WhatWe get together every other Tuesday and discuss a short science fiction story. | ![]() |
WhenEvery other WeekTuesday Evenings, 7:30-8:30 pm Pacific Time USA | |
WhereUpdate: we now have meetings online in zoom. Contact Ernie to info or to join our discord. ernestfrench@gmail.com
Kaffehaus, San Mateo92 E 3rd Ave San Mateo, CA 94401 Between SF & Palo Alto 37.564032, -122.324278 torch.brand.food Free parking Caltrain 5 minutes walking | |
WhyScience fiction explores the effect of technology* on the human condition.* scientific, social, economic, political. |
Date | Story | Author | Year | Link | Length (words) | Number |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
March 2, 2021 | The Dying Man | Damon Knight | 1957 | HTML | 14500 | 123 |
February 16, 2021 | The Way of Cross and Dragon | George R R Martin | 1979 | Youtube Audio | 59 minutes | 122 |
February 2, 2021 | Madness Has Its Place | Larry Niven | 1990 | HTML | 9500 | 121 |
January 19, 2021 | Writing Event 3 | US | 2021 | Write one short story and share | 120 | |
January 5, 2021 | Permutation City extract | Greg Egan | 1994 | HTML | 4700 | 119 |
December 22, 2020 | Predictions for 2040 | US | Email for link | 118 | ||
December 8, 2020 | Stream of Consciousness | Robert J Sawyer | 1997 | Html | 4000 | 117 |
November 24, 2020 | The Crystal Spheres | David Brin | 2018 | Html | 6700 | 116 |
November 10, 2020 | A Walk In The Sun | Geoffrey A. Landis | 1995 | Html | 6600 | 115 |
October 27, 2020 | The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi | Pat Cadigan | 2012 | Html | 8800 | 114 |
October 13, 2020 | Lighthouse Cool Neighbor (Bonus Story) | Michael Shara & Jack Mcdevitt Michael Shara & Jack Mcdevitt | 2006 2007 | Html | 6500 7200 | 113 |
September 29, 2020 | Arena | Frederic Brown | 1944 | Youtube Audio | 67 Minutes 9500 | 112 |
September 15, 2020 | The Evening and the Morning and the Night | Octavia Butler | 1987 | 8500 | 111 | |
September 1, 2020 | The Passage Home | Localroger | 2013 | HTML | 7200 | 110 |
August 18, 2020 | Manifest Logic | Crispin Cooper | 2019 | HTML | 5900 | 109 |
August 3, 2020 | Bitterblooms | George R R Martin | 1977 | Youtube Audio | 80 minutes | 108 |
July 21, 2020 | Brooklyn Project | William Tenn | 1947 | HTML | 4100 | 107 |
July 7, 2020 | The Phantom of Kansas | John Varley | 1976 | HTML | 15000 | 106 |
June 23, 2020 | We Can Remember It For You Wholesale | Philip K Dick | 1966 | Youtube Audio | 51 minutes | 105 |
June 9, 2020 | Zima Blue | Alistair Reynolds | 2006 | 7500 | 104 | |
May 26, 2020 | The Face of the Deep | Fred Saberhagen | 1966 | HTML | 3400 | 103 |
May 12, 2020 | The Fermi Paradox is Our Business Model | Charlie Jane Anders | 2010 | HTML | 4000 | 102 |
April 28, 2020 | CORDYCEPS: Too clever for their own good (Chapter 11-26) | Benedict_SC | 2016 | HTML | 16100 | 101 |
April 14, 2020 | CORDYCEPS: Too clever for their own good (Chapter 1-10) | Benedict_SC | 2016 | HTML | 14000 | 100 |
March 31, 2020 | And Seven Times Never Kill Man | George R. R. Martin | 1975 | 9000 | 99 | |
March 17, 2020 | Out of All Them Bright Stars | Nancy Kress | 1985 | HTML | 7000 | 98 |
