Star Trek: Voyager: Homecoming by Christie Golden - Review

One of the great ideas that you'll come across when exploring the world of Star Trek tie-in fiction is that of the relaunch novels. The concept is to continue telling the stories of your favourite Star Trek series; specifically the stories that take place after the series finale. What to know what happened to Picard and the Enterprise-D crew after the end credits of Star Trek Nemesis? There are plenty of books devoted to the idea. What happened to all the storylines that weren't wrapped up by DS9's "What We Leave Behind" and the new stories they teased? There's a novel series for that. 

In fact, there are multiples novel series for that. Several dozen books, plenty of multi-series crossovers, stories taking place with a focus outside of the Federation and other stories focusing on characters that only appear in a handful of episodes and were significantly more fleshed out in the novels. Honestly, it's a treasure trove of Trek goodness. It's big, messy, and complicated. Take a look at The Trek Collective's reading guide if you need convincing about my last point.

Short Story Sunday 27: Johanna Sinisalo and H. G. Wells

There was a fair amount of hubbub in 2016 around the release of The Big Book of Science Fiction edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. I knew of their reputation even though wasn’t very familiar with their work. Still, a new collection of science fiction stories by dozens of authors spanning roughly 100 years of publishing history carefully curated by two knowledgeable editors and anthologist in the field does call for some attention. That and its very reasonable price point and easy availability led me to purchase a copy. The goal was to read each story and write about it here on the blog. Five years lately, I’m finally starting.

I’ll be taking a specific approach to these reviews. For starters, the VanderMeers wrote wonderfully detailed introduction to each story. Part biography, part career overview, sometimes structured like a miniature essay about an author’s work, these text pieces are as much a draw of the book as the written contents. They also have a great and lengthy introduction to the whole collection in which they write about the difference phases of science fiction writing in the English language while also making mention of non-English authors and their work. They present their criteria in compiling the collection and it makes for a compelling read as well as an excellent contextualization for the reader to sample all of these stories.

Short Story Sunday 25: Robert Reed and N. K. Jemisin

The year’s first week back to work is done and I’m trying to keep the ball rolling here on the blog. I have specific reading and blogging goals for the year that I’m intentionally not making public on the site. I tend to get fired up each January about making Shared Universe Reviews a place full of content and I inevitably fail to meet any of those goals. So, for now, all I’ll be sharing is that I will try and post new reviews regularly in the hopes of striking up interesting conversation with others who enjoy a good book. This week, I went back to the well that is Year’s Best SF 16 and I also had a wonderful time listening to LeVar Burton’s podcast while shovelling the driveway.

“The Good Hand” by Robert Reed
Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction (January 2010), edited by Sheila Williams

Short Story Sunday 24: Brenda Cooper and Gregory Benford

Let's try to start the New Year with reviews of stories originally published in 2010. The key to making this little blog a popular place to hangout online is keeping it relevant to the times. What better way to do that than to continue my review, one story at a time, of Year's Best SF 16?

“The Hebras and the Demons and the Damned” by Brenda Cooper
Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
Originally published in Analog (December 2010), edited by Stanley Schmidt

As is usually the case when reviewing stories in either of Hartwell and Cramer's long running Science Fiction and Fantasy anthologies, Brenda Cooper is an author I was not familiar with until picking up this book. Discovering new authors is one of the pleasures of reading these annual anthologies. Cooper's "The Hebras and the Demons and the Damned" has made it very clear to me that I need to seek out more of her work as it's topic is right up my alley: colonization of alien planets.

Short Story Sunday 17: John Moore and Harry Turtledove

This is an exciting installment of Short Story Sunday. Well, maybe not for you, but it is for me. This marks the first collection that I’ve reviewed in its entirety (except for all of the non-fiction articles). I hope to review many more science fiction and fantasy stories and I hope you stick around and get inspired to read a few of your own.

For a long time I completely ignored short fiction, but in recent years it’s become an important part of my life. Due to an increasingly busier schedule and new responsibilities, I’ve got less time to read novels. I was sad about that at first (and I still kind of am) but I decided to view this as an opportunity to explore another part of literature I didn’t pay much attention to before. Like everything else, not all of the short stories I read are good. Some, even with their short length, aren’t even worth my time. Still, I’ve read plenty of good-to-great stories to remind me of how satisfying short fiction can be. Below are just a couple of good examples.

