Upcoming Discussions
The books listed below are scheduled to be discussed at the group. We're always keen to see new faces so if any of the titles take your fancy please feel free to come along.
Asunder (Kerstin Hall)
30 April 2025 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
We choose our own gods here.
Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch being--three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving--who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with some very dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.
Ferain is willing to pay a ludicrous sum of money for her help. To save him, Karys inadvertently binds him to her shadow, an act that may doom them both. If they want to survive, they will need to learn to trust one another. Together, they must journey to the heart of a faded empire, all the while haunted by arcane horrors, and the unquiet ghosts of their pasts.
And all too soon, Karys knows her debts will come due.
Mickey7 (Edward Ashton)
28 May 2025 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Mickey7 is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous—even suicidal— the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. Mickey signed on to escape from both bad debts and boredom on Midgard.
After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal…and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.
When he goes missing and is presumed dead at the hands of deadly indigenous creatures, Mickey8 reports for duty, and their troubles really begin.
Neuromancer (William Gibson)
25 June 2025 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel.
William Gibson revolutionised science fiction in his 1984 debut Neuromancer. The writer who gave us the matrix and coined the term 'cyberspace' produced a first novel that won the Hugo, Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards, and lit the fuse on the Cyberpunk movement.
More than three decades later, Gibson's text is as stylish as ever, his noir narrative still glitters like chrome in the shadows and his depictions of the rise and abuse of corporate power look more prescient every day. Part thriller, part warning, Neuromancer is a timeless classic of modern SF and one of the 20th century's most potent and compelling visions of the future.
Rakesfall (Vajra Chandrasekera)
30 July 2025 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story.
Annelid and Leveret met as children in the middle of the Sri Lankan civil war. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they'll never leave each other behind.
Dakini Atoll (Nikhil Singh)
27 August 2025 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Fortunato has made it big, directing the Club Ded sequel. He and Delilah Lex are the dream team. But, Delilah is off the map again. Lost, in extreme technological advances. Mutating from a 're-evolutionary' nerve-implant built by the enigmatic roboticist, Seikichi.
In a new era, haunted by doppelganger robots, where the Prion Eyes plague divides cities into zones of safety, Delilah attains messianic status in the trippy Good Morning Delilah!, a game-changing show/realm that spawns its own holographic industry.
Meanwhile Queen Anita begins a perilous journey into the sub-world of ANGELINC - where she finally unmasks the true agenda of the mysterious Oracle...
The Great When (Alan Moore)
24 September 2025 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, his boss and landlady, Coffin Ada, sends him to retrieve some rare books, one of which, Dennis discovers, should not exist. A London Walk by Rev. Thomas Hampole is a fictitious book that appears in a real novel by another author. Yet A London Walk is physically there in his hands, nonetheless.
Coffin Ada tells Dennis the book comes from the other London, the Great When, a version of the city that is beyond time. In the Great When, epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur, while concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous and terrible beings. But, Coffin Ada tells Dennis, if he does not return the book to this other London, he will be killed.
So begins Dennis' adventure in Long London. Delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers, Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may endanger both Londons.
The Book of Elsewhere (China Miéville, Keanu Reeves)
29 October 2025 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
There have always been whispers. Legends. The warrior who cannot be killed. Who’s seen a thousand civilizations rise and fall. He has had many names: Unute, Child of Lightning, Death himself. These days, he’s known simply as “B.”
And he wants to be able to die.
In the present day, a U.S. black-ops group has promised him they can help with that. And all he needs to do is help them in return. But when an all-too-mortal soldier comes back to life, the impossible event ultimately points toward a force even more mysterious than B himself. One at least as strong. And one with a plan all its own.
Gateway (Frederik Pohl)
26 November 2025 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Wealth ... or death. Those were the choices Gateway offered. Humans had discovered this artificial spaceport, full of working interstellar ships left behind by the mysterious, vanished Heechee.
Their destinations are preprogrammed. They are easy to operate, but impossible to control. Some came back with discoveries which made their intrepid pilots rich; others returned with their remains barely identifiable. It was the ultimate game of Russian roulette, but in this resource-starved future there was no shortage of desperate volunteers.
The Kindness (John Ajvide Lindqvist)
28 January 2026 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
A shipping container is mysteriously dumped in the Swedish port town of Norrtalje. Due to their ignorance of its ownership it isn't until a week has passed that the authorities can have it forced open. There the remains of twenty eight refugees are found, a situation of unrelenting horror. Not only that; a black sludge pours out which contaminates the river and is the cause of a new, sickening dread that affects Norrtalje's inhabitants, causing a lack of trust, aggression, violence. It seems like an end to Kindness.
Six characters are at the centre of this extraordinary novel, six people in search of love and connection, whose extraordinary qualities will confront the metaphysical illness consuming their town.