Mod post: theme suggestions

[damned_colonial]

Please suggest themes you'd like to see covered here! Cut and paste the following into a comment:

ETA: please put your theme in the subject of your comment!

Theme:
Are you prepared to run it? Yes/No
Suggested books, if you have them already:


What does it mean to run the theme?

1. At least one month in advance, you'll let everyone know about the theme and your suggested reading for it. You need to suggest at least 3 works of fiction.
2. On the first of the month, you will post a welcome/introduction/kickoff for the theme.
3. Throughout the month, you'll take an active part in discussion of the theme.

You do not have to be an expert on the theme to run it. You just need to have an interest in it.

Comments

[avendya]

I would really, really love to see science & technology covered. (That is, changes in attitude over time, etc.) Jo Graham's Hand of Isis touches on it, but it's more fantasy than pure historical. Cryptonomicon does some interesting stuff with codebreaking in WWII. Are biographies and/or non-fiction allowed? (Because if they are, I could do a whole section of science from 1900 - 1950.)

[damned_colonial]

So the current guidelines, which are totally open for discussion, are that you have to have three works of fiction, but can additionally suggest non-fiction, movies, TV, plays, etc. Cryptonomicon would be a good one to read, though! Maybe in a set about the Pacific theatre of WW2? I'd like to see that.

[epershand]

That would be really cool. Some further suggestions:

Ellen Klages, The Green Glass Sea and White Sands, Red Menace

In addition to Cryptonomicon, Stevenson's related epic trilogy of hugeness (The Baroque Cycle) has some really great stuff covering the English Enlightenment scientists.

[vaznetti]

I'd suggest as well This Thing of Darkness, by Harry Thompson, which is about the voyages of the Beagle, and has lots of interesting material about the development of geology and biology, as well as the relatioship between science and colonialism in the 19th century.