March 3, 2020 | The Giving Plague | David Brin | 1987 | HTML | 7000 | 97 |
Feb 18, 2020 | The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family | Usman T. Malik | 2014 | HTML | 6000 | 96 |
Feb 4, 2020 | The Veldt | Ray Bradbury | 1950 | 5600 | 95 | |
Jan 21, 2020 | At Any Price | Donald S. Crankshaw and Matthew Bailey | 2019 | HTML | 5600 | 94 |
Jan 7, 2020 | Collateral And finishing up discussing predictions! | Peter Watts | 2019 | HTML | 9300 | 93 |
Dec 17, 2019 | We write stories Round 3! | US | 2019 | 92 | ||
Dec 10, 2019 | Predictions Night! How well can you predict the scientific and technological future? | |||||
Dec 10, 2019 | Sunken Garden | Bruce Sterling | 1985 | 5700 | 91 | |
November 26, 2019 | Exhalation | Ted Chiang | 2008 | HTML | 6500 | 90 |
November 26, 2019 | Awards Ceremony for 2019! Pick the best and worst story of 2019. Custom awards too! | |||||
November 19, 2019 | In the House of the Worm | George R R Martin | 1976 | Youtube Audio | 116 minutes | 89 |
November 5, 2019 | Ad Astra | James Gray | 2019 | Movie Theater | 124 minutes | 88 |
October 22, 2019 | Zeitgeber | Greg Egan | 2019 | HTML | 10400 | 87 |
October 8, 2019 | The Children's Crusade | Robert Reed | 2002 | HTML | 10800 | 86 |
September 24, 2019 | The Voice of the Dolphins | Leo Szilard | 1961 | HTML (click html) | 16000 | 85 |
September 10, 2019 | The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar | Roald Dahl | 1977 | HTML (6 parts) | ~14000 | 84 |
August 27, 2019 | Twilight Zone Season 1 episode 8 - Time Enough At Last Season 3 episode 24 - To Serve Man season 5 episode 3 - Nightmare at 20,000 feet | Rod Sterling | 1960 | (Netflix) | 1:30 | 83 |
August 6, 2019 | The Jaguar Hunter | Lucius Shepard | 1985 | HTML | 10400 | 82 |
July 23, 2019 | Ziggarut | Gene Wolfe | 1995 | HTML | 27000 | 81 |
July 9, 2019 | The Matter of Seggri | Ursula K. Le Guin | 1994 | HTML | 16000 | 80 |
June 25, 2019 | The Gold at the Starbow's End | Frederik Pohl | 1972 | HTML | 21300 | 79 |
June 11, 2019 | The Woman Who Destroyed Us | S. L. Huang | 2018 | HTML | 11200 | 78 |
May 28, 2019 | Song for Lya | George R.R. Martin | 1976 | HTML | 24100 | 77 |
May 14, 2019 | Taklaman | Bruce Sterling | 1999 | HTML | 15600 | 76 |
April 30, 2019 | Meat And Salt And Sparks | Rich Larson | 2018 | HTML | 7400 | 75 |
April 18, 2019 | Dune, third chapter: The Prophet | Frank Herbert | 1965 | Audible | 5:20 hours | 74 |
April 9, 2019 | Dune, second chapter: Maud'dib | Frank Herbert | 1965 | Audible | 7:00 hours | 73 |
April 2, 2019 | Dune, first chapter: Dune | Frank Herbert | 1965 | Audible | 7:03 hours | 72 |
March 19, 2019 | Blood, Bone, Seed, Spark | Aimee Ogden | 2018 | Html | 9700 | 71 |
March 5, 2019 | Solution Unsatisfactory | Robert Heinlein | 1941 | Html | 16000 | 70 |
February 19, 2019 | Mika Model | Paolo Bacigalupi | 2016 | Html | 4300 | 69 |
February 5, 2019 | The Door in the Wall | HG Wells | 1910 | Html | 6900 | 68 |
January 22, 2019 | The Library of Babel | Borges | 1941 | Html | 3000 | 67 |
January 8, 2019 | Beyond the Black River | Robert Howard | 1935 | Html | 21900 | 66 |
