From: "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL>
To: "'WSFA members'" <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Next topic please
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 14:10:03 -0400
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

	I have read Sean McMullen's _Souls in the Great Machine_ (Souls) and
bought _The Miocene Arrow_ to read.  I have looked for _The Eye of the
Calculor_ but haven't seen it in paperback yet.
	About 1,700 years in the future, South Australian civilization had
devolved to the quasi-medieval hand tooled machine stage and faces a
varierty of threats, including barbarian attacks, mutated humanoids, and a
mysterious psionic Call that causes thousands to march blindly to their
death in the alien sea.  The Over-librarian, a woman in an openly
patriarchical society, discovers that an ancient space station is about to
terraform the Earth in strange and probably fatal ways.  She sets out to
stop it despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in her path.
	I consider Souls to be pretty darn good.  It took a little while to
get going and the plot and future society are both more complex than the
average.  However, it's a good read for that very reason.  McMullen is not
afraid to tackle a fairly complex theme and a richly textured society and
make them work.  Of course, I'm a little biased because he depicts
librarians as the buttkicking rulers of the world -- as we rightfully are
but are seldom shown.
	I rate _Souls in the Great Machine_ as 3.5 stars on the 5 star
scale.  -- LS

-----Original Message-----
From: Samuel Lubell [mailto:lubell at boo.net]
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 2:01 PM
To: WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net
Subject: [WSFA] Next topic please

Okay, I think enough has been said about the Live Journals and there is no
sense repeating ourselves.  Besides, there are much more interesting things
to talk about:

So what do people think about the Toronto Worldcon and the SARS
threat?  Should we make T-shirts saying "I survived the SARS Worldcon" ?

Are all the Hugo nominees online?  Does anyone know the appropriate URLs?

I was favorably impressed by Sean McMullen's _Voyage of the
Shadowmoon_.  It's a big fantasy novel that for once isn't a collect the
plot coupons to save the world.  Has anyone read his Greatwinter Trilogy
(Souls in the Great Machine, The Miocene Arrow, the Eyes of the
Calculator)?  Is that any good?

So when do people think the economy will pickup? (We jobless want to know)

Anyone have good ideas for topics for Capclave that haven't been done to
death?