Category: Events

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, unless otherwise indicated. Note that the schedule below may be subject to change during the week, please refer to the Seanchai Library website for the latest information through the week.

Monday, August 10th, 19:00: Voyage to the City of the Dead

Gyro Muggins reads the 11th volume in Alan Dean Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth series, first published in 1984.

The Humanx Commonwealth is an interstellar ethical/political entity spanning multiple star systems and worlds. One of the more unique of these worlds is Horseye, the home of three alien cultures and renowned throughout the Commonwealth for having the most spectacular river valley anywhere in the known galaxy.

It is both the cultures and the river that has drawn scientists Eitienne and Lyra Redowl to Horseye. Now, after months spent in quarantine, they embark on a voyage to the source of the 12,000 long River Skar, and study it and the peoples living on its banks.

Veterans of exploration and discovery, the Redowls believe they are ready to face anything. But how can you prepare for things like treachery, lies and greed? For a local legend would have it that at the source of the Skar lie a great treasure – and the locals who appear to be willing to help the Redowls in fact plan on finding it for themselves.

Assuming, that is, the treasure is in fact something at can be regarded as offering wealth or power…

Tuesday, August 11th:

12:00 Noon: Russell Eponym, Live in the Glen

Music, poetry, and stories in a popular weekly session at Ceiluradh Glen.

19:00: The Stars Below

Willow Moonfire reads Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story the initially came to prominence when reprinted in the anthology volume The Wind’s Twelve Quarters alongside of The Word of Unbinding and The Rule of Names, two of the founding short stories of what would become her Earthsea novels.

THE WOODEN HOUSE AND OUTBUILDINGS CAUGHT FIRE FAST, BLAZED UP, BURNED DOWN, BUT THE DOME, BUILT OF LATHE AND PLASTER ABOVE A DRUM OF BRICK, WOULD NOT BURN. WHAT THEY DID LAST WAS HEAP UP THE WRECKAGE OF THE TELESCOPES, THE INSTRUMENTS, THE BOOKS AND CHARTS AND DRAWINGS, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR UNDER THE DOME, POUR OIL ON THE HEAP AND SET FIRE TO THAT.

The opening of The Stars Below

Fearing the zealots who razed his observatory burn him at the stake for heresy, an astronomer is forced underground into the cold tunnels of ancient mine workings that sit upon deeper, more extensive tunnels and caverns hewn by nature. Here he is discovered by a group of old miners who still try to eke out a living chipping silver out of the hard rock. Rather than turn him in, they adopt him, and slowly he learns some of their ways and helps them with their work, but never venturing back to the surface, afraid for what might happen if the authorities come upon him.

But his learning of the stars of heaven will not leave him, nor will the skills he learned in making his own telescopes and fine lenses – one of which he rescued from the pyre of his observatory. And so the miners see him less and less as he explore the great caves and caverns, until one evening he comes to them to tell them he has once again found the stars – and they are below the mine.

Wednesday, August 12th, 19:00: Whittington

Caledonia Skytower reads Alan Armstrong’s 2006  Newbery-Honor winning tale.

Whittington is a roughneck tom cat who arrives one day at a barn full of rescued animals and asks for a place there. Present at the barn is a menagerie of animals and young Ben and Abby, whose grandfather owns the barn and does the rescuing.

To earn his place, Whittington tells the tale of his famous ancestor, the nameless cat who brought Dick Whittington to the heights of wealth and power in 16th-century England. In telling his story of how his ancestors saved and elevated Whittington, this tom-with-a-chip, elevates another little boy above his fear of learning to read.

Thursday, August 13th

1900: TBA

Please check the Seanchai Library blog.

21:00: Seanchai Late Night

Contemporary sci-fi and fantasy from such on-line sources as Light Speed, Escape Pod, Clarkesworld, and more. With Finn Zeddmore.

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, unless otherwise indicated. Note that the schedule below may be subject to change during the week, please refer to the Seanchai Library website for the latest information through the week.

Monday, August 3rd, 19:00: Voyage to the City of the Dead

Gyro Muggins reads the 11th volume in Alan Dean Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth series, first published in 1984.

The Humanx Commonwealth is an interstellar ethical/political entity created and administered by the two major sentient species within it – humans and the insectoid Thranx. It spans multiple star systems, allowing both species to work together not just in a beneficial manner, but also symbiotic.

Within the Commonwealth are many inhabited worlds, but one of the most unique is Horseye, being the home of three alien cultures and having the most spectacular river valley anywhere in the known galaxy. It is both the cultures and the river that draw scientists Eitienne and Lyra Redowl to Horseye, and after months spent in quarantine, they are now ready to embark on a voyage to the source of the 12,000 long River Skar, and study it and the peoples living on its banks.

