• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

So What Are you Reading?: Generations

Both an author I'd like to hear from again (if anybody is going to bring back Aurelia Steiner, the friendly Drelb astrophysicist, she would), AND an author who has worked in both ST and SW. (Although as to the latter, wasn't she the one who grossed readers out with the Death Seed Plague, and its decidely macroscopic pathogen, the Droch?)
That's her!
 
Hard to believe that drochs and a ST/HCTB crossover could come out of the same mind. (Says the guy who usually writes pleasant stuff about a child prodigy organist, but who once wrote a literal* nightmare short-short story about a large, sentient, hostile insect ["an assassin, from a race of assassins" is the canonical description] with an enormous stinger, dispensing a venom that causes a lingering, excruciatingly painful death.)

_____
*By literal nightmare short story, I mean I woke up from a very unpleasant dream that needed very little work to turn it into a short-short.
 
Both an author I'd like to hear from again (if anybody is going to bring back Aurelia Steiner, the friendly Drelb astrophysicist, she would), AND an author who has worked in both ST and SW. (Although as to the latter, wasn't she the one who grossed readers out with the Death Seed Plague, and its decidely macroscopic pathogen, the Droch?)
Barbara Hambly has a Doctor Who audio drama forthcoming, which I think will make her be the first person to ever write tie-ins for Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who? Willing to be corrected if I'm forgetting someone.
 
Meanwhile, I'm nearing the end of the penultimate chapter of John Williams: A Composer's Life. He scored the late Kobe Bryant's animated short, Dear Basketball, and Spielberg's political film, The Papers, but he turned down Ready Player One. He was less-than-pleased with Giacchino's score for Rogue One, and now Solo is in the works.
 
Both an author I'd like to hear from again (if anybody is going to bring back Aurelia Steiner, the friendly Drelb astrophysicist, she would), AND an author who has worked in both ST and SW. (Although as to the latter, wasn't she the one who grossed readers out with the Death Seed Plague, and its decidely macroscopic pathogen, the Droch?)
Yeah, her Star Wars and Star Trek books seem to have gotten almost the total opposite reactions.
Among other things, Richard Donner directed the classic TZ episode starring William Shatner and the creature on the wing of the airplane. Aka "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" by Richard Matheson.
Interesting, I did not know that.
 
Hard to believe that drochs and a ST/HCTB crossover could come out of the same mind. (Says the guy who usually writes pleasant stuff about a child prodigy organist, but who once wrote a literal* nightmare short-short story about a large, sentient, hostile insect ["an assassin, from a race of assassins" is the canonical description] with an enormous stinger, dispensing a venom that causes a lingering, excruciatingly painful death.)

_____
*By literal nightmare short story, I mean I woke up from a very unpleasant dream that needed very little work to turn it into a short-short.

Heck, Roddenberry created Star Trek AND Pretty Maids All In Row . . .

We are large; we contain multitudes. :)
 
Heck, Roddenberry created Star Trek AND Pretty Maids All In Row . . .
:)

Pretty Maids wasn't Roddenberry's creation. It was based on (and heavily toned down from) a hardcore porn novel by Francis Pollini, and the film adaptation initially had a different director, producer, and writer before Roger Vadim and Roddenberry replaced them. Although the final film does have a lot of Roddenberry's sensibilities in it, on more than one level.
 
Barbara Hambly has a Doctor Who audio drama forthcoming, which I think will make her be the first person to ever write tie-ins for Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who? Willing to be corrected if I'm forgetting someone.
The Simon Pegg of the literary world? :-)
 
Bingo, by Crom!
Until I looked up the reference, I thought it was a reference to Peter Jurasik's "compound interest program" from TRON.

(Which I just saw again this weekend. My way of thumbing my nose at the sequels. Does anybody really think that Tron: Legacy or Tron: Ares will hold up even remotely as well as the original does, when they're 43 years old? The only real flaw was that they threw out half of Wendy's close music, cutting it off after the organ solo, and cutting to a Journey song)

Speaking of film scores, and getting back on-topic, I'm now in the final chapter of John Williams: A Composer's Life. He has conducted his music in Vienna, Berlin, and Milan. The Vienna Philharmonic asked him to conduct his Imperial March, informing him that it has become the new Radetzky March. And he's written his second violin concerto, during the COVID lockdown, as a long-delayed gift to Anne-Sophie Mutter (who's young enough to be his daughter, two years younger than his youngest son). He's finally starting to tire of scoring films (especially J. J. Abrams films, that never seem to get locked down until it's time to start striking release prints).
 
