Beyond Reality discussion
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General - Group Business
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The Beyond Reality FAQ: Please read before posting!
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GUIDELINES
Thou Shalt...
* Treat all group members with respect. Please use the same courtesy that you would show when speaking face-to-face with someone. Flames, insults, and personal attacks will not be tolerated.
* Post information relevant to science fiction and fantasy only! Off-topic discussion belongs in the Members' Lounge Discussion Folder, where you're welcome to post about anything - movies, sports, music, whatever - as long as it doesn't contradict any of the other rules.
* Use spoiler warnings and plenty of space when discussing books or movies; please remember that not everyone has read or seen it. You may also hide spoilers behind spoiler tags. (<*spoiler>spoilery spoiler stuff goes here<*/spoiler> - remove the asterisk to make the tags work.)
Thou Shalt Not...
* Flame another group member, inside or outside the group.
* Post, reply to or comment on SPAM. The moderators will resolve the problem by removing SPAMMERS immediately and indefinitely. Please notify a moderator if you encounter this sort of post in the forum.
* Post off-topic messages of any kind without any pertinent SF or fantasy-related discussion, except in the Members' Lounge Folder. The moderators will remove off-topic messages from other folders at their discretion. First-time offenders will be warned. Subsequent offenses will result in removal from the group.
* Post spoilers for books without the appropriate spoiler warnings, except for in topics that are marked as "spoiler topics."
* Send chain letters, petitions, requests for aid, or mass mailings to the group. If you feel such a message is important, please forward it to one of the moderators.
* Blatantly promote your own works/website/products. Self-promotion of books or websites without contributing to discussions will not be tolerated. Authors, you are group members too. We love to have you here and encourage you to participate in our discussions, but please use discretion when posting, so that your comments do not look or feel like an advertisement.
If you're not sure whether something is allowed or not, ask a moderator before posting. Messages that violate our few rules will be deleted, and the member(s) who posted them may receive a warning or be removed from the group altogether.
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GENERAL INFO
1 Q. What is the BEYOND REALITY SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY Reading Group"?
A. Each month, the members of Beyond Reality select two books to discuss - one Science Fiction and one Fantasy. Then we read and discuss them. (Periodically we also conduct series reads in which we progress through all the books in a given series.) Why? To discover some great new books, enhance our reading experience, AND have fun! In addition, members are free to discuss any other science fiction or fantasy novels.
2 Q. How are the Books-of-the-Month chosen?
A. Each month, the members of the group are invited to make nominations for our Books-of-the-month. After the nomination deadline, it's time for us to vote. There will be an initial poll to select two front runners, which then go into the final "run-off" poll. Occasionally, there will also be a short tie-breaker poll. When the voting is over, the winners become our Books-of the-Month!
3 Q. How do I make a NOMINATION?
A. To make a nomination, simply reply to the message under "Nominations for ", which will be posted by the moderators in the General Group Business folder, usually in the middle of each month. Please feel free to post a review or a description of the book you are nominating, so that others will want to vote for it. Each group member may nominate one book per genre for each month - one Science Fiction and/or one Fantasy.
4 Q. How and when is VOTING Handled?
A. After all nominations have been taken, they are placed into a POLL. Our members are then invited to vote for the title(s) they want to read and discuss. A group announcement is typically sent at this time to notify members that the polls are starting. The two most popular titles from the first poll will then be entered into a second "run-off" poll. The winner of that poll becomes the Book-of-the-Month. Feel free to campaign for your nominations! You can also re-nominate a book the next month if it doesn't win.
5 Q. When does the DISCUSSION Take Place?
A. Books are always nominated for a specific month. To allow everyone enough time to find and read the novels, we take nominations 3 months in advance, so e.g. in January we nominate and vote for the April books. The discussion always begins on the 1st day of that month. Old books-of-the-month may be discussed at any time, so don't worry if you're a late-comer or a slow reader! The books we discussed in the previous two months have discussion folders, and after this their topics are moved to the Previous Books of the Month folder.
