Star Trek Medicine Sucks
Throughout a lot of science fiction series, I’ve seen a great deal of “future medical technology”, and frankly, it sucks. Mostly. Mind you, the primary culprits tend to be television and movies. Novels often have crappy medical science as well, but not to the same extent. And sure, I understand a lot of the reasoning […]
Brand Loyalty in Fandom
(Originally posted on June 13, 2018) Brand loyalty isn’t a mindset found solely in fandom, but it does seem very strong there. What do I mean when I say “brand loyalty”? Essentially it’s fans of some particular franchise–Star Wars, for instance–who will defend anything Star Wars no matter the quality. What causes this phenomenon? I […]
Jack Chalker’s Well World Books
(Originally posted on November 15, 2017) The Well World books are . . . different. Jack Chalker was an oddball writer. Not a bad writer, but an odd one. All of his books had an overriding theme: bodily change. Well World is probably the ultimate example of this. The basic theme of Well World goes […]
The Berserker Stories
(Originally posted on October 25, 2017) The late, great Fred Saberhagen created a series of stories and books about a race of genocidal machines called “Berserkers”. These machines were named so after the Norse Berserker warriors, although they are even more terrifying. As the lore goes, an ancient race known only as The Builders created […]
The Star Fox is Iron Man? A Poul Anderson Great
(Originally posted on September 13, 2017) The Star Fox (1964) is a favorite novel of mine from the late, great Poul Anderson. Like a lot of Poul’s novels, there is a political undertone to it. Poul wrote a lot of Libertarian themed fiction, like several of his contemporaries (such as Heinlein.) This novel is both […]
Dahak Series: A Grand Concept
(Originally posted on September 6, 2017) The first of David Weber’s Dahak Series, Mutineers Moon, came out in 1992, preceding his lucrative Honor Harrington books by a year. The series consists of a mere three books, but they’re not bad. Tightly written with a grandiose and outrageous idea. I enjoyed the hell out of them. […]
My First Science Fiction Series: Flinx and Pip
(Originally posted on August 23, 2017) The Flinx and Pip series by Alan Dean Foster appeared on my radar screen in the late seventies. I was ushered into this series via Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye and Alien movie adaptation. Before that my experience with science fiction had been movies and comic books. Although […]
Star Command/In the Fold: 90s Cheese
(Originally posted on June 7, 2017) For many years I tried to find Star Command somewhere on the web. The difficulty lay in the fact that I couldn’t actually remember the name of the damn thing. Until recently, I had only seen it once–20 years ago. However, thanks to the wonder of YouTube, I tracked […]
Warstrider Series: An Unappreciated Gem
(Originally posted on May 24, 2017) The Warstrider series entered by consciousness way back in the early 90s. I only became aware of it because the author, a William H. Keith Jr., wrote several Battletech books. Those Battletech books, while game books, were so outstanding I instantly started following the Warstrider books. They didn’t disappoint. […]