So we’re in the home stretch of the “Battlestar Galactica” reboot now, nearly halfway through season 4. And by “we” I mean “me”, as my wife has more or less tuned “BSG” out at this point, except for some of the scenes where Al from “Quantum Leap”* (AKA Dean Stockwell) shows up, and the occasional conversation like this that ensues if she happens to be awake when I start an episode:
Continue reading “Still Not A Review Of “Battlestar Galactica””
So at the moment I’m reading (unusually for me) a couple of books: And Another Thing by Douglas Adams Eoin Colfer, which is book six in the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” trilogy, and Once Upon A Curse, a short story collection that contains retellings of various famous fairy tale scenarios, including back to back revisions of “Sleeping Beauty”, from different points of view than the originals (no Maleficent so far though). I picked it up over a year ago because it was on sale for $0.99, plus it has a Peter S. Beagle story in it. You may have heard of him.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 7/1/2014: “Once Upon A Curse””
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.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 5/6/2014: “The Golden Queen””
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:
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!
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.
Continue reading “Neither A Review Of “Breaking Bad” Nor Of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen””
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.
So this week I’m reading a book called Desolate: The Complete Trilogy, by Robert Brumm, in which Earth is terrorized by the double whammy of a highly contagious hemorrhagic flu-like illness and giant carnivorous bad-tempered crawdads. Or something like that. Every time the space-lobsters show up I think of the Prawns from “District 9”.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 10/29/2013: “Desolate: The Complete Trilogy””
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:
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 10/1/2013: “The Shadow of Black Wings””
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!
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday: “The Shadow of Black Wings””
Viscosity 