December 18, 2018 | We need to talk about fifty-five SCP-55 Introductory Antimemetics | The Internet | 2010s | Html
Html Html | 2600
900 3400 | 65 |
December 4, 2018 | When We Were Starless | Simone Heller | 2018 | Html | 13200 | 64 |
November 20, 2018 | Beyond Bedlam | Wyman Guin | 1951 | Html | 21500 | 63 |
November 6, 2018 | Second Variety | Philip K Dick | 1953 | Html | 15300 | 62 |
October 23, 2018 | Flowers for Algernon | Daniel Keyes | 1959 | Html | 12000 | 61 |
October 9, 2018 | Guest Law | John C Wright | 1997 | Youtube Audio
| 45:00 7700 | 60 |
October 2, 2018 | Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand | Vonda McIntyre | 1973 | Html | 7400 | 59 |
September 25, 2018 | Sandkings | George R.R. Martin | 1979 | Pdf Youtube Audio | 15000 2h 4m | 58 |
September 18, 2018 | Fondly Fahrenheit | Alfred Bester | 1954 | Html | 6800 | 57 |
September 11, 2018 | On the Orion Line | Stephen Baxter | 2007 | Html | 13000 | 56 |
September 4, 2018 | The State of the Art | Iain M Banks | 1991 | Youtube Audio | 45 minutes | 56 |
August 28, 2018 | Legions in Time | Michael Swanwick | 2004 | Html | 9300 | 54 |
August 21, 2018 | Steve Fever | Greg Egan | 2006 | Html | 6200 | 53 |
August 14, 2018 | Houston, Houston, Do You Read? | James Tiptree, Jr. aka Alice Sheldon | 1969 | Html | 21900 | 52 |
August 7, 2018 | Stories by group members - come if you've written one | Us! | 2018 | One day's worth! | 51 | |
July 31, 2018 | Johnny Mnemonic | William Gibson | 1982 | Html | 5700 | 50 |
July 24, 2018 | Planning our next writing event | Us! | 2018 | 49 | ||
July 17, 2018 | Wings The Mountains Of Sunset, The Mountains Of Dawn | Vonda McIntyre Vonda McIntyre | 1974 1974 | Html | 5600 5000 | 48 |
July 10, 2018 | By His Bootstraps | Robert Heinlein | 1941 | Html | 20500 | 46 |
July 3, 2018 | Tower of Babel | Ted Chiang | 1990 | Html | 8145 | 45 |
June 26, 2018 | Yellow Card Man | Paolo Bacigalupi | 2007 | Html | 14500 | 44 |
June 19, 2018 | Weaponized Math | Jonathan Brazee | 2017 | Docx | 10000 | 43 |
June 12, 2018 | Swarm | Bruce Sterling | 1983 | Html | 9700 | 42 |
June 5, 2018 | Wind Will Rove | Sarah Pinkster | 2017 | 14600 | 41 | |
May 29, 2018 | Glimwarden prologue & chapters 1-2 | Alexander Wales | 2016 | Html | 12600 | 40 |
May 22, 2018 | Blood Child | Octavia Butler | 1995 | Html | 7600 | 39 | <
May 15, 2018 | Melancholy Elephants | Spider Robinson | 1982 | 10 pages | 38 | <|
May 8, 2018 | The Night Whiskey | Jeffrey Ford | 2007 | Html | 10000 | 37 |
May 1, 2018 | Incarnation Day | Walter John Williams | 2007 | Html | 15800 | 36 |
April 25, 2018 | The Martian Obelisk | Linda Nagata | 2017 | Html | 5900 | 35 |
April 18, 2018 | We write stories! (time limit 1 day) | Us! | 2018 | Journal 4 Upper Reaches Rat Race Artificial Selection | 34 | |
April 11, 2018 | The Seventh Voyage | Stanislaw Lem | 1957 | Html Youtube Audio | 7000 31 minutes | 33 |
April 4, 2018 | For Want of a Nail | Mary Robinette Kowal | 2011 | Html | 7300 | 32 |
March 28, 2018 | Tk'tk'tk | David D Levine | 2006 | Html | 6600 | 31 |
March 21, 2018 | The Tenth Muse | Tad Williams | 2009 | Audio | 60 minutes | 30 |
March 14, 2018 | Annihilation | Alex Garland | 2018 | Movie | 120 minutes | 29 |
