Echoes from the Satellite

 Well, the dreaded deadline doom (aka work) has caught up to me, so just a short piece this week. I'm still unpacking from my move from a year ago, and I came across my ancient 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons books. Those books have a lot of history. I began playing D&D when I was in junior high, and it was a part of my life up to college. I never played any of the other editions until recently; right before Covid took over our lives, I found a local group and began playing fifth edition. Certainly the details had changed (how many races are there? how is a sorcerer different from a warlock or a wizard?), but the basic mechanics, and of course the role-playing, were pretty much the same. I was able to slip into it relatively easily. But then the pandemic changed things. We stopped playing for a couple of months. We tried online. And then the guys (it was all guys except for me) decided to play in person again. That's when I tossed in my sword, so to speak. I used to pore o...

  This post is not a review but just an appreciation of a writer that I fear is getting lost in the mists of time -Roger Zelazny. If you've not read any Zelazny, it's hard to find another writer to compare him to, because he had a unique style and voice. He wrote both science fiction and fantasy, but his work often blurred the two. He was one of the SF/F writers that emerged from the 60s who focused not on the hard SF of Asimov and his ilk, but more on the human psyche. His books featured protagonists that were often conflicted, perhaps leaning more towards anti-hero status, but always intriguing. He had an interest in legends and mythology which plays throughout his works. Zelazny had a way with language and words -although he often favored a sort of stripped down style of dialog, he could also weave dreamlike imagery. As a reader, I always felt transported by his writing, effortlessly, to new places, new ideas, new states of being. If you are wondering where to start, I would...

It was a crisp Saturday evening in April 1975 when my older brother Steve and I stopped at The Book Nook store and I made my way to the comic book section, where I spotted one that immediately stood out. A group of super-heroes were bursting through the cover, tearing it open and charging straight at me. I was a sucker for group books and this one featured heroes I didn't recognize, although I recognized the team name: X-Men. It was Giant-Size X-Men #1, and it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. I had been reading comics, and specifically Marvel comics, for about four years at that point, and I knew of the X-Men, although only from reprints and the occasional guest appearance. But other than Wolverine, who had recently appeared in The Hulk, and Cyclops, these characters were unknown to me. From the start, I found myself gravitating to them like no other super-hero comic. I always liked team books the best. I suppose it had to do with all the character interactio...

I had been working on a long post about Ripley from Alien , but unfortunately real world work has gotten in the way and I haven't found the time needed to finish it. Instead, about all I can handle today is this: how the heck did the writers of Star Trek Picard think it was a good idea for our dear captain to wind up as an android? Jean-Luc, who had always proclaimed so proudly his humanity, who was so deeply traumatized by being borgi-fied, is fine and happy that he's been reduced to a computer copy plugged into an android body? Hopefully a good chunk of season two will focus on some existential angst over this situation. I mean, is he even actually Jean-Luc Picard any more, or just an AI copy? What is his perception of himself? How do his friends look at him? What is his status in the Federation? It could be good fodder for episodes, but honestly, I can't really see a way that it ends happily. I guess it's obvious that I don't believe this is truly Jean-...

Earlier this week I saw a tweet by @deanetts about the 70s era Marvel Comics character Killraven (featured in the title Amazing Adventures ) and it got me thinking about that series. As a 70s kid (a Bronze Age Baby, as I was once called), I have an unabashed love of Marvel's output from 1970 to about 1977. That's the sweet spot of comics for me. As a SF fan, I was always excited to see SF elements worked into super-hero fare, but books with straight up science fiction premises were a real treat. I came late to Killraven. Going back through my collection, I can tell the difference between the issues I picked up off the stands and the ones I bought as back issues (I bet most of you can do this too). It looks like I started reading the series with issue 29, which, since it started with issue 18, was a fair way into the run.  But I recall that it wasn't too hard to understand what was going on. The series took H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and imagined that the ...

"The gun is good. The penis is evil." That statement is made by a giant floating stone head very early in Zardoz , a 1974 film by writer-director-producer John Boorman. That, and seeing the late Bond-era Sean Connery running around in essentially a red loin cloth should help set expectations for this film: that it's basically completely nuts. But lord help me, I do find this film enjoyable. Part of it is the sheer goofy spectacle, but the more I've watched it, the more I've come to understand it. Maybe I should be concerned for my mental health. But honestly, Zardoz is not a terrible movie. It's a victim of over-reach.There are some interesting science fiction concepts here, but they are buried under a sea of weird choices. It's a mess, but in the same way a plate of nachos is a mess - deliciously so. I'm not going to give a detailed description of the plot; I'm assuming many of you may have seen it, and if not, rather than re-invent ...

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells There are currently five entries in this highly entertaining science fiction series from Martha Wells. The first four - All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol , and Exit Strategy - are all novellas. The most recent entry, Network Effect , is the first full length novel featuring Murderbot, aka SecUnit, the security construct (part robot, part human tissue) that is the main character of the series and who serves as our guide. I have thoroughly enjoyed this series, devouring the novellas once I became aware of them, and I've just started the fifth book, which was released in May. The stories all take place in a far future where corporations control space exploration/colonization, and teams that go out on these hazardous missions must take a company-owned security unit (SecUnit) with them for protection. The SecUnit of this series has just managed to hack its own control system when we first meet up with it. But rather th...