Ponderings of science, philosophy, history, society, and many other topics
Still on a fiction binge. The most recent one is The Immortality Thief by Taran Hunt. It appears to be Hunt's first novel, and the writing shows a few rough edges, but not in any way that detracts from the experience of the story. The setting is an interstellar future. Humanity appears to be dominated … Continue reading The Immortality Thief
Still fighting dental issues, and so still burning through a lot of fiction. The latest is Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Final Architecture trilogy. This is epic space opera in the spirit of James S.A. Corey's The Expanse, featuring a ragtag spaceship crew finding themselves embroiled in a war between different species and empires, and an overall … Continue reading The Final Architecture
I haven't been posting much lately, mostly due to complications from a dental procedure. Often when sick and in pain, I fall back on entertainment to pass the time, and Megan O'Keefe's Protectorate trilogy turned out to be what I needed: a long epic tale with interesting concepts and compelling characters. In the far future … Continue reading The Protectorate trilogy
Children of Memory is the third book in Adrian Tchaikovsky's trilogy: Children of Time. This series chronicles the rise of an interstellar civilization. At the beginning of the series, humanity has begun projects to terraform several planets in other solar systems. The plan is to use a genetic virus to uplift (make sapient) an implanted … Continue reading Children of Memory
(Warning: spoilers) Back in November I watched the first season of The Peripheral on Amazon. It's science fiction based on a book by William Gibson. If you're familiar with Gibson's works then you'll have an idea of what to expect, a work of cyberpunk, a genre he basically pioneered. I find Gibson's writing difficult, but … Continue reading The Peripheral
Ever since first reading Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories many years ago, I've been interested in the Dying Earth genre. It includes stories of an earth millions or billions of years in the future, one where the planet is running down, often with the sun also near the end of its life. The setting is … Continue reading The Dying Earth genre
It's strange that I've never posted about Westworld. Looking back, it might have been because the first season finished in late 2016 during a period of high distraction (at least for me), the second season happened during my "blogging winter" in 2018 (another period of distraction), and the third, while mildly entertaining, was nothing to … Continue reading Westworld and the dangers of artificial people
The latest installment of Linda Nagata's Inverted Frontier series, Needle, dropped last week, so of course I had to immediately move it to the top of the reading list. This is far future space opera, but with hard(ish) science fiction bent. Unlike typical space opera, there is no faster than light travel, so no galactic … Continue reading Needle (Inverted Frontier Book 3)
I've been a Star Trek fan since I was very young. I remember getting home from school every day and rushing to the TV to catch the next episode, which at this point, c. 1971, were syndicated reruns. Most of the episodes were individual stories, and so could be shown in any order, which the … Continue reading Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
The latest volume of Love, Death & Robots dropped Friday on Netflix. I had hoped to meter my watching of them this time, but it didn't happen. I avoided binging the whole thing Friday night, but by last night I was done. As usual, these are all relatively short, in the 10-20 minute range. All … Continue reading Love, Death & Robots, Volume 3
SelfAwarePatterns 