Short Story Sunday 16: “The Blabber” by Vernor Vinge

This is our first Short Story Sunday edition where I write about only a single story. I’ve tried to avoid that as I’d prefer to showcase more than a single author by post (special editions notwithstanding) and more than a single story. Variety is nice and so are posts that are longer than just two hundred words. This post is different because the story being reviewed is quite long. It’s a novella, really. Still, it’s science fiction, it’s short, and it’s really quite good.

“The Blabber” by Vernor Vinge

Read in New Destinies Volume VI/Winter 1988 (1988), edited by Jim Baen

Originally published in Threats … and Other Promises (1988), editor unknown (but might also be Jim Baen)

“The Blabber” is part of Vinge’s Zones of Thought series which include a trilogy of novels that begin with the award winning A Fire Upon the Deep. Not only is that an excellent title, but it’s said to be an excellent read. I wouldn’t know as my copy remains unread. I’ll get around to it one day and likely sooner now that I’ve read this novella which takes place just after the events of the first book.

Short Story Sunday 15: Catherynne M. Valente and Rick Cook

No introduction this post, we're heading straight into the reviews.

“How to Become a Mars Overlord” by Catherynne M. Valente

Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

Originally published in Lightspeed issue 3 (2010), edited by John Joseph Adams.

“How to Become a Mars Overlord” is written as a seminar intended on providing guidance to people interested in conquering the prized planet, Mars. Valente is more interesting in recreating a sense of wonder and yearning for the red planet than she is in telling a story. All of her examples of Mars overlords are pastiche or echoes of pulp stories featuring the titular planet. If they’re not recognizable as a creation of another author, then they’re created by Valente with that same spirit in mind. The whole thing is very inventive and full of energy but it’s done in a style that doesn’t work for me.  

Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens Novelization Review

Some unexpected things have happened with my readings habits throughout the years but one thing I never would have predicted is that I enjoy reading novelizations of movies I like to watch. It started because of Star Wars mostly and while I haven’t read tons of novelizations since I discovered I like reading those kinds of books, it’s a trend that will likely continue for many years. Recently, a little movie came out continuing the story began so many years ago with the release of Star Wars in 1977. That movie is Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens and it’s pretty good. It’s not a masterpiece, but I don’t think anybody was realistically expecting one. Generally speaking, we wanted a good movie and we got a good movie. We also got a good novelization courtesy of the Grand Master of novelizations Alan Dean Foster.

Though it didn’t really surprise me, The Force Awakens book was pretty darn close to the movie experience and so my reaction was essentially the same. This is not the best novelization I’ve read but it’s still good. In some ways, I like it more than the movie. In some other ways, I don’t. This mostly has to do with the fact that when I read the book I lose the good elements from the movie such as the actors’ portrayals of their characters and the movie’s visuals. I’m well aware that I’m not saying anything revelatory here. It kind of comes with the territory of novelizations. However, if I’m comparing this to my experience reading other Star Wars novelizations, this one falls a little short. That’s because the original trilogy’s visuals and the actors performances are engraved in my mind’s eye. My multiple viewings of the original trilogy actually supported and improved my reading of their respective novelizations. That is not the case with The Force Awakens. I’ve seen it once and while the viewing was fresh it my mind when I read this book, I simply don’t have the same familiarity with it that I did with those other movies.

Short Story Sunday 13: Alastair Reynolds, David Langford, and Michael Swanwick

Short Story Sunday, thirteenth edition, brings you rock ‘n’ roll dinosaurs, first contact with an alien civilization, and murderous house. Let’s get started.

“At Budokan” by Alastair Reynolds

Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

Originally published in Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic SF (2010), edited by Jetse de Vries

One of the tricky things about reviewing short stories is that your enjoyment of some of them depends on a twist or reveal toward the end of the story. It makes it difficult to write about it in a critical way because part of your review is simply dancing around the plot reveal. “At Budokan” is one of those stories. It’s good enough that it will still be a good read upon rereading and that’s due to the fact that the overall story and thematic elements are more important than the plot twist. That’s something that lesser writers struggle with but Reynolds has a firm grasp on his story from the very first page.

Short Story Sunday 12: Damien Broderick and Cat Sparks

By sheer coincidence that they were listed back to back in the short story collection I was reading yesterday, today’s authors are both Australian. I occasionally bump into online articles or a review focusing on Australian genre authors. Apparently it’s a niche in genre publishing, a specific look at the writers from down under. It’s nice to see praise thrown as a group of writers like that. It helps with your perspective. Not all English language writers are from the US or the UK. Overall, the Year’s Best SF 16 has been pretty good for its diversity in writers. On to the reviews!

