Minneapolis Sci-Fi (and sometimes Fantasy) Book Club

Virtual Book Club Event - May 2025

Come join us to discuss this month's poll selection, Babel by R.F. Kuang!

Here is a short synopsis from Goodreads:

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

In-Person Book Club Event - June 2025

Come join us to discuss this month's poll selection, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Here is a short synopsis from Goodreads:

When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day.

Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' pain.
Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith...and a startling vision of human destiny.

Virtual Book Club Sequel Event - July 2025

Come join us online to discuss the Sequel to a Deadly Education, The Last Graduate by Naomi Novak!

Here is a short synopsis from Goodreads:

The dark school of magic has always done its best to devour its students, but now that El has reached her final year -- and somehow won herself a handful of allies along the way -- it's suddenly developed a very particular craving . . .

For her.

As the savagery of the school ramps up, El is determined that she will not give in; not to the mals, not to fate, and especially not to the Scholomance. But as the spectre of graduation looms -- the deadly final ritual that leaves few students alive -- if she and her allies are to make it out, El will need to realise that sometimes winning the game means throwing out all the rules.

Wry, witty, endlessly inventive, and mordantly funny -- yet with a true depth and fierce justice at its heart -- this enchanting novel reminds us that there are far more important things than mere survival.