Star Trek: Very Short Treks
{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. […]
Timescape
{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 […]
The Kingdom of the Cats
{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 […]
GalFed
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 -> […]
Emperor, Swords, Pentacles
{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 […]
A Judgment of Dragons
{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 […]
84K
{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 […]
Reading for the future
Here’s a post David Brin wrote on his blog about a concept he has about passing the love of science fiction literature on to the next generation: Reach out to teachers and give them good reasons why they should teach science fiction in their classroom. He points out that it was very successful in the […]
Carve the Sky
{4.5/5} “Most past antiquarian organizations have consisted of crabbed and constipated men poring over dusty manuscripts in obsolete alphabets and dreaming of times when antiquarians were respected. The Academia is a different matter altogether. They affect to study the human race, but actually feel responsible for its destiny.” Carve the Sky by Alexander Jablokov, published […]
The Practice Effect
{4.5/5} “Deacon Hoss’k had made such a consistent and logical case! The wizard’s people must have used ruthless means to accomplish such wonders… especially to freeze the state of practice in each of these amazing tools. The lives of many of the equivalent of the L’Toff in Dennis Nuel’s homeland must have been sacrificed so […]