“Under the Moons of Venus” by Damien Broderick

Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

Originally published in Subterranean (Spring2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan (guest editor)

Broderick has been writing science fiction stories since the 1960s but this is the first time I read one. It’s not a simple read, there is a lot of information thrown at the reader and you have to be active in putting things together in order to properly understand the story. I’m not sure I understood it completely, to be honest. Who can blame me when the story uses advanced mathematics and geomorphology to try and solve the mystery of the Moon’s disappearance? The characters, all four of them, are straddling the line between insanity and genius. One of them happens to be an intelligent talking dog (he was surgically altered).

Star Wars: The Last Command Review (Unread 034)

Cover art by Tom Jung.

While the world is filled with excitement and initial positive responses to the latest Star Wars film’s release, I’m alone in my little corner finishing off the excellent trilogy of novels by Timothy Zahn. The Thrawn Trilogy has been a pleasant surprised from start to finish. I had quite a few reservations when I started to read the first volume in this series. The first Expanded Universe novel I read was Choices of One, a book focusing on Mara Jade during the time of the original film trilogy and written by Zahn. To be quick about it, I didn’t like it. I didn’t really know who Mara Jade was and worst of all Zahn didn’t make me care. The book had a more militaristic feel than the Star Wars films and I felt that was a bit of an odd fit despite there being a constant presence of the Empire and its military forces in the movies.

Because of this and other smaller details, I didn’t have much in terms of expectations when deciding to read The Thrawn Trilogy. The expectations I did have were mostly of reluctance and hope. You see, the fans are very vocal online about their love of this trilogy which arguably created the Expanded Universe (which sadly met its demise earlier this year). Zahn is often hailed as the best author in the entire EU and people support their statement with this series of books. Could it really be that good? What makes these books better than the rest? What makes these books better than Choices of One?

Star Wars: Smuggler’s Run: A Han Solo & Chewbacca Adventure Review

In the last year there has been an understandable increase in the amount of reviews and articles about the Star Wars franchise. The excitement for the new film is resulting in a huge amount of speculation as to what the future of the franchise will look like as well as guessing and plenty of fan theories to make even the most imaginative fans giddy. There has also been plenty of attention given to the rapidly developing New Canon which is in the process of replacing the beloved Expanded Universe of Star Wars tie-in fiction. Personally, I haven’t taken part in the speculation because I find it brings little value to the overall appreciation of the franchise. More importantly, it doesn’t give me any satisfaction. Instead, I’ve been investing my time in enjoying the comics and novels of the EU and dipping my toes in the New Canon. So far I’ve read three volumes of Star Wars comic, which are once again being published by Marvel following Dark Horse’s loss of the licence. I’ve just read my first New Canon novel. Appropriately, it’s written by Greg Rucka with illustrations by Phil Noto, both of which have had a noteworthy career in the comics field. That’s the main reason I chose to start with this book and it also happens to be short which was quite convenient.

Set right after A New Hope, Smuggler’s Run centers on Han Solo and Chewbacca. Now that they’ve received payment for helping the Rebellion during their attack on the Death Star, Han plans on going back to Tatooine to pay off Jabba the Hutt. He’s tired of living in fear of the price on his head and who could blame him? Leia, on the other hand, has different plans for Han. He’s proved his usefulness to the Alliance and she’s not ready to let this new ally go.

Star Wars Omnibus: Clone Wars Volume 1: The Republic Goes to War Review (Unread 033)

I’ve written before about Dark Horse’s Star Wars comic omnibus collections. They’re pretty great. They’re designed to collect novel length stories and smaller stories that otherwise wouldn’t be collected anywhere else. I really like them because they’re huge and quite affordable. This volume is over 400 pages long. For the most part, these omnibus volumes include numerous issues all tied to a theme or a series or a time period. This one, obviously, is set during the Clone Wars. Particularly the beginning of the Clone Wars shortly after the events of Attack of the Clones.

A very large number of issues are included in this volume. Unfortunately, I will not list all of the creators involved because I’m lazy. However I’m pleased to announced that Dark Horse meticulously listed all creators at the beginning of each story. For this collection that meant almost every new issue. Most of the comics in this volume are short stories of approximately two issues in length (all the Jedi one-shots are double sized issues). Here are the contents of Clone Wars: The Republic Goes to War:

Star Wars: Young Jedi Knights: Heirs of the Force Review (Unread 032)

In my anticipation for the latest Star Wars theatrical release, I’ve been exploring the Expanded Universe. This might seem a little odd to some people after Disney’s announcement that the EU is no longer canon, but that doesn’t matter to be one bit. I’ve read enough novels and comics that are part of the EU to know that it’s a pretty incredible fictional universe to explore. It can match, scene for scene, the enjoyment to be had from the Star Wars films and it often does that by exploring some pretty ludicrous ideas. It’s sometimes beautiful, scary, uplifting, exciting, funny, embarrassing, action packed, and it’s just about everything you could ever ask for from genre literature. I believe that whatever descriptive word you can think of it can be applied to stories set in the EU. It’s a large, inexplicably complicated, occasionally messy shared universe continuation (and, uh further prequelization) of the Star Wars films.

