So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[KRAD]

The "A Time to..." books were among the most successful series of Trek books ever published. 14 years later, they're still in print, which is no small feat. People are still buying and talking about these books.

I think they're already classics at this point, is what I'm saying, and not just 'cause I wrote one of them.

 

[Reanok]

I'm reading a mystery Cat in an alien x-ray by Carole Nelson Douglas.

 

[JD]

I finished up The Dresden Files: Wild Car earlier this afternoon and now I've started The Dark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History by Caseen Gaines, with a foreword by Cheryl Henson and introduction by Brian and Wendy Froud. I've flipped through this a bit and it looks absolutely awesome, it covers the entire history of The Dark Crystal franchise from what lead to Jim Henson coming up with the idea all the way through to the release of the recent comics and novels, and the announcement of the Netflix series, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.

 

[marlboro]

Two from the Grand Designs S.C.E. Omnibus.

Ring Around the Sky

We need more Tellarite worldbuilding stories.

Orphans

I liked this, but I think it would have been improved by being in a longer format. There were just so many things I would have liked to see more of, like the Klingon engineers, or the interactions between the natives and the engineers, and some more backstory about the designers of the worldship.

I find the idea of generational starships, particularly the "world-ship" kind very intriguing. From Heinlein's "Universe" to Trek's "For the World is Hollow" to Tchaikovsky 's "Children of Time" - I am always game for these types of stories.

 

[marlboro]

Just started Hyperion by Dan Simmons. So far so good.

I also ordered a copy of In the Garden of the North American Martyrs by Tobias Wolff.

 

[Lonemagpie]

ASTERIX AND OBELIX: ALL AT SEA by Uderzo
First time I've read Asterix in years, but it still holds up, despite Rene Goscinny's death leaving Uderzo as sole creator. In this one, Obelix is reduced to childhood while aCaesar's galley is stolen by Spartakis [sic]. There are all the usual tropes and puns, the art of course remains as distinctive as always (thick-lipped black caricatures included, though bear in mind that all the races as caricatured in a stereotypical way that changing probably would stand out worse), and it was as entertaining as I always found them – though not reaching the peaks of the classics from the 60s and 70s. The plot does peter out towards the end, as if Uderzo suddenly realised he'd gone for a multilayered thing and only had three pages left in the format, but... Look, it's Asterix, it does what it says on the tin. And bonus points for the Apicius and culinary references, and Spartakis being drawn to look like Kirk Douglas...

 

[Stephen!]

I've currently started reading "Indistinguishable from Magic" and have almost finished "Armageddon's Arrow"

 

[marlboro]

Just started Hyperion by Dan Simmons. So far so good.

I believe that this is a fairly well known book, but I went in completely blind. There are 4 books in the series, but I think the first two books tell a complete story. Not sure about that. I didn't read up on it because I wanted to avoid spoilers.

Book one is told in a style reminiscent of The Canterbury Tales. During a time of looming galactic war, seven disparate people set off on a pilgrimage to a planet called Hyperion. The planet is home to the Shrike, an enigmatic and extremely dangerous creature (being?) of indeterminate nature and motive. Along the way the pilgrims share tales and learn that they all have previous ties to Hyperion.

There is some excellent world building here; multiple planets, cultures, and religions are explored. Each tale is different thematically, but all of them still feel like part of the same universe. I like how the author didn't set everything in one big infodump; the picture of what is going on in the universe is portioned out in dribs and drabs. MInor references in one story, may be expanded into a major event two stories later.

On the negative side, I think there are too many references to 20th century things. I'm sure some things from our time will exist in the future, but it still feels...off...when someone born hundreds of years after Earth's destruction still knows the lyrics to a song from the Wizard of Oz. Or when you have 29th century detective who wears a trenchcoat, carries an antique pistol, and has an office fit for Sam Spade.

This is something that pops up a lot on Trek tv shows.
It's always a little jarring to me and takes me out of the moment.

So far, I'd say this is good but not great. I can't judge it fairly until I've finished book 2.


Before I get to book 2, I'll probably read Double, Double by Michael Jan Friedman.

 

[JD]

I finished up ST:TNG: Headlong Flight by Dayton Ward last night. I'll post my thoughts over in the review thread.
With that done, I decided to start the first digital collection of the first Kelvinverse Star Trek ongoing comic series, written by Mike Johnson, with art by Stephen Molnar and Joe Phillips, colors by John Rauch, and letters by Neil Uyetake.

 

[John Clark]

Just starting on Privilege of Peace by Tanya Huff

 

[Reanok]

I just finished reading a mystery about Shakespeare plays called Page Fright by Elizabeth Penney.The history about Twelth night and Merchant of Venice and Romeo&Juliet was really interesting.

 

[marlboro]

Fall of Hyperion.

The ending of the second book was convoluted and unsatisfying to me. I kind of wish the story had ended as a cliffhanger in book one. Give the reader enough clues to piece together a plausible ending and carry out the Canterbury Tales homage to its inevitable conclusion.

This morning I read Sargasso Sector
Mr. Kupperberg might want to stay away from Atlantic City.


While reading this, a question occurred to me - what type of device were people reading these SCE books on back during the early 2000s?

 

[Christopher]

While reading this, a question occurred to me - what type of device were people reading these SCE books on back during the early 2000s?

Desktops and laptops, at least. There have always been e-book reader programs available for regular computers.

