Category: science fiction

Teaser Tuesday 6/3/2014: Infected (Click Your Poison)

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week’s “Teaser Tuesday” comes from a book that’s a little bit different from most! Readers of “a certain age” may remember the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” such as The Cave of Time, the first in the series. Rather than being linearly structured, these books presented a series of scenes, at the end of which the protagonist (you) had to make a decision, then turn to the indicated page to see how things worked out for you. Pretty often that would be like this:

But then every once in a while it be like this:

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Teaser Tuesday 5/6/2014: “The Golden Queen”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

So this week I’m reading The Golden Queen by Dave Wolverton, which starts out looking like a whimsical Irish fantasy novel before turning into a galaxy-spanning science fiction epic in which several adventurers and a talking bear (because why not?) with a name like a vacuum cleaner attempt to drive the conquering alien insectoid race known as the Dronon out of human space.

"This isn't the Hundred Acre Wood."
“This isn’t the Hundred Acre Wood …”

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Not A Review of “Battlestar Galactica”

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

So recently I mentioned that, after any number of other series were rejected, I decided we would start watching the 2003 reboot of “Battlestar Galactica”. Obviously this show could not possibly be as good as “Breaking Bad”, because what is? But it’s still pretty good. It tends to put my wife to sleep in 15-20 minutes or so, which is longer than most movies can keep Mr. Sandman at bay. But does she actually pay any attention to it when she’s awake? For a while I didn’t think so. She didn’t really seem to know or particularly care who anyone was, leading to conversations like this:

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Teaser Tuesday 4/22/2014: “Bad Radio”

~ James Viscosi ~ Leave a comment

So this week I’m reading Bad Radio by Michael Langlois, in which an eternally-youthful former Army Ranger and the granddaughter of one of his old World War II army buddies have to stop a necromancer who is apparently plotting to set up a transmitter, call in an Eldritch Abomination, and destroy the world. Or something like that. At this point all I know is that the “bad radio” in question seems to be a metal ring with eight spikes on it, and it is apparently powered by sticking the spikes into the eye sockets of four people. Ouch.

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Broken Bad: The Search for Another Show

~ James Viscosi ~ 8 Comments

So I previously mentioned that, having finished “Breaking Bad“, I have now been charged with finding a new show that can catch and hold my wife’s attention. Although there’s been no shortage of suggestions on shows that might fit the bill, those who are familiar with my movie rating system (“This movie put my wife to sleep in X minutes”) will not be surprised to hear that the search is not going well. WARNING: Minor spoilers below!

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Neither A Review Of “Breaking Bad” Nor Of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”

~ James Viscosi ~ 8 Comments

So as everyone knows, for the past several months we’ve been binge-watching “Breaking Bad” (which, for us, means watching one to one-and-a-half episodes a night). Sadly, we have recently come to the end of the series. Season Five started out a bit slow, and introduced some new characters, which caused a very slight and temporary slump in interest.

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Teaser Tuesday 2/11/2014: “Death’s Hand”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week I’m reading Death’s Hand, by S.M. Reine, in which Buffy and her watcher Giles try to stop Glorificus the hell-goddess from destroying the … oh, wait, sorry, that was Season 5 of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer“. No, in Death’s Hand, the kopis (AKA sword) Elise and her aspis (AKA shield) James are trying to stop a hell-goddess from destroying the world by letting her Armageddon Clock get to midnight. This naturally involves fighting hordes of zombies, demons, ghosts, and at least one necromancer. Apparently no one told them they could just pay 4 mana to remove counters from the Armageddon Clock during anyone’s upkeep.

armageddon_clock

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Teaser Tuesday 1/14/2014: “Khe”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

This week I’m reading Khe, by Alexes Razevich, which is one of those unusual SF novels which (so far, at least, and I’m 79% of the way through it according to my Kindle) takes place entirely on an alien world, with no human beings present at all. The majority of the characters are doumanas, members of a race which seems to be quite birdlike, only without the wings, the feathers, the beaks, or the claws.  Umm, well, I guess they’re not actually birdlike at all, except that they can “see” the magnetic field of their planet, and they’re migratory, unlike African swallows.  The story concerns one of these doumanas, Khe, who, after undergoing an experimental treatment to sort of help her lay eggs (it’s complicated) develops the ability to accelerate the growth of plants, at the cost of taking years off her own life. Upon realizing that she’s likely to die a very early death due to being continually pushed to improve crop production at her commune (yes, they live in communes … again, it’s complicated), she decides to take her chances in the wilderness.

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Teaser Tuesday 10/1/2013: “The Shadow of Black Wings”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week I’m still reading The Shadow of Black Wings by James Calbraith, from the BookBub mailing list.  I’m going to bend the rules a little bit this time in that this teaser quote from the book is not from the page I’m actually on, but it was simply too good not to use.  Here goes:

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Teaser Tuesday: “The Shadow of Black Wings”

~ James Viscosi ~ 1 Comment

This week I’m reading The Shadow of Black Wings by James Calbraith, another book I got free from the BookBub mailing list. This one is sort of an alternate Victorian history/steampunk/fantasy mashup. Oh, and there are dragons. (T’Sian would, I think, eat them for lunch, but still, anything’s better with dragons right?) And now, on to the two-sentence quote!

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