in super handy at that.

What we'll do is this: Anyone can bring one or more suggestions to the next discussion on June 6th and we'll have a voting (just like a regular OBC voting). We can also settle on a date for the horror special at our next meeting.*
IF nobody comes up with a suggestion, I have a little selection of books I'd like to read and discuss with you, and here they are: