My friend Keshav and I ran a book club from July to September 2026. Each Saturday, we'd spend a few hours reading and discussing short stories, some sci-fi and some literary. Towards the end, we also added Milton's political pamphlets (credit to Miles for leading the discussion) and Machiavelli's The Prince to the mix.
I added a few stories to my all-time favourites: Greg Egan's “Learning to Be Me”, Ted Chiang's “The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate” and Franz Kafka's “The Great Wall of China”.
What we read:
“Learning to Be Me” (Egan, 1990)1
“Better Living Through Algorithms” (Kritzer, 2023) [read]
“A Bad Day for Sales” (Leiber, 1953) [read]
Greg Egan
“Luminous” (Egan, 1995)
“Axiomatic” (Egan, 1990)
Borges & Kafka
“The Lottery in Babylon” (Borges, 1941)
“The Great Wall of China” (Kafka, 1931)
Clarke & Calvino
“The Star” (Clarke, 1955) [read]
“The Distance of the Moon” (Calvino, 1965)
Omelas
“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (Le Guin, 1973)
“The Ones Who Stay and Fight” (Jemisin, 2018) [read]
“Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” (Kim, 2024) [read]2
Milton
The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (Milton, 1660) [read]
Guest lecture by Miles.
Ted Chiang
“Exhalation” (Chiang, 2008) [read]
“The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate” (Chiang, 2007)