‘Is this the Meetup?’ I asked, moments after fighting with a set of curtains to enter a part of the pub that was set aside for a private party.
‘The Deviant Robot Meetup, yes’ replied a man in his mid-twenties, who was holding a piece of paper that contained a list of names.
‘Is this the book club?’
‘No, this isn’t a book club. We mostly play card games’.
The Deviant Robot Meetup turned out to be a group for geeks. I later found out that it was described as a group for anyone ‘interested in video games, movies, comic books and general geek culture’. This was my kind of group and these were my kind of people! I had never realised that a ‘geek culture’ and video games group existed.
Unfortunately I wasn’t there to talk about video games or comics, or play some weird card game; I was there for a book club to discuss a book I had never read. I explained that I was looking for a different group, thanked the nice man for his time, and went off to explore the pub.
I soon noticed a sign towards a second function room. I climbed a flight of stairs and entered a room. Fourteen people stopped talking and immediately looked at me.
‘Is this the, erm, book club?’ I asked hesitantly, suprised that it looked like there were two Meetups happening at the same pub at the same time.
‘Yes! Welcome. We’re just about to start. What’s your name? My name is Leila.’ Leila was an attractive woman in her mid to late twenties who had died red hair. She wore smart black plastic rimmed glasses, which made her look somewhat studious. Her outfit conveyed an essence of friendly authority.
‘I’ll let you into a secret…’ I whispered, loudly enough so everyone in the room could clearly hear me. ‘I’ve not read the book. Is that okay?’ Leila chuckled.
The book was called The Running Man, by Richard Bachman, who is also known as horror writer Stephen King. I’ve read a number of Stephen King novels: I enjoyed his first book, Carrie, liked the one called Misery where the lead writer was tortured by a crazed fan, but thought The Tommyknockers and Christine were both nonsense.
‘Yeah, that’s fine’ replied Leila, ‘just think of it as being a bit like the film’.
I wandered over to a free seat that was at the other end of a huge table, without confessing that I hadn’t seen the film either.
Leila opened up the discussions.
‘I really loved it!’ proclaimed the first reader. It quickly turned out that this was a view that was thoroughly at odds with everyone else. Other readers had an opportunity to share their perspectives; I quickly learnt that the lead character was thoroughly unlikeable and particularly stupid. There was also talk about the ridiculousness of his intestines flailing around outside of his body. At one point he was apparently disguised as a catholic priest.
Having read the Wikipedia synopsis of the book, I made a meagre contribution, saying that I had heard that the book was written over a period of ‘a week’; other members of the group confirmed this, reducing the writing time to an improbable ‘three days’.
It was soon time for the first drinks break. I chatted to Catherine, who was sitting on my left. She had been a member of the group for two to three years and was a regular, and had come to the group straight after work. Alan was sitting on my right. Alan lived in the area and so didn’t have time to read on a regular commute. ‘I decided to read more. The thing is, I need a deadline, as otherwise I’ll just start a book, read about a third of the way through, and then start another book. A week before this meeting I read and read and read!’
After burgers were ordered, and pints were pulled, we all reconvened to continue our chatter. The conversations meandered around the lead character, the secondary characters, and the differences between the book and the film. The overall premise was pretty simple: the main character competes in a game show where he has to escape ‘hunters’; the longer he stays alive, the more money he wins to support his wife who has turned to prostitution, and to buy drugs for his ill daughter.
In the book, everyone dies. The film, however, has a happy ending; our lead protagonist survives. ‘It’s ridiculous, but it’s a good sort of ridiculous.’ said one reader. ‘It had exploding head bracelets!’ A consensus was quick to emerge: the film was clearly a lot better.
‘I was thinking about how to improve the book’ added another reader after a period of general discussion. ‘If you made one part better, it would show up the rest of the book as being terrible’.
After the second break it was time to ‘score’ the book out of ten.
‘I enjoyed it… but as a romp, and I don’t usually like romps’ said Phil, who was sitting at the front of the room. ‘It’s not one of his best’ came one view followed by the opinion that ‘it’s a pretty bland dystopia’. ‘He can’t write women to save his life!’ was another damning perspective. My favourite comment was one that considered several aspects: ‘it has poor description, poor characterisation, and it’s one of those books that inspires other people to do better things’. The combined score was a mediocre five and a half out of ten.
Unexpectedly, the conversation moved to an entirely different topic. Five members of the group shared stories about their visit to the ‘bee talk’ at Conway Hall, attracted by the idea of a talk about a ‘bee-induced global apocalypse‘.
‘I was there too!’ I exclaimed.
The members turned to look at me, wearing expressions of bemusement.
The meeting closed with a set of announcements. There were some free books that members could get a copy of, and there were some writers who were going to come down and give some talks. The group wasn’t just a book club; it was a group interested in science fiction, literary events and the death of humanity. It also struck me that it was a group about philosophy, beer and fun.
At the end of the Meetup I chatted with Leila for a couple of minutes. She had started the group six years ago after discovering that a couple of her friends were reading a book called The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a book that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She set up the group ‘as a bit of joke’ but soon discovered that it became popular, attracting over one thousand members.
I later read that ‘post-apocalyptic literature’ was a well-established branch of science fiction. As a teen, I had been into this stuff, but I had never realised there was a label that had been attached to it. I had devoured the dystopias of Orwell and Huxley, and had been terrified by the science fiction of Wyndham, and had discovered intriguing futures that were depicted in cyberpunk novels. Through Leila’s group, I inadvertently discovered that a fleeting and slightly weird interest was alive and well.
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