Category Archives: science fiction

The City on the Edge of Forever by Harlan Ellison

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The City on the Edge of Forever by Harlan Ellison is Ellison’s big wet raspberry to Gene Roddenberry. Harlan Ellison has many traits that have won him awards and enemies. And one of his biggest traits is a thirst for revenge when he feel he has been wronged. After waiting and fuming for 30+ years with Gene Roddenberry saying his script was almost unfilmable and over-budget and had crew members doing drugs, Ellison waited until Roddenberry died and then published his side of the story.

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Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede by Bradley Denton

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Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede was Bradley Denton’s second novel and touches on many of the same themes as Wrack and Roll(review), including the power of music to make a difference in the world. The book is out of print now, but expect it to be back in print soon when the movie (starring Jon Heder from Napoleon Dynamite) comes out (title simply Alive and Well). It’s a road trip through the musical past and a brings us along on the fun journey.

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Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

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Ship Breaker is the new novel from Paolo Bacigalupi. Unlike his previous effort (The Windup Girl), Ship Breaker is a Young Adult novel. As an aside, I understand financially why author’s write YA books, since they pay better, but it sucks that authors have to do it. To have a brilliant new author like Bacigalupi and know that his new book is aimed at a YA audience makes me sad and wonder how much better it would be if it was aimed at the adult market. But besides being aimed at a YA audience, Ship Breaker is a worthy followup to The Windup Girl and moves Bacigalupi into the top tier of science fiction authors after just two books (and one story collection).

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DVDs You Should Own – Samurai Jack

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Samurai Jack is proof that Genndy Tartakovsky is an animation god. While Pixar and Dreamworks are upping the ante on computer animation with more and more realistic drawings and effects, Genndy Tartakovsky works with simple, hand-drawn animations that are more expressive than any computer animation has ever been able to do. And with news coming out a couple months ago about Tartakovsky’s newest series coming to Cartoon Network, I thought we should take a look back at Samauri Jack.

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The Quiet War by Paul McAuley

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The Quiet War by Paul McAuley is an interesting book about the choice people make. The book reminds me, in some ways, of Firefly. They both deal with a central authority and outer planets that want to go in a different direction. McAuley has created an novel that deals with different science fiction topics (ecological disaster, bio modifications and space wars), but the novel as a whole doesn’t hold together.
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Dr Who after 3 episodes

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As I mentioned in my review of the first episode, I am new to Dr Who. I’ve now watched the first 3 episodes with the new Dr. and am truly enjoying it (and wondering why I didn’t get into it sooner). The 3 episodes have been standalone (for the most part) and don’t require a lot of history to follow, but the longer term storylines have been popping up (and a couple references that I don’t understand since I haven’t seen previous seasons).

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Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann

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Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann is part Batman and part Sky Captain. The book is a steampunk pulp superhero that is an homage to The Shadow, only our hero is The Ghost. The US is in a cold war with Britain (whose Queen Victoria just died at the ripe of age of 107) and is deep into prohibition and jazz. The only thing missing from the book was appearances from Babe Ruth and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

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Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow

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Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow is similar in tone to Little Brotheror Makers in that there is a bunch of cool ideas surrounded by a mediocre story. The book moves along fast and furiously, but at the end there isn’t much there. I did enjoy the book, but was left with a feeling that the book could have been done much better by a different writer.

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