Archive for the ‘Reviews of books’ Category
Star Trek: Strangers From the Sky
{4.5/5} “Spock sat while Kirk paced, listened as Kirk talked, provided as always the balance for everything Kirk was — shadow to his sunlight, coolness for his fire, calm against his agitation. Centered and impeccable, in contrast to Kirk, who was pale and tousled from the morning’s ordeal, Spock was simply there, focus for Kirk’s […]
Little Sister
{4.5/5} “Being in that streamlined, percolating body with its loose joints and eagle vision was an indescribable thrill, beyond anything she had ever felt or imagined feeling.” Little Sister by Barbara Gowdy, published in 2017 Rose runs a movie theatre — she lives with her mother who has dementia, and has a boyfriend she sees […]
Star Trek: The Latter Fire
{4.5/5} “We are captains, and with command comes the implicit truth that we must balance lives against lives, with each order we give… I have done so in the past and I carry the scar that does not heal. I do not need to ask you if you have done the same. I know you […]
Final Report
{5/5} “I don’t know much about science, but I know this: They didn’t land a spaceship on a comet using anecdotal evidence, and they didn’t calibrate the rate of descent using focus groups.” Final Report by Rick Mercer, published in 2018 This is mostly a collection of Rick Mercer’s rants from his TV show, Rick […]
Star Trek ENT: Patterns of Interference
{4.5/5} “Do we presume we have the right — and the wisdom — to intervene in the lives of other beings we may not fully understand? Or do we default to granting them the same primacy over the lives that we insist upon for our own?” Star Trek: Enterprise — Rise of the Federation: Patterns […]
Star Trek: Enterprise — Live by the Code
{5/5} “Mayweather… tried to imagine wanting the experience he’d undergone inside the Ware, believing it was necessary and just. Would it really be so wrong for someone to free him from that condition, that conviction, over his protests? Would he be better off staying inside? He couldn’t believe that.” Star Trek: Enterprise — Rise of […]
Star Trek: Enterprise — Uncertain Logic
{4.5/5} “Peace, tolerance, openness to exchange with other species: These ideas create more opportunities, allow individuals more chances to survive and more options to succeed. Therefore, they have an evolutionary advantage over violence, intolerance, oppression — ideas that tend to destroy lives or restrain their opportunities.” Star Trek: Enterprise — Rise of the Federation: Uncertain […]
Star Trek: Enterprise — Tower of Babel
{4.5/5} “The Federation’s strength comes from its unity — its ability to set aside its members’ differences in pursuit of their mutual interests. Our respective syndicates will be better able to stand against them if we learn from their example.” Star Trek: Enterprise — Rise of the Federation: Tower of Babel by Christopher L. Bennett, […]
Star Trek: Enterprise — A Choice of Futures
{4.5/5} “Reluctantly at first, not without anger… but we talked, and after a while we started to listen. And that paved the way for more of us to be willing to talk, and to listen. And both our peoples began to understand that what we hated each other for was far in the past, no […]
Star Trek: Enterprise — To Brave the Storm
{4.5/5} “Home wasn’t usually far from his mind, but on this day of all days — Valentine’s Day marked not only the fourth anniversary of the successful resolution of the Xindi crisis, but also the passage of three years since his ‘death’ aboard Enterprise — he was particularly aware of the immense gulf that separated […]