Category Archives: Sci-Fi Saturday
Originally 95 cents each!
I mentioned in a post six years ago that I’d finally gotten around to unpacking a box of books that had been sitting in a closet since I moved into the place. The problem I always have when I move (aside from all the book packing) is shelf space. I prefer the kind of shelves mounted on the wall, so I have to recreate shelf space every time.
Not that my memory for what I mentioned in a post six years ago is sharp. Or even exists. I noticed the post had some views recently, so I re-read it. The line caught my eye because last week I opened the last unopened box of books.
And I found some old science fiction friends!
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15 Comments | tags: Chiun, Darkover (book series), Don Pendleton, J.O. Jeppson, Mack Bolan, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Remo Williams, Richard Sapir, science fiction, science fiction books, SF, SF Books, The Destroyer, The Executioner, Warren Murphy | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
I actively try to avoid “the buzz” — for most definitions of the word (“beer buzz” is a whole other thing than I’m talking about here). I mean the buzz of current memes and all the popular things I’m supposed to think, feel, and be. As I’ve said before, I’m deliberately allergic to trendy — I refuse to swim in the main stream.
That applies especially to the books, TV shows, or movies, that I’m supposed to see. I’m even more resistant to things I’m supposed to either hate or love. (I still have never seen ET — never will.) I generally don’t read or watch reviews until after I’ve read or watched what they review.
Which brings me to Axiom’s End (2020) a debut novel by Lindsay Ellis.
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18 Comments | tags: alien contact, alien races, alien vistors, aliens, first contact, Lindsay Ellis, science fiction, science fiction books, SF, SF Books | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
I watched the first season of The Feed (2019), a British SF-horror series on Amazon Prime. I can’t say I was terribly whelmed by it. By the time I watched the last two episodes (of ten) I was mostly kinda over it. It has some neat ideas, but far too many tropes and cliches.
Full disclosure, I am not generally much of a horror fan. As with fantasy, I need a bit of something special — original — in my horror (like alien face-huggers or alien trophy hunters). Ordinary horror stories (especially outright slasher flicks), or, for that matter, ordinary Medieval magic fantasy stories, just don’t make the cut.
The problem I had with The Feed was finding it pretty ordinary.
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6 Comments | tags: Amazon Prime, science fiction, science fiction TV, SF, television | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
Synchronicity pops up a lot in my life. Between working on drafts about my disappointment with a science fiction series, I took a break to read my news feed and saw an article asking why so many popular SF TV series are so awful. The article made a number of points that resonated a lot with me.
The article calls out Westworld (season three), Star Trek: Picard, and Devs, as examples of awful science fiction television, which seems to match what I’ve read. By which I mean, just about everything I’ve heard, both negative and positive, doesn’t incline me towards these shows (I might check out Devs at some point).
Unfortunately, I don’t think the author answered the question.
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20 Comments | tags: Gene Roddenberry, science fiction, science fiction TV, SF, Star Trek | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
My last post was about my disappointment in the science fiction novel series, The Expanse, starting with book four. As it turns out, for me, that’s just the start of my disengagement — it goes seriously downhill from there. To be clear I’m speaking strictly in terms of my personal taste. As the saying goes, ‘One person’s mead is another person’s poison’ (not that I’m a fan of mead).
Given the steep downward trend, book four seems better in comparison. While I like it much less than the first three, I like it much more than what follows. It has some good protomolecule bits, and frontier colony stories are pretty standard science fiction fare.
But I’m particularly struck by what the TV version changed and added.
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25 Comments | tags: adaptations, Babylon 5, science fiction, science fiction books, science fiction TV, SF, SF Books, The Expanse (TV series) | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
I just finished Time Travel: A History (2016) by science historian and author James Gleick. The New York Times Book Review, Anthony Doerr described it as, “A fascinating mash-up of philosophy, literary criticism, physics and cultural observation.” I agree with that description minus the word fascinating. I would have said tedious.
This is not the book’s fault. I’m not saying it’s bad. There was nothing I disagreed with. There were even a few parts I got into. The problem is I found it ambling, rambling, and meandering. It wasn’t incoherent, but it seemed disconnected to me.
Overall, I found it easy to put down and hard to pick back up.
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16 Comments | tags: Doctor Who, Edith Nesbit, H.G. Wells, James Gleick, Robert Heinlein, The Time Machine, time, time travel | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
If you know me at all, you know I was already a science fiction fan when Star Trek began. (It’s a rare occasion I get in on the ground floor of something.) I adored Kirk and crew. It took some episodes, but I came to love Picard and crew even more. The Trek story still unfolds, but I left that fold around the fifty-year mark. (Or rather, Trek left me.)
More recently (the rebooted) Doctor Who became my favorite SF TV series, but it’s starting to look like it won’t have the staying power that Trek did. I haven’t been as engaged the last many seasons, and the shift to the 13th Doctor hasn’t worked for me.
Currently I’d have to say my favorite SF TV series is The Expanse.
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6 Comments | tags: Boston Legal, Captain Kirk, Chris Chibnall, Dark Matter (TV series), David Tennant, Denny Crane, Doctor Who, Jessi Combs, Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, science fiction, science fiction TV, Star Trek, The Doctor, The Expanse (TV series), William Shatner | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday
Okay, here’s one that’s been sitting in my Drafts folder since 2012. The last time I even edited it was back in 2016. (Wow. Four years already?) The problem has been turning it into a post. At this point it’s like a lazy twenty-year-old who won’t move outta the house.
If you were a serious fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the post’s title might ring a bell. It involves an episode with a very interesting idea about a communication problem between different species despite a “universal translator” that makes the words clear.
It isn’t a matter of language, but of metaphor.
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9 Comments | tags: Darmok, metaphor, Picard, relationships, Star Trek | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, Writing
One of the older notes on my board just reads: “Armageddon (1998) vs Deep Impact (1998)”. On weirdness points, the note could just as easily have read: “Antz (1998) vs A Bug’s Life (1998)”.
The coincidence that both coincidences take place in 1998 (ah, the good old days) does makes it a bit weirder, but weird coincidences aren’t the point of my note or this post. The point is how audiences reacted to the films.
For this Sci-Fi Saturday, I thought I’d ramble about some SF Yin-Yang pairs that have struck me over the years.
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9 Comments | tags: Frank Miller, George Lucas, Michael Bay, Mimi Leder, Peter Jackson, Robert Heinlein, science fiction movies, SF, SF Movies | posted in Movies, Sci-Fi Saturday
Neal Stephenson, like Greg Egan, is a hard science fiction author who never fails to delight me with something new and tasty. Both Stephenson and Egan seem able to leave footprints in otherwise well-trodden ground. Stephenson, in particular, often makes me LOL.
That’s not an acronym I use very often, but it seems especially appropriate here given this post is about The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland. The book has so many tongue-in-cheek military acronyms (DODO, DTAP, DEDE, MUON, etc) that it has a glossary at the back.
The story concerns parallel worlds, wave-function collapse, and witches.
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7 Comments | tags: hard SF, Neal Stephenson, Nicole Galland, science fiction, science fiction books, SF, SF Books, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., witches | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
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