It’s much more than just tie-in media. These novels and comics aren’t just a collection of one-off stories that don’t really matter. They’re not stories that occur between the stories we already know from the movies (though they are that, too). The Expanded Universe is really well named because it does what the title suggests. It expands everything you know about Star Wars and in just about every direction possible. This brings us to Heirs of the Force.

Star Wars: Dark Force Rising Review (Unread 031)

Cover art by Tom Jung.

It’s been a few months since I read Heir to the Empire the first volume of The Thrawn Trilogy. Not sure how I lost track of the series but the constant commentary on the upcoming seventh instalment of the Star Wars film saga has brought my attention back to one of my favourite franchises. It just made sense to finish reading this series before moving on to other novels in the Expanded Universe. This series is so important to the entire EU and introduces a lot of elements to the Bantam era Star Wars novels. Unlike the first book, I knew what to expect this time around and I think I enjoyed this volume more because of it. Once again written by Timohty Zahn, Dark Force Rising is a direct continuation of the events depicted in Heir to the Empire. As such, there are a lot of similarities between both books, but the second volume tops the first in execution, character development, and plot.

The plot might seem a little light at first glance, but a lot of what goes on is nicely matched up with character development so it’s a little deceptive. The political instability that plagued the New Republic regime in Heir to the Empire further develops. Bothan councillor Borsk Fey’lya continues to garner more support to his cause and it’s dividing the New Republic’s military strength. This is leaving them vulnerable to Grand Admiral Thrawn’s fleet. Han and Lando are sent on a mission to gain more supporters and in doing so they pick up the trail that might lead them to the secret location of the Katana Fleet, a large fleet of 200 Dreadnought-class vessels that date from the Clone Wars. Thrawn also picks up the trail and begins looking for the lost fleet as well. Meanwhile, Luke searches for Joruus C’baoth, an old Jedi Master, in the hopes of continuing his training in the Force. Leia travels to the Noghri homeworld to fulfill a promise she made in the previous book. Here she’ll continue her work to bring more support to the New Republic.

The Blog Fantastic 043: Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern Review (Unread 029)

Every once in a while I like to look at the Blog Fantastic page and assess the reviews I’ve done so far. Most of the time when I do this it’s to help me decide which book I should read next. As regular readers know, I’m reading several series at the same time rather than read a single series from start to finish before moving on. I do this because I like variety in my reading pile. That’s how I roll.

This time, what stood out to me, is how many reviews I’ve written of books in Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series. This is my seventh review in that series, more than any other series I’ve read so far and I think I know why. This series has been one of the most enjoyable to read since I’ve started the project. Not only do I enjoy reading the books, I find the reviews are relatively easy to write. I don’t have to think too much about what the content of the review will be, it sort of comes out naturally once I’ve finished reading. This differs from some of the other series I’ve reviewed.

Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time is kind of a pain because the books take so long to read. They literally take me weeks and sometimes it’s discouraging because those books regularly have entire chapters of 20+ pages where next to nothing happens. Other times, I’m devouring roughly 200 pages during a weekend because out of the blue, the plot kicks in and there is action galore. The books also give me conflicting feelings as I fluctuate from love to hate, sometime within a single chapter. They’re so sprawling in content and length that I find them a little exhausting. Other series that I absolutely love, like Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea, are also hard to review. The difficulty is caused by different reasons though. LeGuin’s books are just excellent, masterpieces of the genre. When I review them I can’t help but feel inadequate, as if my commentary doesn’t begin to describe the excellence of her writing and the stories contained in her books.