March 7, 2018 | Utopia, LOL? | Jamie Wahls | 2017 | Html | 5000 | 28 |
February 28, 2018 | Birthdays | Fred Saberhagen | 1976 | Html | 15500 | 27 |
February 21, 2018 | Forgetfulness | Don A Stuart | 1937 | Html | 10700 | 26 |
February 14, 2018 | The Tale of the Wicked | John Scalzi | 2013 | Html | 7800 | 25 |
February 7, 2018 | What Have I Done | Mark Clifton | 1952 | Html | 6800 | 24 |
January 31, 2018 | Nine Lives | Ursula K. Le Guin | 1969 | Html | 10700 | 23 |
January 24, 2018 | Colosseum | Blake Stone-Banks | 2017 | Html | 8500 35m | 22 |
January 17, 2018 | Blood Music | Greg Bear | 1983 | Html | 9000 | 21 |
January 10, 2018 | A Billion Eves | Robert Reed | 2006 | Html | 22900 | 20 |
January 3, 2018 | The Persistence of Vision | John Varley | 1978 | Html | 20000 | 19 |
December 13, 2018 | Second Game | Katherine MacLean & Charles V De Vet | 1958 | Html | 16200 | 18 |
December 6, 2017 | Videostar | Walter John Williams | 1986 | Html | 12400 | 17 |
November 29, 2017 | All the Birds of Hell | Tanith Lee | 1998 | Html | 8300 | 16 |
November 22, 2017 | Take Your Time The War on Yourself | Nicky Case Nicky Case | 2017 2017 | Html Html | 3100 2400 | 15 |
November 15, 2017 | The Things | Peter Watts | 2010 | Html mp3 | 6800 53 minutes | 14 |
November 8, 2017 | Little Faces | Vonda N. McIntyre | 2010 | Html Mp3 | 15300 93 minutes | 13 |
October 31, 2017 (First Contact) | Ambassador The Game of Rat and Dragon | Peter Watts Cordwaiter Smith | 1954 2000 | Pdf Html | 3500 5700 | 12 |
October 24, 2017 | Understand | Ted Chiang | 1991 | Audio | 109 minutes | 11 |
October 17, 2017 | I, Robot | Cory Doctorow | 2005 | Html | 15400 | 10 |
October 10, 2017 | The Exterminator's Want Ad | Bruce Sterling | 2010 | Html | 4300 | 9 |
October 3, 2017
(Two internet stories) |
And I Show you how Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes
The Egg | Scott Alexander Andy Weir | 2015 2009 | Html Html | 6500 1000 | 8 |
September 26, 2017 | Equinoctal | John Varley | 1977 | Html | 18000 | 7 |
September 19, 2017 | Maneki Neko | Bruce Sterling | 2011 | Html | 5600 | 6 |
September 12, 2017 | Palimpsest | Charles Stross | 2009 | Html | 27500 | 5 |
September 5, 2017 | The Last Answer | Isaac Asimov | 1980 | Html | 2600 | 4 |
August 22, 2017 | The Last Question | Isaac Asimov | 1956 | Html | 4500 | 3 |
August 8, 2017 | Blessed by an Angel | Peter F Hamilton | 2007 | Html | 6500 | 2 |
July 25, 2017 | Glory | Greg Egan | 2007 | 10500 | 1 | |
Group calendar in ICS format
Direct google calendar link - click "+" in lower right to follow it | ||||||
Send me your suggestions for group readings! |
The spot is basically a cafe with cakes, coffee, but it also has craft beers.
The earliest story we've read comes from 1937, and the most recent from 2020.
Story submissions are open - we want ones which are between 5 and 25k words, and have multiple things to discuss. It helps if there is some mystery in the intepretation of what the story means. Also, finding ones which deal with technology more specifically would be interesting, too! (rather than clearly sociological/biological ones)
Last modified May 24, 2020