Follow Friday - Twenty-Seven Should Be Sacred to the Minbari

It's Friday again, which means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - The Book Addicted Girl and The Little Book Blog.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: Let's step away from books for a second and get personal. What t-shirt slogan best describes you?

There's only one t-shirt slogan that fits:

Go to Previous Follow Friday: Twenty-Six Is Only Evenly Divisible by Thirteen
Go to Subsequent Follow Friday: February Has Twenty-Eight Days, Usually

Follow Friday     Home

30 Days of Genre - What Is the Best Fan Soundtrack?

Okay, I know, it has been a while, but no one said that the 30 Days of Genre had to be 30 consecutive days.

The truth is, this one stumped me for quite a while. Before I started on this meme I had no idea what a fan soundtrack was, let alone that this sort of thing even existed. And, as usual, I'm probably going to take a huge left turn away from what was intended when this question was added to the meme. Because I'm not going to pick a single soundtrack. I'm going to pick an entire band:

Five Year Mission

Left to right: P.J. O'Connor, Mike Rittenhouse, Andy Fark, Chris Spurgin, and Noah Butler

Based in Indianapolis, this quintet is on a mission (hence the name) to write and record a song for each of the original Star Trek episodes, plus the original pilot The Cage. That will be eighty songs in total split up over five full length CDs. Thus far, they've released one CD covering the first sixteen episodes running from The Cage through Shore Leave, with a second projected to be ready for release this fall. They are recording the songs in the order the episodes originally aired (well, except for The Cage, which didn't air until well after the end of the run of the original series). They have a website called Five Year Mission where you can keep up with their releases and shows and get their CDs or band-related paraphernalia.

And each song is, in it own way, brilliant. They range from the silly, such as The Corbomite Maneuver and Miri, to the tragic and sad like The Menagerie, Part I and Balance of Terror. Some songs focus on a single element of the episode, some songs, are extended narratives that describe the events of that particular show - Shore Leave is an excellent example of this. Each song somehow seems to capture the essence of the episode it related to, usually highlighting the goofy sincerity of the show by poking playful fun at things like the seeming insanity of trusting previously unknown aliens who can read your thoughts to provide a place for recreation, or by highlighting the pathos of hunting down war criminals who happen to be close friends as well. Each song hits just the right emotional chord while delivering a great musical performance as well.

And if that wasn't enough, they make videos to go with their songs. They haven't made videos for all of the songs on their first CD, but they have made several brilliant ones. Here's the one for Miri, which builds upon the chorus "Bonk, bonk/Bonk, bonk on the head/Blah, blah, blah" to discuss the story of three hundred year old children with no parental supervision:


Or the video for the song The Naked Time, with its repeated refrain of "Vulcans don't cry", eventually leading to the observation that "Ship saving action/Based on a theory at most/Time travel backwards/That might prove useful in a future episode."


I love this band. I love their music. I'm planning on starting reviews of the classic Star Trek episodes on this blog, and I intend to include their videos with the episodes when I can, or to link audio files of the appropriate songs if there is no video available. If you love the original Star Trek, then you will almost certainly love these guys.

Go to Day 7: What Is Your Favorite Couple in a Genre Novel?
Go to Day 8: What Is the Saddest Scene in a Genre Novel?

30 Days of Genre     Home

Follow Friday - Twenty-Six Is Only Evenly Divisible by Thirteen

It's Friday again, which means it's time for Follow Friday. There has been a slight change to the format, as now there are two Follow Friday hosts blogs and two Follow Friday Features Bloggers each week. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow both of the Follow My Book Blog Friday Hosts (Parajunkee and Alison Can Read) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the two Featured Bloggers of the week - We Fancy Books and A Novella's Tale.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: Name three authors that you would love to sit down and spend an hour or a meal with just talking about either their books or get advice on writing from?

Anyone who has paid attention will know that I love the Lord of the Rings and pretty much anything else related to Middle-Earth, so it should come as no surprise that my first choice would be J.R.R. Tolkien. I've read Tolkien's essays on writing and his non-Middle-Earth related stories. I have (and have read) Letters from Father Christmas, a volume that shows his intense love for his children and his far ranging imagination. I'd mostly want to find out what he thought about the body of scholarship and related material like David Day's Tolkien Bestiary that has risen up regarding his work. And what he thought of the Peter Jackson movies. I would want him to read Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon myths in Old English like he apparently did for some of his Oxford classes. And I would want him to talk about how he developed Middle-Earth and its languages and people.

