Every penny of all dues paid to this meeting is being donated to Macmillan Cancer Care (http://www.macmillan.org.uk/), who do amazing work supporting and caring for people with cancer and their families. The organiser, Your Glorious Leader ®, will be making up the PayPal Dues.
Please help support Macmillan by reading a truly great book.
Just like the previous four years we will be having only one December meeting, on our usual second Monday of the month, and I am very pleased to announce that once again it’s chosen by our President the late great Mr Iain M. Banks. And this time Your Glorious Leader ® won’t talk him out of his first choice by saying ‘don’t be afraid to pick something challenging for us’.
Only 50 places available for one single meeting to discuss…
http://m.cdn.blog.hu/sf/sf/image/Herbert,Frank.jpgFrank Herbert’s DUNE is one of the most widely praised & awarded works in the English language. Layered with religious and cultural symbolism Dune surpassed people’s expectations of SF and became a cultural touchstone for a generation who were exploring ideas of consciousness and discovering SF for the first time. It has been in print continuously since it’s first publication fifty years ago in 1965.
This Hugo and Nebula Award winner tells the sweeping tale of a desert planet called Arrakis, the focus of an intricate power struggle in a byzantine interstellar empire. Arrakis is the sole source of Melange, the ‘spice of spices’. Melange is necessary for interstellar travel and also grants psychic powers and longevity, so whoever controls it wields great influence.
The troubles begin when stewardship of Arrakis is transferred by the Emperor from the Harkonnen Noble House to House Atreides. The Harkonnens don’t want to give up their privilege, though, and through sabotage and treachery they cast young Duke Paul Atreides out into the planet’s harsh environment to die. There he falls in with the Fremen, a tribe of desert dwellers who become the basis of the army with which he will reclaim what’s rightfully his. Paul Atreides, though, is far more than just a usurped duke. He might be the end product of a very long-term genetic experiment designed to breed a superhuman–he might be a messiah. His struggle is at the centre of a nexus of powerful people and events, and the repercussions will be felt throughout the Imperium.
Dune is one of the most famous science fiction novels ever written, and deservedly so. The setting is elaborate and ornate, the plot labyrinthine and the adventures exciting. Five sequels by Frank Herbert follow this novel. And some truly awful ‘sequels’ by Frank Herbert’s son and Kevin J. Anderson.
Don’t read them, they’re shit.
Every penny of all dues paid to this meeting is being donated to Macmillan Cancer Care, who do amazing work supporting and caring for people with cancer and their families. The organiser, Your Glorious Leader ®, will be making up the PayPal Dues.
Please help support Macmillan by reading a great book.