Short Story Sunday 06: Vandana Singh and Malka Older

“Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra” by Vandana Singh

Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

Originally published at Strange Horizons (2010)

“Somadeva” begins with the revival of a centuries-long dead writer whose magnum opus, an 18 volume compendium of stories arranged in a complex web of interlocking stories. He’s not sure if he’s come back to life or he’s the echo of his former self revived in the present or even if he’s an entirely new being created by the books of his life work so cherished by Isha, a woman travelling in space. Together, they continue to travel the stars in search of new stories. Isha gathers them together in the hopes of better understanding the origins of the alien cultures they encounter. Along the way, Somadeva, the revived writer, contemplates the essence of stories and their mysterious relationship to all things living.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve never read of this author before. I’m glad I’ve just discovered Singh because this story was masterfully told. “Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra” is nothing short of excellent. Mirroring the fictional 18 volume work of Somadeva, this short story includes stories within stories along with interlocking stories. Together, they all form an intricate web of narratives that all support and embellish each other. The story deals with primal and universal themes of being and it asks big questions. Do stories create the world or are they ways for us to understand the world around us by passing down the knowledge acquired through the ages?  Some answers might be found within the text. In fact, one of the main ideas of this story is that all stories have multiple interpretations resulting from the life and experience of the person analysing it.

Short Story Sunday 04: Terry Bisson, Spider Robinson, and David Drake

This week I’m reviewing three short stories from three different collections. Two of them will be familiar to regular readers but I’ve added a new collection to the rotation: The Tank Lords by David Drake. Half of this book is made up of short stories and the other half is a small novels. I’ll be reviewing the novel on its own but the stories will continue to be a part of Short Story Sunday. Let’s get to it.

“About It” by Terry Bisson

Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

Originally published in F&SF (Sept/Oct 2010), edited by Gordon Van Gelder

Terry Bisson was unknown to me before I read this story (regular readers might have noticed a trend) and I’m sorry to say that “About It” is a poor introduction. The story is told by a janitor who works in a laboratory and brings home a Sasquatch. There ol’ Bigfoot sits around, enjoys nature and the companionship of a few neighbourhood kids. He likes watching TV with the janitor. What at first appears to be a nice retirement from the lab out in the suburbs turns out to be nothing more than a waiting room for the afterlife. The Sasquatch inexplicably fades to nothing and dies, leaving me confused and a little sad . . . but the feeling quickly faded after I closed the book and put it down.

Short Story Sunday 03: Benjamin Crowell, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and Vernor Vinge

No introduction this time around, we’re diving right into the stories with some of the best science fiction published in 2010, as collected in Year’s Best SF 16.

“Petopia” by Benjamin Crowell

Read in Year’s Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction (June 2010), edited by Sheila Williams

Two young teens living on the West Coast of Africa discover a technologically advanced teddy bear in the near future. It made its way from California to Africa with a shipment of used and discarded computers which one of the teens, Aminata Diallo, disassembles as her day job. The teddy bear is a toy for rich kids, kind of like a future version of a Tamagotchi mixed with a cellphone. Aminata’s brother uses the bear (named Jelly) to become a chess hustler. The kids are put in a situation where they have to use Jelly to steal money from other people’s bank accounts in order to help their drunken father get out of a pinch.

Jodorowsky's Dune – Movie Review

During the weekend, while taking a break from writing the latest instalment of Short Story Sunday, I watched Jodorowsky’s Dune, a movie about Alejandro Jodorowsky’s doomed attempted at adapting Frank Herbert’s Dune to the silver screen. As always, I started this movie with some personal baggage, something that is also known as expectations. I was apprehensive, to say the least. I was worried the movie would be the celebration of an incomplete film project, filled with commentators who would enthusiastically call it a masterpiece even though no footage of it exists. People who would tell you that by not sharing their opinions of this unmade movie your life has somehow been poorer than it otherwise would have been. I was expecting an audio visual check list with a narrator marking off each instance where the legacy and influence of this lost Dune could be seen in other science fiction movies that followed. In essence, I was expecting a lot of back patting and celebration for something that, by my understanding, simply doesn’t exist. Something that was nothing more than a dream. I was worried that I was about to watch a documentary of overzealous film enthusiasts verbally masturbating over their lost holy grail. I cannot express my excitement and relief that Jodorowsky’s Dune isn’t that movie.

To be honest, there is a little bit of what I’ve described in this movie but it’s presented through a filter of pure creativity and exhilaration that it’s hard to not give in an accept it for what it is. You can’t avoid making this kind of documentary and simply ignoring all of the adoration some people will have for the subject matter. The movie has some moments where fans of Jodorowsky lament the loss of what could have been one of the most culturally significant and worthwhile science fiction movies of all time. It’s also inevitable that people will talk about the lasting legacy that this movie had on parts of the film industry. That’s great and it’s worth mentioning, but playing “spot the influence” simply isn’t for me. Most of the movie, to my surprise and great enjoyment, is about something else.