October was a fun month! The highlight was reading some classic SF of the 1970s and 1980s, particularly True Names, Shockwave Rider, and Neuromancer. I was also able to revisit some favorite contemporary authors — Scalzi, Doctorow, and Suarez. I can see doing a big SF focus on an annual basis, though perhaps more in September than in October. Horror and German history need their space, after all.
Mount Doom:
Metatropolis, ed. John Scalzi
Discarded: Food of the Gods, H.G. Wells. I read this for a bit and decided to let it go. It’s on Gutenberg, so I can try it again later.
Science Fiction Sweep:
The Dispatcher & Murder by Other Means, John Scalzi. Read by Zachary Quinto
The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner
Millennium, John Varley
True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier, Vernor Vinge.
The Heinlein Interview (and other Heinleiniana), J. Neil Schulman
Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, Alec Nevala-Lee
ST TOS: In Harm’s Way, David Mack
ST TOS: A Child of Two Worlds, Greg Cox
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Metatropolis, ed. John Scalzi
Influx, Daniel Suarez
Classics Club:
The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Coming up in November:
I’m aiming for a TBR broadside, since I have two titles already halfway finished. I also recently realized that (as I’m going to grad school) I have access to some TBR titles via the uni library, either physical or electronic, so I may go after a few that I still want to read, but whose physical presence I no longer wish to coexist with. Expecting science to have a strong presence.
Reading Freely 
I know nothing about Food of the Gods, but I feel like when you get into the obscure works of famous authors, you start to understand why they remain obscure. I remember trying The Inheritors by Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford and thinking… what is this weirdness? It was a (confusing) trip.
I read ‘Food of the Gods’ eons ago. I can’t remember that much about it, but it concerned a new method of solving world hunger by giving domesticated animals a special feed that massively increased their growth. Inevitably it made its way into the natural world and produced gigantic creatures of ALL kinds! An interesting warning against GM…!
H.G. Wells’ “In the Days of the Comet” comes to mind. To quote from my review…
“In the Days has nothing of science fiction in it; it is instead a bit of wish-fulfillment in which Wells writes about what’s wrong with the world: property, marriage, tradition, and Jews. […] I guess they can’t all be War of the Worlds, eh H.G.?”