I saw it this weekend. I will say that it's an enjoyable and entertaining movie. But it's something of a logical mess. I'm not spoiling much by saying that time travel features in the story. Early in the movie, there's discussion about how lame movie treatments of time travel typically are. (Back to the Future … Continue reading Avengers: Endgame
Tag: Science fiction
Recommendation: Edges (Inverted Frontier Book 1)
A few weeks ago I recommended Linda Nagata's novel, Vast, the final book of her Nanotech Succession series. Edges is both a sequel to that book, and the first episode in a new series, Inverted Frontier. As in Vast, this is a future where mind uploading and copying is possible, where multiple copies of someone's … Continue reading Recommendation: Edges (Inverted Frontier Book 1)
Recommendation: Tiamat’s Wrath (The Expanse Book 8)
Tiamat's Wrath is the eighth book of The Expanse series. This is definitely a series you want to read in order, so if you're just starting, I'd recommend beginning with the first book, Leviathan Wakes. This is the penultimate book of the series, so it shouldn't surprise anyone that things are seriously heating up. We … Continue reading Recommendation: Tiamat’s Wrath (The Expanse Book 8)
Recommendation: Vast
I have a bad habit of buying ebooks and then letting them sit in my Kindle account unread, sometimes for years. I'm sorry to say that the book that was in this state the longest was Linda Nagata's Vast. I picked it up back in 2011 based on Alastair Reynold's glowing recommendation. However, when I … Continue reading Recommendation: Vast
Recommendation: Prador Moon
I've recommended Neal Asher's books before. This one is pretty much cut from the same pattern: superhuman AIs, fearsome aliens, exotic future technologies, and epic space battles covered in detail. In terms of the chronology of his Polity future universe, Prador Moon is the earliest story, although it was written after several other books and … Continue reading Recommendation: Prador Moon
Captain Marvel
Last night I did something I rarely do anymore, saw a movie in theater right when it was released: Captain Marvel. As Marvel movies go, it was typical: lots of action, special effects, heart warming moments, and laughs. Marvel / Disney really seems to have the formula for general entertainment down. You don't come out … Continue reading Captain Marvel
Why faster than light travel is inevitably also time travel
I've always loved space opera, but when I was growing up, as I learned more about science, I discovered that a lot of the tropes in space opera are problematic. Space operas, to tell adventure stories among the stars, often have to make compromises. One of the earliest and most pervasive is FTL (faster than … Continue reading Why faster than light travel is inevitably also time travel
Recommendation: The Soldier
I've recommended Neal Asher's books before. He writes epic space opera where the stories take place over a vast scale, most of the characters are superhuman or alien entities, and the forces involved are titanic. That was the motif of his Transformation series that I recommended back in 2017. Like that series, The Soldier, which … Continue reading Recommendation: The Soldier
The dangers of artificial companionship
Lux Alpstraum at Undark argues against "Our Irrational Fear of Sexbots": When most people envision a world where human partners are abandoned in favor of robots, the robots they picture tend to be reasonably good approximations of flesh-and-blood humans. The sexbots of “Westworld” are effectively just humans who can be programmed and controlled by the … Continue reading The dangers of artificial companionship
Doctor Who: The Woman Who Fell to Earth
I've noted before that I'm a long time fan of Doctor Who, so naturally I tuned in to watch the first episode of the new Doctor played by Jodie Whittaker. I'll be honest here, I wasn't sure what to expect with a female Doctor. As a progressive, I was certainly for it in principle, but … Continue reading Doctor Who: The Woman Who Fell to Earth
