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.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 