6 Q. Are there any Books that can NOT be Nominated for Book-of-the-month?
A. Yes.
1- Sequels may only be nominated if the first book of that series has already been a previous Book-of-the-Month (and e.g. book 3 only if we've read books 1 and 2, and so on), so group members will be more likely to have already started that series, and are therefore more likely to be able to join in on a discussion of that series.
2- A full omnibus (a book with more than one novel in it) may only be nominated if the novels are individually out of print -OR- if the total number of pages is no more than 500 pages.
3- Horror is fine for nomination so long as it could be considered Science Fiction or Fantasy as well.
4- Out of print books can be nominated, but please take a moment to check if the book can easily be found second-hand (on Amazon, Alibris, etc.).
5- Books MUST be available in print format. If a book is ALSO available in electronic format, that's fine, but books that are ONLY available in electronic formats are not eligible.
6- Books MUST be available internationally. We are an international group with a diverse membership. Books that are only available in the United States or which have been published in the United Kingdom but have not yet come out elsewhere exclude a large portion of the membership and are therefore not suitable for our group discussions. Please take a moment to check availability of any book you'd like to nominate. If you are not sure where to get this information, a moderator will be happy to help you find it.
7- We generally discourage authors from nominating their own books. It violates our (previously stated) rules regarding self-promotion, and in the case of self-published or indie authors, often the books are only available in electronic formats, which violates rule #5 above. (This includes secondary authors, illustrators, translators and editors. If your name is on the book and/or you are directly involved in a book's production, please don't nominate it.)
8- Please take a moment to see if the book you're planning to nominate has been our Book of the Month before. While it's not against our rules for a book to be nominated if it was our BotM before, we'd usually rather read something new! (Note that if a book has been read quite recently - say, in the past 2 years - the mods will probably ask you to choose another book to nominate.) You can find a complete list of our past Books of the Month in the Previous Books of the Month folder, or by checking the group's Bookshelf.
7 Q. Can I discuss books that aren't the current Book of the Month?
A. Absolutely! Beyond Reality is a free forum for all discussion of science fiction and fantasy. Please feel free to ask questions, discuss books you have read or are reading, offer recommendations and so on. Any SFF-related discussion can go in the General SF&F Discussion folder, and any off-topic discussion can go in the Members' Lounge Folder.
UPDATED July 2014:
8. Q. Can I nominate a book from an independent publisher?
A. Of course - IF the book qualifies in all other ways outlined above (available in paper form, available internationally, etc.)
9. Q. Can I sign up for the group just to make a group read nomination or vote for a book in a poll?
A. Well, we won't bully you at the door, but please be aware of how this may look to other members of the group. Often times, it will just be a case where a person stumbles across a discussion or poll, finds something interesting and decides to sign up and get involved. That's wonderful! But in a smaller number of specific cases, this can appear to be a gentle, even well-intentioned, abuse of the nomination/voting system, and it smacks of self-promotion, which is definitely not OK. With this in mind, we find it necessary to clarify a corollary to our established self-promotion statement: Signing up as a group member just to nominate or vote for a potential book of the month is frowned upon, and doing so specifically to promote a book written by a friend or colleague will be treated in the same way as self-promotion. It comes across as an attempt to game the system and is unfair to other group members, as it skews results in favor of a book or author who happens to have a lot of friends or fellow authors under the same publisher. If it becomes clear that a nomination falls into this category and/or that many of the votes for a particular book are from people who signed up just to promote said book, the book will be disqualified from voting. If this occurs during the nomination stage, the nominator will be given a chance to suggest another book instead. Every attempt will be made to make sure the nomination and voting process is as fair as possible at all stages, but it is quite possible that it may not become obvious that a particular nominated book has been promoted in this way until it is already in the midst of the voting stage. In such a case, the book will be removed from the poll and a message will be posted explaining why.