Until I looked up the reference, I thought it was a reference to Peter Jurasik's "compound interest program" from TRON.
Crom or Bingo?

Dare I admit that I haven't watched Tron for more than forty years?

But I was rereading some of Robert E. Howard's original "Conan" stories just a few months ago.
 
Last edited:
Until I looked up the reference, I thought it was a reference to Peter Jurasik's "compound interest program" from TRON.
You sir, are the coolest person I have ever met online. :-)

(Which I just saw again this weekend. My way of thumbing my nose at the sequels. Does anybody really think that Tron: Legacy or Tron: Ares will hold up even remotely as well as the original does, when they're 43 years old? The only real flaw was that they threw out half of Wendy's close music, cutting it off after the organ solo, and cutting to a Journey song)
Same, last week, with my sons! And then Legacy, in preparation for seeing Aries. And no, the new one simply cannot compare to the depth and originality and vibrant imagination running through every frame of the original. It was my first, my gateway. I wouldn't have read a single one of these Star Trek novels, or even watched any of the shows - much less any of the Star Wars or Doctor Who that I am invested at to a similar level - if Tron hadn't first been my gateway to sci-fi wearing out that library VHS as I got it out again and again to experience this magical notion of a world beyond the one that I knew. My first step into the wonderful realm of science fiction that we all share here.
 
Incidentally, before I was obsessed with Batman, it was Rocket Robin Hood that I remember watching regularly. Anybody remember that?

Yes, it got played a lot on Canadian TV when I was a lot younger. I always got a kick out of Krantz using the same backgrounds and villain for a Rocket Robin Hood Story and a Spider-Man story. Or did they do that twice?

I've always thought it a shame that Williams was never tapped for a Star Trek score.

I'm not a huge Williams fan (the only soundtrack album of his I have is the first Star Wars, which I got fairly recently). For my money, Jerry Goldsmith was a better fit for Star Trek.

Oh, yeah, reading. When my local comic shop went under around the time of Covid lockdowns I decided to switch to digital, so I get my Star Trek comics as Kindle versions of the paperback collections. I get them as soon as they come out, then they sit on my Kindle Fire and iPad for months or years until I get around to them. So I read about eight of them over the weekend.

Current reading, inspired by playing a bit of one of the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell games, which in turn was inspired by my plans to watch the Netflix series, is James Swallow's first Splinter Cell novel. My wife was not much of a tie-in reader in general, but being a gamer girl she bought at least the first couple of Splinter Cell novels by another writer ages ago, as well as a Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed novel or two, so who knows, I may get around to those earlier Splinter Cell novels too.
 
Crom or Bingo?
Crom was Peter Jurasik's compound interest program (it boggled my mind that the same actor played both Crom in TRON, and Londo, in B5. Then again, it also boggled my mind when I found out that the Pilsbury Dough Boy was originally voiced by Paul Frees). And Dan Shor's actuarial program was named Ram.
 
But I was rereading some of Robert E. Howard's original "Conan" stories just a few months ago.

I also read a few of the Howard stories this year, along with a whole bunch of the 80s pastiches. The guy who really got me interested in Conan was the owner of the comic store I managed. Unfortunately, he took his own life in the beginning of September. I really wish he was around to talk about that Conan #25 with. He would have really loved it.
 
Crom was Peter Jurasik's compound interest program (it boggled my mind that the same actor played both Crom in TRON, and Londo, in B5. Then again, it also boggled my mind when I found out that the Pilsbury Dough Boy was originally voiced by Paul Frees). And Dan Shor's actuarial program was named Ram.
Could the Crom in B5 be a reference to his character from TRON? JMS does strike as the kind of person who could be a TRON fan.
 
What "crom" in B5? I don't remember any, and neither do the "Babylon Project" wiki, nor the Lurker's Guide.

I remember "Spoo" (and I also remember the word showing up in a Beetle Bailey comic strip from before JMS made it into first grade)
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top