Last summer we were sad to see many of our regular members of the Psychotronic Book Club head off to university, however, the group continues, and we are keen to recruit new book lovers from Year 10-13. This group broadly reads what is categorised as ‘weird’ fiction, which is a mix of horror, science fiction, cult, offbeat, classics, and often brand-new novels. We particularly love ambiguous and strange fiction where we can have discussions on the oddities of what we have just read.
We traditionally read one novel every half-term and before Christmas enjoyed Iain Banks’s controversial cult classic ‘The Wasp Factory’, which has lost none of its power in the forty years since it was first published. We followed that with Alden Bell’s zombie masterpiece ‘Reapers are the Angels’, which ranks as one of the most powerful horror novels of the last twenty years.
Before February half-term we will be discussing Stephen King’s legendary horror ‘Pet Sematary’ which can be picked up from the library. Following that, we will be jumping into one of my favourite science fiction novels of the last decade, Chris Beckett’s ‘Dark Eden’ about the descendants of a small group who crash-land on a dangerous and uninhabited planet.
Cal, Harry, and Jake (see photo) have been enjoying reading these books, with both Harry and Jake in particular also exploring a range of older titles from our Psychotronic back-catalogue going back many years.
Both ‘Pet Sematary’ and ‘Dark Eden’ are available for borrowing from the library.
Mr Jones, Senior Librarian & Archivist