“We’re Going on an Adventure”: Summer Visionary Fiction

The MEP’s Science and Visionary Fiction Reading Group will read Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Ruin this summer.  The catchphrase, “We’re going on an adventure,” signals the novel’s overlapping themes of contemporary significance–desperate efforts to escape war and corporate destruction on Earth, species-level competition to make new homes elsewhere, and the varieties and the social significance of artificial intelligence.

Above all, the book continues the author’s exploration of empathy between his characters and with us, his readers: “I wanted to write sections from the point of view of an octopus.”

As befits summertime reading, we will add other selections as we go, meshing these themes with the interests of the group.