Category: Critical Mass News

Adam digs deep in history to bring us A True Story by Lucian of Samosata.

Lucian of Samosata was a writer known for his satire. He was born in what is now eastern Turkey, in Samosata, about 120 C.E. Samosata was located in the ancient Roman province of Syria (not to be confused with the modern country); the site was recently inundated by the Atatürk Dam. Lucian was trained as a rhetorician (somewhat like a trial attorney). However, he made a living as an itinerant lecturer. Lucian traveled widely, as far as Greece, Italy and Gaul. He died in Athens, about 180 C.E. Over eighty works, written in Greek, are attributed to him, some probably spuriously. The best known of his works, A True Story, is considered to be one of the first science fiction stories.

The Internet Sacred text Archive

Widely hailed as the first science fiction story, A True Story, by Lucian of Samosata is a voyage to the edges of the universe and reason. The title is the first clue that this will be a tall tale. As much a predecessor of Douglas Adams as Jules Verne, Lucian’s fantasy explores not only outer space (where he brokers war and peace between the inhabitants of the sun and moon), but also the Elysian fields, the geography of the Odyssey, and the interior of a giant whale.

https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/true/index.htm includes parallel English/Greek translations of the work

One of the images from the Project Gutenberg translation of A True Story.

Full english text at Project Gutenberg

Critical mass Zoom meeting, Sept 16th.
Part 1: Sep 16, 2020 7:00pm Adelaide, 7:30 Melbourne
<tea break 7:40 – 7:50>
Part 2: Sep 16, 2020 7:50pm Adelaide, 8:20 Melbourne

Join Zoom:
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/75158919590?pwd=N2IrNGZ3d1kyclA1WkgxMUx4d3JOdz09

Meeting ID: 751 5891 9590
Passcode: 1ve6jG

Nova Mob’s Murray notes

At the September Nova Mob we look back about 150 years to early Australasian science fiction writers. Our speakers will be Anne Black and Lucy Sussex, and the discussion is set to cover Australia’s first science fiction novel and New Zealand’s second-most famous Victorian SF novel.

Anne Black will be talking about Adelaide writer George Isaacs who in 1865 had a short sf novel The Burlesque of Frankenstein published in Melbourne as part of a longer book Rhyme and Prose. The Burlesque of Frankenstein waited until 1989 before receiving stand-alone publication thanks to historian and fan Graham Stone. It’s not mentioned in the MUP Encyclopedia of Australian Science Fiction nor The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature. Anne has had published several articles and a book on George Isaacs.

Lucy Sussex will be discussing Anno Domini 2000, or: Woman’s Destiny, the 1889 utopian novel written by Sir Julius Vogel. Vogel was New Zealand’s Premier from 1873 to 1875 (when he was knighted) and again in 1876. Among other matters of note, Wikipedia says Vogel “is also noteworthy as one of the few practising Jewish prime ministers outside Israel”.

Our meeting will be by Zoom and is on Wednesday 2 September 8.00pm to 9.30 or so.  (7:30 to 9pm Adelaide time)

You are invited to a scheduled Zoom meeting:

Topic: Nova Mob Sep 2020 Anne Black & Lucy Sussex 

Time: 2 Sep 2020 08:00 PM Melbourne, 7:30pm Adelaide

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4177583193?pwd=VjdPL1BhSTBNclN2YnRsejN3Y1hlUT09

Meeting ID: 417 758 3193
Passcode: nova

If the meeting fails partway through, just click the same link again and re-join.

The Glitter and Hope Bundle – Curated by Cat Rambo

I think I speak for all of us when I say that 2020 has not gone exactly how I expected it to, and this StoryBundle has been no exception. I originally conceived of it as a hopepunk centered bundle, but as I sorted through possibilities, I found less punk than plenty of hopeful stories that reminded me that hope comes in all sorts of forms, not all of them as in your face as hopepunk.

Hope can find its origin in friendship, whether on an alien planet or a New York street corner. It can come from writing, in a myriad shades as multi-colored as the ink in which it’s inscribed. It glitters at the bottom of Pandora’s box, waiting to escape. Waiting to provide comfort and lightand renewed vigor for the fight.

