Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Varley Vade mecum updated

I have recently revised and expanded my essay on John Varley's Eight Worlds series. The revision includes
(1) Justification for each story to be included in the series
(2) A timeline for the series with never before seen data
(3) A cool diagram illustrating the logical series connection between stories
(4) A formal definition for the Eight Worlds
(5) All my latest analysis of the series including the non-linear parallel universe structure


Read it at http://www.freewebs.com/herbboehm/reviewsandarticles.htm

=Doug Eigsti=

Oct. 23rd Awards Banquet Held

Last Saturday we met to reminisce over the history of the Fictionados. A good time was had by all. Thanks to my father for offering his house for the event.

Rick and I had wanted to celebrate the significance of the group to us with an award. First we toyed with the idea of issuing diplomas, but that would have mocked our sentiment and trivialized the moment. This fake diploma idea began to rankle. Why issue a diploma as a joke? We wanted something that would honor our accomplishment; something to represent the reality of reading together for so long, hence the certificate of achievement. The certificate stated that we had been reading together for twelve years and represented over two thousand hours of required reading. This calculates to an average of about thirty minutes a day. I didn't bother figuring the exact number of books we had read together, but it would be about one hundred and twenty. That is a lot of common experience to share with someone. The certificates were appropriately framed to permit them to be proudly displayed, and presented to Rick and me, by me and Rick.

The awards banquet was well attended, all the Fictionados were present (Rick Marx and Doug Eigsti), as well as my family. Rick's family was unable to attend. We feasted on Chinese food catered from Fortuna Inn. We noted the irony that now, when we have finally hit upon the optimum method of scheduling books to read, The Huge Mangy Tome Project, does our membership plummet to the lowest possible number, that is two people. We have had as many as nine members at one time but they have parted, each for their own reasons. We would love to have more people, but we will carry on regardless, because reading is important to us.

Visit our home page at http://www.freewebs.com/fictionados/ to continue your education.

Readers Read. Do You?

=Doug Eigsti=

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Ender's Shadow Grows

Orson Scott Card's saga of the Hegemon begun with Ender's Game now has another entry. The original series consists of:
(1) Ender's Game
(2) Speaker for the Dead
(3) Xenocide
(4) Children of the Mind

Card followed these up with a novel parallel to Ender's Game telling the story of the first book from the point of view of Ender's Lieutenant, Bean; where the success for the victory over the bugs is attributed to Bean and not Ender. But the book returned to the feel of the original novel better than any of the other three sequels. Now he has written the third Bean novel. The Fictionados have read volumes 1-5. Numbers 6 and 7 are sure to be typical Orson Scott Card. They should be quite good.
(5) Ender's Shadow
(6) Shadow of the Hegemon
(7) Shadow Puppets

So many books...

Awards Banquet Rescheduled

The Fictionados Awards Banquet has now been set for Saturday, Ootober 23rd. The venue is still being negotiated.

Certificates of Achievement will be presented to all members that have completed the twelve year program. (i.e. Rick Marx and Doug Eigsti)