Star Trek: Picard (season 2)
{4.5/5} “The universe is essentially a grand tapestry. It is flawless. It is fragile. It is exquisite. Yet it is somehow always a thread’s pull away from total annihilation.” Star Trek: Picard season 2, aired in 2022 Picard is taking some time to work on the grapes, and he gives a speech to Starfleet’s newest […]
3rd Rock from the Sun (season 6)
{4.5/5} “‘Ragamuffin’? Sally, throw him out. Harry, bring me a dictionary.” 3rd Rock from the Sun season 6, aired in 2000-01 When Mary’s sister Renata comes to town Dick pretends to woo her in order to break her heart and get revenge for Mary. When they go to a parallel dimension they find they live […]
Ron’s Gone Wrong
{4/5} “A bird has commented on your face.” Ron’s Gone Wrong, released in 2021 All of Barney’s classmates have a B-Bot, whose motto is “best friend out of the box.” He finally gets one for his birthday, which he’s very happy about. But his dad got one that had fallen off a truck, and it […]
The Tomorrow War
{4.5/5} “They have no use for prisoners or government, technology, money… nothing. We are food. And they are hungry.” The Tomorrow War, released in 2021 In the middle of a soccer game, soldiers from 30 years in the future appear and ask for everyone’s help. They ask for people to join them and go to […]
Elder Race
{5/5} “When I appear, everyone abruptly defers to me, and I realize that I, as the putative victim of their crimes, am expected to have some hand in the judicial process. This is, of course, just piling contamination on contamination. I am, frankly, not only the last but the worst anthropologist. I’m lucky nobody is […]
Activation Degradation
{4.5/5} “It hadn’t been tasked with reconnaissance. It had been tasked with termination. It was to kill, not study. Why did so many of Unit Four’s instincts contradict its direct orders?” Activation Degradation by Marina J. Lostetter, published in 2021 Unit Four is a robot who is periodically reassembled anew. It works at a mining […]
Project Hail Mary
{5/5} “They have some of the best supercomputers in the world. I needed their supercomputers and engineers to try all kinds of scenarios and propagation models for how Astrophage could get around in the galaxy. Back to the point: These local stars have been dimming for decades. And the rate of dimming increases exponentially — […]
Big Bug
{3.5/5} “Too bad. I’d started knitting you a wool scarf.” Big Bug, released in 2022 A few people have dropped by Alice’s house — her neighbour Françoise, who when her dog dies always clones a new one. And her ex-husband Victor along with their daughter Nina and his new girlfriend Jennifer. The house AI locks […]
The Future of Another Timeline
{5/5} “Watching women demure to men in public and suffer the consequences of their abuse in private, it was hard to believe we were at a transition point in history when women’s growing power could unsettle a long-established social order. But change is never linear or obvious. Often progress only becomes detectable when it inspires […]
Star Trek: Picard — The Dark Veil
{4.5/5} “For some time, Romulan ships have been coming across anonymous caches of survival resources and material, left near border worlds where the refugees have been relocated. Medicines, replicators, and the like. Deposited there by some unknown benefactors, who have diligently scrubbed out any evidence of their origin. Almost as if a handful of Starfleet […]