San Francisco Science Fiction Short Story Reading Group

What We get together every other Tuesday and discuss a short science fiction story.
When Every other Week Tuesday Evenings, 7:30-8:30 pm Pacific Time USA
Where Update: we now have meetings online in zoom. Contact Ernie to info or to join our discord. ernestfrench@gmail.com Kaffehaus, San Mateo 92 E 3rd Ave San Mateo, CA 94401 Between SF & Palo Alto 37.564032, -122.324278 torch.brand.food Free parking Caltrain 5 minutes walking
Why Science fiction explores the effect of technology* on the human condition. * scientific, social, economic, political.

Reading List

Date	Story	Author	Year	Link	Length (words)	Number	Score
August 3, 2020	Bitterblooms	George R R Martin	1977	Youtube	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	PDF	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 a 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	PDF	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	PDF	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	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	Audio pdf	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 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	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 PDF	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	Pdf	14600	41
May 29, 2018	Glimwarden prologue & chapters 1-2	Alexander Wales	2016	Html	12600	40	A B
May 22, 2018	Blood Child	Octavia Butler	1995	Html	7600	39	A
May 15, 2018	Melancholy Elephants	Spider Robinson	1982	Pdf	10 pages	38	A B C D E
May 8, 2018	The Night Whiskey	Jeffrey Ford	2007	Html	10000	37
May 1, 2018	Incarnation Day	Walter John Williams	2007	Html	15800	36	A
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	A
April 11, 2018	The Seventh Voyage	Stanislaw Lem	1957	Html Audio	7000 31 minutes	33	A
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	A
March 21, 2018	The Tenth Muse	Tad Williams	2009	Audio	60 minutes	30	A
March 14, 2018	Annihilation	Alex Garland	2018	Movie	120 minutes	29	A
March 7, 2018	Utopia, LOL?	Jamie Wahls	2017	Html	5000	28	A
February 28, 2018	Birthdays	Fred Saberhagen	1976	Html	15500	27	A
February 21, 2018	Forgetfulness	Don A Stuart	1937	Html	10700	26	A
February 14, 2018	The Tale of the Wicked	John Scalzi	2013	Html	7800	25	A
February 7, 2018	What Have I Done	Mark Clifton	1952	Html	6800	24	AB
January 31, 2018	Nine Lives	Ursula K. Le Guin	1969	Html	10700	23	AB
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	A
January 3, 2018	The Persistence of Vision	John Varley	1978	Html	20000	19	A
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	A
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	B
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	A
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	Pdf	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!

Contact

contact: ernestfrench@gmail.com

About

We get together every week in a coffee shop to discuss a science fiction story. We've been meeting for about 6 months and have had a good time covering a wide range of stories. My personal favorites are Charles Stross, Iain Banks & people like that, but we also read that weird 70s SF from John Varley, and go back to the 50s sometimes too.

Update: we now have meetings online in zoom. Contact me to info

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 2017.

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