My second choice would probably be Robert A. Heinlein. I certainly don't agree with him on every issue, but his influence on science fiction as a genre is pervasive. You cannot talk to a science fiction writer without them citing one of his books - usually Have Spacesuit, Will Travel - as their introduction to the genre. If I had a nickel for every time "the door dilated" from Beyond This Horizon is cited as an example of masterful science fiction exposition I would never have to work another day in my life. One of the early episodes of Star Trek was clearly influenced by Stranger in a Strange Land, and the episode The Trouble with Tribbles was clearly inspired by his writing. His five rules for writers are brutal, direct, and honest. And if I could get his brilliant wife Ginny Heinlein to join the conversation, that would be fantastic.

My third choice, and the only one of my selections who is actually alive, would be Ursula K. LeGuin. I can't think of another author whose range of work has been so consistently brilliant. She has written brilliant fantasy with her Earthsea books. She has written some of the most brilliant science fiction with books like The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Her book The Lathe of Heaven has been turned into a television special twice - I'd like to know which she thought captured her intentions better. Her Earthsea books were butchered by the SciFi channel into an atrocious miniseries - I'd like to know what she'd do differently when licensing her books for media now. But mostly I'd just want to hear her talk about her writing.

Go to Previous Follow Friday: A Quarter of a Century
Go to Subsequent Follow Friday: Twenty-Seven Should Be Sacred to the Minbari

Follow Friday     Home

Review - Barcode Booty by Steve Weber

Short review: Buy crap cheap and sell it for a profit online.

Haiku
Use a scouting app
Find discounts in real life
And sell them online

Disclosure: I received this book as part of the LibraryThing Member Giveaway program. Some people think this may bias a reviewer so I am making sure to put this information up front. I don't think it biases my reviews, but I'll let others be the judge of that.

Full review: Barcode Booty is a short but informative guide that outlines how to use a variety of price comparison applications available for smart phones like the iPhone and the Droid to scout for material to sell on Amazon, eBay, and similar websites. Though most of the book is dedicated to evaluating, comparing, and explaining these sorts of applications, the book also gives pointers on what to do with the stock one acquires. As the book is fairly short with only 150 pages of text plus an index, the advice is fairly basic, giving little more than an outline of how to set up a home-based online sales business.

The advice contained in the book boiled down to its essential message is simple: find and buy things cheaply that are in high demand on the internet and resell them for a profit. The wrinkle in the book is that it advocates using a variety of smart phone applications like scandit, pic2shop, or RedLaser to scout for products, comparing the price they can be found for at discount retailers with the price they can be potentially sold for online. This methodology, Weber explains, allows the online reseller to be assured that they will be able to make their investment back and turn a profit as well.

The book starts with Weber talking about his own personal experiences as an online reseller, kicking off with an amusing little anecdote about shopping with his son in tow and then explaining how he got started selling used books online and then branched out to other products. Then the book evaluates a number of popular barcode reading applications, explaining their individual attributes and explaining their individual usefulness - one element that becomes clear is that an online reseller who relies upon one of these applications exclusively is probably missing out on useful information and hampering their efforts unnecessarily.

The book proceeds to warn readers about potential scanning pitfalls, including the potential social pitfalls, and then discusses what sorts of other uses these sorts of devices can be put to. The book goes on to describe some more advanced devices and applications that could be of use to the dedicated reseller, evaluating the various resale platforms that are available, how to use options to outsource fulfillment (and when outsourcing your fulfillment would be a good idea), suggestions for where to hunt for inventory, and a basic outline of legal issues that are associated with running a home-based business of this type.

Weber has three other books on the market, all focused on reselling items online: Sell on Amazon, eBay 101, and The Home-Based Bookstore. I have not read any of them but if they are as straightforward as Barcode Booty they should be fairly informative for anyone interested in engaging in internet arbitrage. The only question that this raises in my mind is whether Weber's success is more the result of reselling items on eBay or his ability to sell "how-to" books to people who aspire to resell items on eBay. This does raise one cautionary element though - reselling products online is not a new idea at this point. Books like Weber's are useful to someone interested in the business, but they also serve to increase the volume of competition.

While much of the information contained in this book is probably old hat to anyone who has engaged in reselling products online, for anyone who is interested in trying to get started this is probably as good an introduction as one might find. One thing Weber makes clear is that this is not a "get rich quick" scheme. While there appears to be money to be had, there is clearly considerable work involved. Anyone who is inclined to attempt to engage in online arbitrage should be prepared to spend considerable hours hunting through discount stores, library book sales, and other locations locating bargains to convert into resale opportunities. But for anyone who is willing to put in the work, Barcode Booty clearly and concisely outlines a basic path that should prove to be potentially lucrative.

