Wednesday 18 October 2017

This Evening

This evening, when I enter the Gregson Centre (and see image) to attend our small sf group, Kevin will be catching up with this blog on his mobile, having forgotten to look at it since last month. John will arrive late from farm work and will tell us about current super-hero films.

I will have taken along my newly acquired copy of SM Stirling's The Desert And The Blade and will recommend Stirling's alternative history fiction. None of us will drink much, if any, alcohol. We will arrange to meet again probably on the third Wednesday of next month. A meal at another venue, also involving our respective wives, might be discussed.

I will not need to tell them about the richness of the Time Patrol texts because they have heard all that before. Kevin and I first met at the inaugural meeting of an sf society on 4 November, 1976. John joined us much later from a comics group. Our group is called "Englishmen" for a very obscure reason. The greeting, if I ever remember to use it, is "England prevails," taken from Alan Moore's V for Vendetta. See here. For a short while, we were a Prisoner (also here) and sf group.

5 comments:

S.M. Stirling said...

Sounds like a pleasant evening in store. My regards to your friends!

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Mr Stirling,
Thank you. I texted both to inform them of your regards and John has acknowledged. When I arrived, Kevin was laughing while reading my account on the blog of him reading the blog.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I'm esp. fond of the Dominic Flandry stories, as I'm sure you are not surprised to know. Has any of your friends expressed opinions about Flandry and the Terran Empire?

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
Of these two, no. John doesn't read sf and Kevin used to concentrate on Philip Jose Farmer. Another guy said he found TRADER TO THE STARS unreadable.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Darn! Some of my better "guest essays" were discussions of various aspects of the Technic Civilization stories, after all. And I'm very disturbed that anyone could find the Nicholas van Rijn stories unreadable!!!!!

Sean