Sphere

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of books

{4.5/5} “Wear these at all times, even though they’re just a precaution: the alarms trigger automatically if life-support conditions go below optimum. But that won’t happen… Every single major system is redundant. We can lose power, we can lose air, we can lose water entirely, and we will be fine for a hundred and thirty […]

The Postman

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of books

{4.5/5} “All considered, it was amazing a man like him had lived this long. Everyone he had known or admired as a boy had died, along with all the hopes any of them had had. The soft world made for dreamers like himself broke apart when he was only eighteen. Long since then he’d come […]

Minority Report

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of movies

{4.5/5} “Everybody runs.” John is chief in the precrime unit of the Washington DC police force. Due to the ability of three precogs to see murders in the future, the precrime unit has been able to eliminate all murders for the past six years — the murderers are caught beforehand. Precrime is set to go national […]

Shadows in Flight

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of books

{4.5/5} “The human race had encountered only one alien species, ever, and had fought a war of extinction with them. According to a story told by the writer of The Hive Queen under the pseudonym ‘Speaker for the Dead,’ the Formics had not meant to wipe out the human race at all. But Carlotta wasn’t […]

Star Trek Typhon Pact: Brinkmanship

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of books

{4.5/5} “In many ways… Venetan culture is a better fit with the Tzenkethi than the Federation. Both civilizations are very stable and achieve that stability through a certain degree of conformism on the part of their members rather than encouraging individualism… Your Federation explorers and we Ferengi entrepreneurs are perhaps somewhat baffling to the Venetans. […]

Star Trek Typhon Pact: Raise the Dawn

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of books

{4.5/5} “In a career that had taken him from the lowest foot soldier to the supreme commander of the Romulan military forces, the admiral had learned to identify most of the real enemies in the galaxy: ego, arrogance, self-righteousness, a hunger for power, a lack of compassion and perspective, an unwillingness to understand. In his […]

Star Trek Typhon Pact: Plagues of Night

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of books

{4.5/5} “The idea of such obvious power, so distasteful to her in the way that it for so long had been applied in Romulan society, seemed to mock her. Though she did not crave leadership, neither did she wish to be deposed. Having risen to the office of praetor, she wished to fashion her government […]

Star Trek Typhon Pact: The Struggle Within

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of books

{4.5/5} “Yeah, but after Andor, if I screwed up this alliance, Admiral Akaar would transfer me to maintenance detail in the center of the nearest star, and then put my vaporized atoms on report for dereliction of duty.” Captain Picard is hoping the Talarian Republic will join the expanded Khitomer Alliance. Jono, the human who […]

The Matrix

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of movies

{5/5} “There is no spoon.” Neo is a hacker who knows that something’s wrong with the world. He’s approached by some mysterious people, Trinity and Morpheus, who say they can tell him the truth about the world — if he’s ready to hear it. The truth is that he’s been living in the Matrix, a […]

Ender’s Game

Posted by Dave Switzer under Reviews of movies

{4.5/5} “There’s too much at stake to let your unfiltered thoughts leave this station.” It’s the future. A race known as the Formics attacked Earth but Earth eventually defeated them. Another war is inevitable, so children with great tactical minds are taken to the orbiting Battle School to have their skills honed. A brilliant tactician […]