The next meeting will be on Saturday 21st Feb at 2 p.m. in the Storyhouse meeting room. For details see the Facebook Chester Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group user group, or comment here to ask for the details if you are not on Facebook.

We will be discussing Harmattan Season by Tochi Onyebuchi.

The book is set in a fictional country based on the North African countries occupied by the French in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Onyebuchi’s family is from Nigeria not North Africa, but he is known for the Afrofuturist themes in his books and the subject matter clearly appeals to him.

The book can seem a little hard because his characters’ speech is spattered with neologisms from a fictional pidgin, but the meaning is usually fairly obvious and even when it isn’t you can simply ignore them and get on with the story. Onyebuchi manages to construct a fascinating and faintly surreal world where magic and colonial oppression mix to give a colourful and fascinating landscape.

The next meeting will be on Saturday 17th January at 2 p.m. in the Storyhouse meeting room. For details see the Facebook Chester Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group user group, or comment here to ask for the details if you are not on Facebook.

We will be discussing Slow Gods by Claire North.

Claire North is a pen name used by Catharine Webb for her SF books. Her first book as Claire North was The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August in 2014 and Slow Gods is her thirteenth book. In all her books she manages to come up with all sorts of interesting ideas and her new book looks just as strange and interesting as her first one.

The next meeting will be on Saturday 13th December at 2 p.m. in the Storyhouse meeting room. For details see the Facebook Chester Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group user group, or comment here to ask for the details if you are not on Facebook.

We will be discussing Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers.

Chambers wrote two novellas – A Psalm for the Wild-Built in 2021 and a sequel A Prayer for the Crown-Shy in 2022. These were subsequently republished as a single novel Monk and Robot in 2025 and it is this single novel that we are discussing. But feel free to read the two novellas separately as the novel is just the two novellas concatenated.

Chambers has created a remarkable character in the eponymous monk Dex. The notion that all problems can be solved with a nice cup of tea is somewhat quintessentially English, though Chambers is actually American.

The next meeting will be on Saturday 15th November at 2 p.m. in the Storyhouse meeting room. For details see the Facebook Chester Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group user group, or comment here to ask for the details if you are not on Facebook.

We will be discussing Ripe by James Hider. This is a good old hard science fiction thriller!

The next meeting will be on Saturday 18th October at 2 p.m. in the Storyhouse meeting room. For details see the Facebook Chester Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group user group, or comment here to ask for the details if you are not on Facebook. We will be discussing Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti.

Thomas Ligotti is one of those cult writers who is little known outside of the community of dedicated horror fans. His work tends to be on the weird side but can be very unnerving.

The next meeting will be on Saturday 20th September at 2 p.m. in the Storyhouse meeting room. For details see the Facebook Chester Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group user group, or comment here to ask for the details if you are not on Facebook.

We will be discussing the anthology Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology.

Drowning cities and unicorns. Burning deserts and forgotten gods. Golems, elf warriors, and inner-Earthers. Alien lifeforms and museum workers. Ancient plagues and the future of humanity. The familiar and the fantastical. Each story in this anthology is both unique and compelling: from fairy-tale retellings to romance-tinged high fantasy, from nihilistic horror to gripping science fiction. Immersive, wide-ranging, and sublime, Storyteller features worlds and characters that are sure to travel with you long after the last page has been read.

The next meeting will be on Saturday 16th August at 2 p.m. in the Storyhouse meeting room. For details see the Facebook Chester Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group user group, or comment here to ask for the details if you are not on Facebook.

We will be discussing The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor. This book won the 2023 Locus award for best first novel, and has been shortlisted for several other awards. The Guardian described it as:

If a lion could speak,” Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “we could not understand him.” Swap “lion” for “octopus” and you have the philosophical challenge at the heart of this deeply interesting work of science fiction.

The next meeting will be on Saturday 19th July at 2 p.m. in the Storyhouse meeting room. For details see the Facebook Chester Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group user group, or comment here to ask for the details if you are not on Facebook.

We will be discussing The Enterprise of Death by Jesse Bullington.

Bullington’s writing can be a bit, erm, visceral but it is always interesting. Strange horizons described the book as:

Breathtakingly grand in scope and achingly nuanced in detail

The next meeting will be on Saturday 21st June at 2 p.m. in the Storyhouse meeting room. For details see the Facebook Chester Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group user group, or comment here to ask for the details if you are not on Facebook.

We will be discussing Lake of Darkness by Adam Roberts.

The next meeting will be on Saturday 17th May at 2 p.m. in the Storyhouse meeting room. For details see the Facebook Chester Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Group user group, or comment here to ask for the details if you are not on Facebook.

We will be discussing The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton.

Kirkus describes it as:

A fresh twist on dystopian fiction with its share of surprises.