It’s time to highlight another week of storytelling in Voice by the staff and volunteers at the Seanchai Library. As always, all times SLT, and events are held at the Library’s home at Holly Kai Park, unless otherwise indicated.
Monday, November 4th 19:00: Variable Star
Gyro Muggins reads Spider Robinson’s 2006 completion of an eight-page novel outline from 1955 by Robert Heinlein.
When aspiring composer and musician Joel Johnston first met Jinny Hamilton, it seems like a dream come true. And when she finally agrees to marry him, he feels like the luckiest man in the universe.
There’s just one small problem. He is broke. His only goal in life was to become a composer, and he knows it will take years before he’d be earning enough to support a family. But Jinny isn’t willing to wait; she wants Joel with her in marriage now.
Unsettled by her conviction that money wouldn’t be a problem for them, Joel presses Jinny for an explanation. Her response stuns him: ‘Hamilton’ is not her last name – it is ‘Conrad’, and her grandfather is the wealthiest man in the solar system: Robert Conrad; she had been using subterfuge to ensure whoever she fell in love with really loved her for who she was, not for her grandfather’s money. With that truth revealed, she also informs Joel of her family’s broader plans for her and her husband-to-be.
Perhaps most men in Joel’s shoes, faced with the facts that Jinny really did love him and was offering a life of wealth, might have forgiven her for hiding her identity and plans. But not Joel. So it was that he found himself trying to get as far from her and her family as possible: aboard a colony ship heading deep into space. And then came the cosmic cataclysm that would visit so much calamity on humanity as a whole.
Tuesday, November 5th 19:00: What’s Cookin’?
A favourite food stories and recipe exchange with Caledonia Skytower and friends. Tonight they share favourite food stories, and everyone is invited to bring some of their favourite recipes (on note cards) to share.
Wednesday, November 6th 19:00 Stories from Home
With Thanksgiving in the United States now approaching, the Seanchai Library staff sit down to celebrate this time of year by sharing local tales from the various regions of the corporeal world where they live, or have lived: the American South-west, the Klondike, the Puget Sound, and more. You are invited to recommend stories from your home as well.
Thursday, November 7th 19:00 Julius Caesar – A Novelisation
With Shandon Loring. Also in Kitely – find teleport from the main Seanchai World grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI.
Seanchai Listening Rooms
Following the success of Seanchai’s Pirate Story Listening Room at this year’s Pirate Cove event, the library now offers two special listening rooms that are now available for your 24/7 story pleasure.
- The Raven’s Chamber focuses specifically on Edgar Allen Poe’s 1845 narrative poem The Raven. Inspired in part by a talking Raven in the historical novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of Eighty by Charles Dickens, Poe’s famous alliterative poem uses musicality stylized language with its own internal rhythm as it relates a talking raven’s mysterious visit to young man – the poem’s narrator – lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore, as he slowly descends into madness. Both “traditional” and “alternate” readings of the poem can be heard in the room on stream, along with other interpretive content.
- The Ghost Listening Room takes a broader scope, offering haunting tales in comfortably spooky atmosphere.
Both listening rooms can be reached via the direct SLurls above, or by visiting Seanchai Library and using the teleport boards (shown below) located on the back wall of the library’s Story Floor (main floor). Each board will offer both an information note card about the room, and open your world map for teleporting to either room.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 