Sleeping Giants is a science fiction novel by Sylvain Neuvel in which an unknown interviewer and scientist Rose Franklin attempt to decipher the alien origins and purpose of a giant robotic weapon. Told by way of case files – transcripts, diary entries, and other documents – the novel spans the course of four years, beginning with a prologue set when Rose is 11 years old.

When the novel begins, Rose takes out the bike she has received for her birthday, only to fall into a massive hole near Deadwood, South Dakota, in which is a giant hand. Seventeen years later, Rose now spearheads the effort to determine what the hand is, and to crack the code of the symbols featured on it. At the same time, two American pilots, Kara Resnik and Ryan Mitchell, testing Syrian airspace for radiation, return over Turkey when another body part appears beneath them, activated by the radiation they trail. Because of this, Kara and Ryan are tasked to be a part of Rose’s team. A French-Canadian linguist, Vincent Couture, is brought on board to help decipher the symbols. Scouring the globe, the team completes the robot.

The team is watched over, protected by, and instigated by an unknown interviewer (to whom the files belong and who appears in most of the files speaking to the members of the team). The interviewer has immense power that spans presidential administrations, and indeed he only has two equals: the sitting president and an unidentified subject whom he meets in Washington D.C. The unidentified subject turns out to be the descendant of alien soldiers who came to Earth as the most far-flung colony of their alien empire, to guard it against the threat of invasion using giant war machines. When the danger had passed, they left one robot behind in pieces so that when humanity advanced enough technologically, it could operate the robot on its own and prove worthy of alien contact – or destruction. The ability to master the atom for war is the sign of humanity’s advancement, and progress by the 2010s has allowed the robot to be found, reassembled, and activated, for it uses radioactive material as fuel. The aliens are now watching to see what becomes of the robot they left behind.

Kara and Ryan become pilots for the robot, but they are unable to make much progress because the robot only responds to Kara. When Vincent attempts to operate the robot, he is successful, meaning he and Kara are both descendants of the aliens – the only ones who can operate alien machinery because of their genetics. As a result, Greek geneticist Alyssa Papantoniou is brought on board to study Vincent and Kara. But a testing accident on the robot destroys part of Denver International Airport, kills hundreds (seemingly including Rose), and exposes the top secret project to the world. The United States then goes public with the truth about the robot, and sinks it in the Puerto Rico Trench so no country may harness its destructive power. Secretly, the interviewer oversees a consortium of nations other than America which buy into a project to recover the robot.

The new secret project is overseen by Alyssa. But when the project is exposed because of Alyssa’s incompetence, the United States must intervene – now holding the moral high ground – to take custody of the robot – with everything happening at the workings of the interviewer. The United States then gifts the robot to the UN to form the Earth Defense Corps, a multinational effort to prepare for potential alien invasion. As the novel ends, in an epilogue, Rose wakes up on the side of a road in Ireland, with no memory of the project and no memory of the past four years – though she does remember everything before.

Like, not even movies or games, just books. Recently I've been reading this book called A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, which is about his experiences as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. The book talks about this root (?) called cassava, and something about the author describing it made me really hungry for it, even though I had never heard of it before. Its really weird, and I don't really know why books incite such a reaction in me.

Since AP Lit in high school, I’ve wanted to get into reading. Recently I started making a list of things I want to read (both fiction and non, fantasy and sci fi, bios and commentary), but am not making the slightest dent in it. Im able to read magazine writing and online publications throughout the day, so what do y’all do to read more books?

And why is it Ravenclaw?

I figure we might as well get a thread going about the Harry Potter series of books, show that it is popular and that ~HarryPotter needs to be a thing.

Which Hogwarts house are you? Find some like-minded friends and start the seeds of a community here.

What book are you reading currently? What's your favourite book of all time? Suggest books for us to read this month and maybe a short blurb as to why we should read it.

I'm currently reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, a book that is widely regarded as one of the best recently-released motivational tools for cleaning up and sorting your life and living areas. Ms Kondo puts forward a method of sorting possessions to keep vs ones to discard, one that appears to work for a decent number of people based on discussions I've seen.

I'm a big fan of Peter Watts (Blindsight, Echopraxia) and Greg Egan (Schild's Ladder, Diaspora) and always looking for more to read. That said I find myself a little bit difficult sometimes as I'm not really a fan of massive scope stuff like operas or anything too dated. Granted I really haven't given either of the latter much of a chance as I think I just prefer tight, focused stories with a small cast of characters.

I recently started The Quantum Thief and am liking certain aspects of it but you're really thrown into a blizzard with that one.

I don't mind reading a fast book with lots of action or a twisting plot, but over the years have discovered authors that seem to have a style unique to them apart from what's going on:

Richard Powers seems to play with the sounds and meanings of words strung together like pearls on a necklace(The Echo Maker, Orfeo).

John Banville (Athena) creates descriptions that sound poetic and deep while remaining clear and visual.

Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch) puts you into a scene so that you feel the emotion of being there.

Don Delillo (The Names) makes a continental paradise seem like a dense forest of scholars and bright sunlight all at the same time.

Those are a few of mine, what are your favorites?

“My sweet little whorish Nora I did as you told me, you dirty little girl, and pulled myself off twice when I read your letter. I am delighted to see that you do like being fucked arseways. Yes, now I can remember that night when I fucked you for so long backwards. It was the dirtiest fucking I ever gave you, darling. My prick was stuck in you for hours, fucking in and out under your upturned rump. I felt your fat sweaty buttocks under my belly and saw your flushed face and mad eyes. At every fuck I gave you your shameless tongue came bursting out through your lips and if a gave you a bigger stronger fuck than usual, fat dirty farts came spluttering out of your backside. You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora’s fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.

You say when I go back you will suck me off and you want me to lick your cunt, you little depraved blackguard. I hope you will surprise me some time when I am asleep dressed, steal over to me with a whore’s glow in your slumberous eyes, gently undo button after button in the fly of my trousers and gently take out your lover’s fat mickey, lap it up in your moist mouth and suck away at it till it gets fatter and stiffer and comes off in your mouth. Sometimes too I shall surprise you asleep, lift up your skirts and open your drawers gently, then lie down gently by you and begin to lick lazily round your bush. You will begin to stir uneasily then I will lick the lips of my darling’s cunt. You will begin to groan and grunt and sigh and fart with lust in your sleep. Then I will lick up faster and faster like a ravenous dog until your cunt is a mass of slime and your body wriggling wildly.

Goodnight, my little farting Nora, my dirty little fuckbird! There is one lovely word, darling, you have underlined to make me pull myself off better. Write me more about that and yourself, sweetly, dirtier, dirtier.”

― James Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/504662-my-sweet-little-whorish-nora-i-did-as-you-told