Of This and Other Worlds - Science Fiction Reading Group

Heading into 2026, we’ll be continuing our Fantasy and Science Fiction reading group, exploring worlds both fantastical and horrific, monstrous and utopian. Whether your interests lie in exploring the ruins of a lost civilization, challenging fiends to save the world from ruin or delicately navigating the politics of a corporate interstellar McEmpire™ (Ask about our franchising options and get a free McNuke™!), I do hope you’ll join us.

For the fourth reading group of 2026, we will be travelling to a world under the sway of a terrifying dictatorship.

The One State is the perfect society, ruled over by the enlightened Benefactor. It is a city made almost entirely of glass, where surveillance is universal and life runs according to algorithmic rules to ensure perfect happiness. And D-503, the Builder, is the ideal citizen, at least until he meets I-330, who opens his eyes to new ideas of love, sex and freedom.
A foundational work of dystopian fiction, inspiration for both Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley's Brave New World, WE is a book of radical imaginings - of control and rebellion, surveillance and power, machine intelligence and human inventiveness, sexuality and desire. It is both a warning and a hope for a better world.