So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Finished USS Cerritos Crew Handbook last night.

Just started Phil and Kaja Foglio's Girl Genius: Omnibus Volume One. Still in the prologue: young Agatha Clay doesn't yet know that she's really Agatha Heterodyne, a Spark.

 

[KRAD]

That said, Dillard was (is?) a good writer, so there are definitely some enjoyable passages.

Is -- she's still alive, and has continued writing under her real name, Jeanne Kalogridis.

 

[Daddy Todd]

My current commute listen is a collection of James Tiptree Jr. stories -- Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. Tiptree was the pen name of Alice Shelton, back when women SF authors regularly obscured their gender with ambiguous or outright male pseudonyms.

Shelton's stories are scary good. "The Screwfly Solution" was written 50 years ago, but describes the deep misogyny of "Rogan Bros" to a T.

 

[Denise]

Reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliene Bailey. Halfway through and I love it.

 

[Reanok]

Star Trek ds9 Revenant by Alex white

 

[Greg Cox]

Spirit Seeker by Jeff Young.

Steampunk, spiritualism, and necromancy!

 

[Stevil2001]

Reading The Ministry of Time by Kaliene Bailey. Halfway through and I love it.

Great book!

 

[JD]

Would it be a good idea to read The Pandor Principle before I read Unspoken Truth?

 

[Christopher]

Would it be a good idea to read The Pandor Principle before I read Unspoken Truth?

No, I don't think so. They actually have some differences in their interpretations of Saavik's backstory.

People tend to forget that Saavik's Hellguard backstory was introduced in Vonda McIntyre's movie novelizations, not in The Pandora Principle. Most subsequent authors have accepted it as Saavik's backstory, but they've interpreted its details in different ways. So you don't really need any of them as precedents for the others.

 

[JD]

Oh OK, I thought Unspoken Truth was specifically written as a sequel to The Pandora Principle.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Not terribly likely, given that Truths is by an established (and renowned) ST author, while Pandora is by someone who, so far as I can recall, only wrote the one ST novel.

 

[Christopher]

Not terribly likely, given that Truths is by an established (and renowned) ST author, while Pandora is by someone who, so far as I can recall, only wrote the one ST novel.

There are plenty of well-regarded Trek novels by people who only wrote one, and The Pandora Principle is certainly one of them. Personally I came to find its writing and characterizations too broad and melodramatic (after initially liking it quite a bit), but it always had a lot of fans and still does.

I just checked the "Historian's Note" in Unspoken Truths, and it specifically cites The Pandora Principle as a reference in mentioning Hellguard. On reflection, I think UT is consistent with the broad strokes of TPP's version of Saavik's backstory (like Spock taking an extended leave to help her learn the basics of Vulcan behavior) even while changing some of the details.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Please understand that I meant no disrespect, for Ms. Clowes, neither explicitly nor implicitly. Simply that it seemed to me that Ms. Bonanno would have been far more likely to write a sequel to one of her own works, or to one by a more active colleague. Indeed, anything that fleshes out Saavik's backstory (or otherwise mentions Hellguard) could be considered a sequel to the few sentences establishing the existence of Hellguard in VM's TWOK novelization.

And indeed, I have no basis for an opinion of The Pandora Principle, given that I may have only read it once, and even if I'd read it more than once, the most recent time was probably three decades ago.

 

[Detaith911]

I'm currently reading my way through Kahless and through the annotated Frankenstein

 

[Greg Cox]

For what's it worth, I leaned heavily on The Pandora Principle when writing my recent Saavik stories: Lost to Eternity and "Housewarming."

In fact, at one point I queried the Powers That Be about whether a certain specific reference to Pandora was possibly too obscure these days, but was told to go ahead with it.

The bit about Saavik being the star pitcher on her Academy softball team, which I referenced directly in "Housewarming."

 

[Smiley]

I finished reading Star Trek: Chain of Attack today. Its Trekkie heart is in the right place, and there are a few cool ideas sprinkled around the book. I also like the Abrams-like way that each chapter starts a few seconds or minutes before the cliffhanger at the end of the previous chapter to show how the situation gets to its resolution. Unfortunately, not a whole lot of consequence happens in the book, even for its relatively short length, so three stars is the most I can give it.

 

[Reanok]

Ultraman the official novel by Pat Cadigan

 

[JD]

Not terribly likely, given that Truths is by an established (and renowned) ST author, while Pandora is by someone who, so far as I can recall, only wrote the one ST novel.

I don't really see where any of that has to rule out it being a sequel to The Pandora Principle, I'm pretty sure we've seen one author right a sequel to another other's book.
I finished reading Immortal Coil on Wednesday, and I loved it just as much this time around. As a huge fan of Data I really enjoyed what Jeffrey Lang did with him in it, and I like Rhea and her realtionship with Dad a lot. It was also pretty fun how he brought all of the different AIs from TOS and TNG together.
I'm not almost done with the special digital version of The Simpsons Time Magazine, which I borrow on the Libby library app.

 

[JD]

I finished up The Simpsons Time Magazine yesterday, and I started STTOS: Constellations at work today. Made it through the whole first story First, Do No Harm by @Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore. I really enjoyed the story a lot, it was an interesting examination of the Prime Directive and the ways it can effect things.

 

[youngtrek]

August reading report:

I read (started and finished) two books in August:

“American Comic Book Chronicles” [vol. 2] 1945-1949 by Richard J. Ardnt and Kurt F. Mitchell with Keith Dallas (TwoMorrows Publishing, 2024)

Star Trek: Picard: “Second Self” by Una McCormack (Gallery Books, 2022).

I also continued my reading of 1943-1944 Superman comics in the various Superman Archives and Golden Age newspaper strips collected editions. I came very close to finishing a couple of those but couldn’t quite make it in time for those to count towards August.

My 2025 GoodReads Reading Challenge now stands at 31 of 75 books read (41%). I should be two-thirds of the way there heading into September. I’ll have to get a move on.

— David Young