So this is a bundle centered on hope with a touch of glitter, rather than grit, and I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I did. It’s a range of flavors as well as forms: novels, including some beginnings; connected short stories; sequential novellas; and an anthology of stories connected by theme. – Cat Rambo

You only have a couple of days left if you’re interested:
https://storybundle.com/blog/glitterandhopebundle/

The Chills & Wonder Bundle – Curated by Kevin J. Anderson
Enjoy these thirteen books in the “Chills and Wonder” StoryBundle curated by New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson. These are some of the best, most entertaining dark fantasy, urban fantasy, and thriller novels—all thirteen books for as little as $15, and a portion goes to support the Challenger Learning Centers. This bundle is available for another 17 days…
The StoryBundle includes the just-released anthology Monsters, Movies & Mayhem, with 23 all original stories about monsters and movies by Jonathan Maberry, David Gerrold, Fran Wilde, Rick Wilber, and many others. Lights! Camera! Monsters!
In the gritty thriller Disappeared by Lucienne Diver, a mother is missing, a father left to tell the tale, and their kids are determined to get to the truth or die trying. Steven-Elliot Altman’s Severed Wings is a romantic urban fantasy thriller that will make you believe in angels and demons and everything in between. Recommended for readers from American Gods to Twilight. In Keeper of the Winds by Russell Davis, nineteen-year-old Jenna Solitaire discovers an ancient family artifact, a wooden board covered in runes. It is coveted by powerful forces, and they will stop at nothing to take it from her.
In Amity Green’s The Witcher Chime, a deadly, possessive entity imprints on members of Savannah Caleman’s family, making her the latest object of obsession in this chilling, historical tale of haunted legacy and terror. In Book and Blade by Erik Lynd, Christopher never asked to inherit the office of the Beast or take up the mantle of the Hunter of Lost Souls. He never asked for his safe, comfortable world to be shattered and his family taken from him. And to make matters worse, it was all a mistake.
Melinda M. Snodgrass, one of the writers for Star Trek: The Next Generation, introduces readers to White Fang Law in This Case Is Gonna Kill Me. Fresh out of law school, Linnet Ellery is offered a position at of one the most prestigious firms in New York—one that caters to supernatural clients. Linnet will need all of her vaunted luck to avoid the cutthroat office politics, backroom deals, supernatural killers, and centuries-old schemers…
But there’s more—An insect-loving boy discovers that his new boarding school harbors a dark past and grisly secrets in Sarah Read’s The Bone Weaver’s Orchard. In The Rust Maidens by Gwendolyn Kiste, strange transformations destroyed Phoebe’s friends, and now threaten her own existence. And New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry presents a collection of hairy detective tales in Beneath the Skin, It’s hard enough being a low-rent private investigator—but when you’re also a werewolf, things take a turn for the weird.
The Chills & Wonder StoryBundle includes three exclusive titles, including a new edition of Alexandre Dumas’s long-unavailable classic The Wolf Leader, one of the first werewolf novels ever written, by the author of The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask. New edition with a Foreword by Jonathan Maberry.

Straight from CoNZealand, Ellen Boucher provides details of the award winners:

This month, Kate Treloar will be looking at The Kraken.
As noted last newsletter, there are various items you might like to read/view.
NOVELS

• Kraken by China Mieville (2010)
• The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham (1953)

SHORT STORY

• The Call of Cthulhu by HP Lovecraft (1928)

Part of the installation Beatrice by Julia Robinson at the Santos Museum of Economic Botany, Adelaide. Do the tentacles look familiar?

As before, we’re meeting via Zoom

Meeting details:
Topic: The Kraken — Critical Mass, Adelaide
Start Time: Aug 19, 2020 7:00 pm Adelaide, 7:30 Melbourne
<tea break at 7:40pm>
Meeting resumes 7:50pm, for an 8:30 finish.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/75115213552?pwd=eVdMNTBxOHVVTTMxQ0FGSDI5M3BjZz09

Meeting ID: 751 1521 3552
Passcode: Ds3ksp

His impact on science fiction is undeniable – not only because of what Lem wrote and predicted (e-paper, for example), but also due to how he wrote it. His prose is very precise, carefully planned, seemingly concise and distant, only to reveal at a second glance an incredible depth of emotions, breathtaking imagination, painful questions and even more harrowing answers about human nature and the Universe. It’s paradoxical, at times absurdly funny, at times depressing, almost always unsettingly convincing. And in many cases, it’s just utterly brilliant. I won’t hesitate to put many of his novels among the best of the best in sf, ever. Mulling over Lem’s more difficult novels takes as much time – or more – as reading them; and they stay with the reader for a long time afterwards. But Lem also wrote wonderfully funny, witty satires, little morality plays dressed up as fables, hilarious accounts of interstellar travelers, and twisted crime novels with no perpetrators. During his later years he turned toward philosophical essays, analyzing the significance of nanotechnology, AI, and virtual reality – but his most influential, and the best in my opinion, are his science fiction novels.

— Ola G, “On Stanislaw Lem”, Re-enchantment Of The World