Veterans of exploration and discovery, the Redowls believed they were ready to face anything. But how can you prepare for things like treachery, lies and greed? For a local legend would have it that at the source of the Skar lie a great treasure – and the locals who appear to be willing to help the Redowls in fact plan on finding it for themselves.

Assuming, that is, the treasure is in fact something at can be regarded as offering wealth…

Tuesday, August 4th:

12:00 Noon: Russell Eponym, Live in the Glen

Music, poetry, and stories in a popular weekly session at Ceiluradh Glen.

19:00: TBA

Check the Seanchi Library website for updates

Wednesday, August 5th, 19:00: Whittington

Caledonia Skytower reads Alan Armstrong’s 2006  Newbery-Honor winning tale.

Whittington is a roughneck tom cat who arrives one day at a barn full of rescued animals and asks for a place there. Present at the barn is a menagerie of animals and young Ben and Abby, whose grandfather owns the barn and does the rescuing.

To earn his place, Whittington tells the tale of his famous ancestor, the nameless cat who brought Dick Whittington to the heights of wealth and power in 16th-century England. In telling his story of how his ancestors saved and elevated Whittington, this tom-with-a-chip, elevates another little boy above his fear of learning to read.

Thursday, August 6th, 1900: Philip Marlowe’s The Finger Man

With Shandon Loring. Also in Kitely – from the main Seanchai World grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI.

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, unless otherwise indicated. Note that the schedule below may be subject to change during the week, please refer to the Seanchai Library website for the latest information through the week.

Monday, July 27th, 19:00: Colossus

Gyro Muggins reads the 1966 future cold war novel by Dennis Feltham (DF) Jones.

Charles Forbin has dedicated ten years of his life to the construction of the supercomputer, Colossus, rejecting romantic and social endeavours in order to create the United States of North America’s (UNSA, a nation encompassing both America and Canada) first artificially intelligent defence system.

Colossus is capable of taking and analysing data rapidly, allowing it to make real-time decisions about the nation’s defence needs. But the system soon exceeds even Forbin’s expectations; it is able to take far more information and process it far faster than he and his team at the Colossus Programming Office believed would ever be possible.

Such is the system’s apparent abilities, the President hands off full control of the UNSA’s ballistic missile capability, together with other defence protocols, to Colossus and makes the announcement to the world that he has ensured peace.

But then the USSR announces that it has a defence supercomputer of its own – Guardian – with capabilities similar to that of Colossus. Then the two computers demand they be allowed to communicate directly – and proceed to do so at a rate that is well beyond the understanding of their respective development teams.

And neither system takes it kindly when Forbin and his Russian opposite number, Academician Kupri, both disable their ability to communicate directly and then seek to remove them from control of UNSA and USSR nuclear missiles…

Tuesday, July 28th:

12:00 Noon: Russell Eponym, Live in the Glen

Music, poetry, and stories in a popular weekly session at Ceiluradh Glen.

19:00: The Golden Apples of the Sun

Willow Moonfire reads from an anthology of 22 short stories by Ray Bradbury, first published in 1953, and which takes its title from the final line of the poem The Song of Wandering Aengus by W.B. Yeats. Originally published in 1897 under the title A Mad Song before gaining its proper name until 1899. A romantic poem about an old man recalling a magical encounter with a silver trout that turned into a beautiful young girl after he caught it, only for her to vanish, the poem ends with the stanza:

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Of these lines, Bradbury said, “Maggie [his wife] introduced me to Romantic poetry when we were dating, and I loved it. I love that last line in the poem, and it was a metaphor for my story, about taking a cup full of fire from the sun.”

Wednesday, July 29th, 19:00: Whittington

Caledonia Skytower reads Alan Armstrong’s 2006  Newbery-Honor winning tale.

Whittington is a roughneck tom cat who arrives one day at a barn full of rescued animals and asks for a place there. Present at the barn is a menagerie of animals and young Ben and Abby, whose grandfather owns the barn and does the rescuing.

To earn his place, Whittington tells the tale of his famous ancestor, the nameless cat who brought Dick Whittington to the heights of wealth and power in 16th-century England. In telling his story of how his ancestors saved and elevated Whittington, this tom-with-a-chip, elevates another little boy above his fear of learning to read.

Thursday, July 30th

1900: Philip Marlowe’s The Finger Man

With Shandon Loring. Also in Kitely – from the main Seanchai World grid.kitely.com:8002:SEANCHAI.

21:00: Seanchai Late Night

Finn Zeddmore presents contemporary science fiction and fantasy from such on-line sources as Escape Pod, Light Speed, and Clarkesworld magazines.