what Dave thinks about movies, books and everything
{1.5/5} Star Trek: Very Short Treks, aired in 2023 This is a series of 5 short animated videos that were made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Star Trek: The Animated Series. Three of them will make you frown and two will make you smile. The 1st 3 videos are all distasteful in different ways. […]
The KW Symphony is the symphony that I went to — I was in the habit of going to several concerts each year. They were a terrific symphony — superbly talented musicians, and conductors who created splendid programs that you wanted to hear. Just days before this season was supposed to start, the board declared […]
{4.5/5} “He had to admit Peterson was right. It was precisely the kind of simple check he or Renfrew should have tried. But they were schooled in thinking of mechanical experiments, full of devices which operated without human intervention. The notion of asking for a confirming sign simply had not occurred to them. And now […]
{4.5/5} “It was like looking into a mirror when you’ve never seen your reflection. For the first time, I understood why people stopped, dropped things, and stared when they saw me. He was my skin tone, had my freckles, and his rough golden hair was shaved so close that it looked like a coat of […]
{4/5} “He can hear only his footsteps, his breath, his heartbeat, and the crackling flame of the torch that is definitely getting dimmer, which is disappointing because he had hoped it would be a magic endless-light torch and not a regular extinguishable one.” The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, published in 2019 Zachary is a […]
{4.5/5} “‘What made you think of pulling in all those birds?’ ‘I have it from my mother, who has it from her cousin, who has it from her man’s sister, who has it from her aunt, that Prandra daughter of Tengura, the first woman to leave Ungruwarkh, does something similar with birds of prey in […]
Most of Phyllis Gotlieb’s novels are set in her Galaxy Federation (GalFed) universe. Here they are. Sven Dahlgren O Master Caliban! 1976 Heart of Red Iron 1989 Starcats A Judgment of Dragons 1980 -> 4.5/5 Emperor, Swords, Pentacles 1982 -> 4.5/5 The Kingdom of the Cats 1985 -> 4.5/5 Lyhhrt Flesh and Gold 1998 -> […]
{4.5/5} “Sometimes he scented small animals, but they did not run in fear because none on this world recognized the smell of Predatory Cat. He ran uphill over stones and downhill through rank grass with the savage joy of the marauding Hillsman, fear for Emerald compressed to a small knot in his belly, and the […]
{4.5/5} “He dealt food supplies and gave medical attention when requested to all comers among the world’s million and a quarter inhabitants: big red cats, leopard-sized and -shaped; nearly half, mostly female, were telepathic… No one thanked the suppliers. GalFed had plenty of use for half a million telepaths, and one day payment would fall […]
{5/5} “Dani Cumali was murdered by a professional hit woman. A firm called Faircloud Associates have bought a discretion clause to close the case. Dani’s phone, the one that was registered to her, has been lost by the police. You were one of three people called from this device, which neither the killer nor the […]