 

[marlboro]

I am a very late adopter when it comes to tech stuff; I only purchased a Kindle last January. I've always been a big reader, but I've never enjoyed reading things on my pc. It seems like the e-books would have been a tough sell before handheld devices became commonplace. Of course, you couldn't sell e-readers without e-media, but it was pretty ballsy to do new online-only books in 2000.

Somebody has to be first out of the trench though, right?

Edit: I'm reading The Far Side Gallery vol. 3. Gary Larson is a genius.

 

[Christopher]

I will never understand people who post on computer bulletin boards to complain about how much they hate reading off computer screens. Look, reading isn't always comfortable. Reading a heavy hardback book can be hard on one's wrists. Reading an old, decaying paperback can be smelly. Reading through bifocals can make it hard to find the right head angle to focus the words. And what about all the people in past centuries who had to read by candlelight? If you love reading, then you'll read whatever you have to, regardless of comfort or convenience.

 

[JD]

I am a very late adopter when it comes to tech stuff; I only purchased a Kindle last January. I've always been a big reader, but I've never enjoyed reading things on my pc. It seems like the e-books would have been a tough sell before handheld devices became commonplace. Of course, you couldn't sell e-readers without e-media, but it was pretty ballsy to do new online-only books in 2000.

Somebody has to be first out of the trench though, right?

Edit: I'm reading The Far Side Gallery vol. 3. Gary Larson is a genius.

I'm pretty sure some of the first e-readers were starting to come out around the time the SCE e-books started.

I will never understand people who post on computer bulletin boards to complain about how much they hate reading off computer screens. Look, reading isn't always comfortable. Reading a heavy hardback book can be hard on one's wrists.

The Dark Crystal: The Ultimate Visual History is a kind of a pain to try to read, according to the stats on Amazon.com it's 9.2in x 1.1in x 11in and weighs 3.2 pounds. So it's big and cumbersom, and heavy (for a book), but so far it's been good enough that I'm willing to put up with it.
The one book I have that's going to be even worse is Firefly: Celebration, which over 500 pages long and is 11.2in x 9in x 2in and 5.6lbs. Just for reference, Full Circle, the first regular Trek paperback I came across on Amazon is 4.2in x 1.2in x 6.8in and 10.4oz.

I finished reading the first (Kelvinverse) Star Trek comic collection last night, and I enjoyed it. The art was nice, and the stories were pretty good remakes of their episodes with a few Kelvinverse twists thrown in. I'll separate my thoughts by the two arcs it has.

Where No Man Has Gone Before
I thought the way they worked Gary Mitchell and Lee Kelso in was pretty good. I was a disappointed they didn't bring in a Kelvinverse version of Dhener. I liked the Mitchell recreating scenes from first movie in the end. Having Spock show up to help Kirk defeat Mitchell was a nice twist.
Galileo Seven
I don't really remember the original episode, and I had to stop my rewatch before I finished it this morning, so I can only compare the first few minutes.
There didn't seem to be quite as drastic of changes with this one as there were with WNMHGB, mainly just tweaks to the dialogue and changing out the brunette yeoman for Rand.
The biggest inconsistencies I noticed with the movies is the fact that they seemed to be using the TOS stardates instead of changing them to the Kelvinverse version with the year as the first four numbers.

 

[Christopher]

There didn't seem to be quite as drastic of changes with this one as there were with WNMHGB, mainly just tweaks to the dialogue and changing out the brunette yeoman for Rand.

Hmm, as I recall, the changes in "Galileo" were much greater. The WNM remake was essentially the same story from beginning to end, whereas the "Galileo" remake changed the ending entirely.

Really, the first two remake stories never made much sense to me, since the Kelvin crew was brought together about a decade earlier than the TOS crew. So it doesn't make sense that the exact same events and dialogue would occur at an earlier time. The third one, "Operation: Annihilate!," worked much better for me, since it only kept a few of the basic elements (parasite invasion on Deneva, George and family being there) while otherwise telling a new story about them. Ditto for the one-part "Hendorff" issue that retold "The Apple" in a totally different way.

On the other hand, the "Return of the Archons" reworking didn't make sense because it changed too much; there was no way to reconcile it with the idea of the Prime and Kelvin timelines being the same prior to 2233, since it was a massively different reinterpretation of what Beta III was like. But then, it eventually turned out that Mike Johnson was working from the assumption that the timelines had always been different, in contrast to what the filmmakers intended.

 

[marlboro]

I will never understand people who post on computer bulletin boards to complain about how much they hate reading off computer screens. Look, reading isn't always comfortable. Reading a heavy hardback book can be hard on one's wrists. Reading an old, decaying paperback can be smelly. Reading through bifocals can make it hard to find the right head angle to focus the words. And what about all the people in past centuries who had to read by candlelight? If you love reading, then you'll read whatever you have to, regardless of comfort or convenience.

You just can't help yourself, can you?

 

[USS Firefly]

Rereading star trek the fall: peacable kingdoms, wow what a lot of recaps.
Some of them are half a page long, it sometimes takes me out of the story

 

[KRAD]

While reading this, a question occurred to me - what type of device were people reading these SCE books on back during the early 2000s?

Their computers. The debut of S.C.E. in 2000 was done to coincide with Microsoft's release of their e-reader program to install on your computer to make the reading experience better.

It seems like the e-books would have been a tough sell before handheld devices became commonplace. Of course, you couldn't sell e-readers without e-media, but it was pretty ballsy to do new online-only books in 2000.

Indeed. In fact, the poor sales of the eBooks was why they cancelled the monthly eBook line in 2006, just a few months before Sony and Amazon debuted their eReader and Kindle, respectively.

To this day, I weep at the poor timing.