Sci Fi Story Club: Mieville + Guha
About the Event
Join us on Zoom for the next gathering of the Sci Fi Story Club. We’ll be discussing two stories about space elevators: “The Rope Is The World” by China Mieville and “Elevator Era” by Soham Guta.
Once purely speculative but now inching closer to reality, space elevators may someday be a way of traveling to outer space without the use of rockets. One end of a massive cable would be tethered to earth, the other would be attached to an orbital counterweight; the centrifugal force of earth’s spin would keep it extended and stationary, so that elevators could travel up and down the cable to a space station at the top. In “The Rope is the World” China Mieville imagines a future in which earth’s equator is studded with corporate-branded spokes reaching out to interconnected space stations – but life on the rope grows bleak as they fall into disrepair and the power goes out. In Soham Guha’s “Elevator Era”, the trillionaire builder of India’s space elevators invites two of the last working terracotta artists, a father and son, up to his opulent offworld city to decorate a room with tiles. They soar up the massive cable high above an earth ruined by environmental devastation and squalor, where their encounter with their benefactor will lead to an unexpected reckoning over inequality and injustice.
Email eden@lapl.org for the reading selection and for the Zoom link to attend.
For disability-related accommodations, please call (213) 228-7430 at least five business days prior to the event. The City will make every effort to accommodate requests received with less notice.
