Tonight at Portland State, science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson will present a free lecture called “Climate Change and the Pursuit of Happiness,” a perhaps over-adorable title for a lecture about humanity's urgent need to move away from a “high carbon-burn lifestyle.” Robinson's the multiple Hug and Nebula-award winning author of Antarctica, Pacific Edge, and the multicolored Mars trilogy. PSU’s Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 228, 1825 SW Broadway, 7 pm, FREE

For those of you who are actually having sex (SNAP), at the Hawthorne Powell's pediatrician Mark Sloan reads from Birth Day, which examines why "having a baby is still so hard." Perhaps to lend him a bit of credibility, he'll be joined by an actual woman—Judy Norsigian, author of Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth .

And for your mom, Steven Galloway reads from the Cellist of Sarajevo at the downtown Powell's, 7:30pm.

More book listings here.