Steve Weber     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Random Thought - Introducing Star Trek: The Original Series to My Son

My son is thirteen. I figure this is about the right age to introduce him to Star Trek, specifically the original series. He's never seen the show, and is only vaguely familiar with it. This shouldn't really be that surprising: after all, the original series first went on the air forty-five years ago. But this does raise an interesting question: What order should I show him the episodes, because just like most other science fiction shows, the original Star Trek was jerked around by network executives who really didn't understand science fiction at all. And as a result, there seems to be almost no easy to figure out way to present the episodes to a new viewer. This isn't a problem that crops up all that often any more. Most people are familiar with the show, either through one or more of the movies, or through the numerous spin off shows that have been made. But my son is somewhat unique: though he is aware of the existence of Star Trek he's never watched any of it.

As most fans know, Gene Roddenberry originally filmed The Cage as the pilot for Star Trek, but network executives rejected it as "too cerebral". Then Roddenberry went back, recast almost every part in the show and filmed a second proposed pilot titled Where No Man Has Gone Before, which contained enough action to satisfy the network executives. But when the time came to put the show on the air, they didn't air that episode first, but instead inexplicably put The Man Trap on to lead the show off. And quite bluntly, The Man Trap is an awful opening episode. Of course, it isn't really the episode's fault, it was filmed as the sixth episode, and is more or less season filler. But why someone decided to start a show that has the tag line "To boldly go where no man has gone before" with an episode where the crew goes where people have obviously been quite a few times is beyond me. And the order in which the subsequent episodes were aired doesn't make much sense either: the second show aired was Charlie X, the eighth show in production order, and the third put on the air was the pilot Where No Man Has Gone Before, and so on, with the episodes hopscotching around: fourth to air was The Naked Time (seventh in production order), fifth was The Enemy Within (sixth in production order), sixth was Mudd's Women (fourth in production order) and so on. And as a result the crew of the Enterprise shifts strangely from one episode to the next, and the personalities of the various characters seem almost schizophrenic. As I have found so often with televised science fiction, watching the shows in the order they originally aired is just a bad idea.

In most cases, watching the episodes in production order is the optimal choice. It is the order that the creators of the show usually intended the episodes be shown in before clueless network executives get their fingers on the show and decided that consistency and character doesn't matter: after all, the show is just science fiction so the only things that are important are the monsters and ray guns. But oddly, in the case of Star Trek, putting the shows in production order raises a few odd problems of its own. Because most of the episodes have a Captain's Log, and as a result most of the episodes are given a Stardate. And bizarrely, if you arrange the episodes in production order, the Stardates are all screwed up. Where No Man Has Gone Before is first in production order, and has a Stardate of 1312.4. The Corbomite Maneuver is next in production order with a Stardate of 1512.2. But Mudd's Women is third in production order and has a Stardate of 1329.8. And so on and so forth. The Squire of Gothos, eighteenth in production order, has a Stardate of 2124.5, but What Are Little Girls Made Of?, which is tenth in production order, has a Stardate of 2712.4. Some episodes from season two have Stardates that would place them in the middle of season one. Some episodes from season three have Stardates that would place them in the middle of season two.

And it is this sort of sloppiness that illustrates how poorly television producers and network decision makers understand science fiction fans. It seems likely that when they were putting the episodes together the various writers assigned to put together the screenplays in some cases just threw a string of numbers into their script and figured no one would ever care enough to wonder why the dates seemed to jump forwards and backwards several times. But science fiction fans do care, and this highlights just how badly most television executives underestimate them. The attitude most television executives seem to have is that science fiction fans are easily mollified and as a result don't worry too much about putting out anything that is coherent or well-written, instead just producing schlocky crap - witness the string of poorly made SyFy channel movies that have aired. But the truth is that science fiction fans are harder to please than "mundane" television viewers. Perhaps this is because when a science fiction show or movie airs it imagines a fictitious world, and science fiction fans expect that world and the characters who live in it to make sense, demanding a level of internal consistency that goes well beyond that expected for mainstream shows like Grey's Anatomy or Cheers. In short, more than any other type of show, a science fiction television series needs a consistency editor to go through episode scripts and clean up details like making sure elements like the Stardates are properly sequenced.

But this little bit of sloppiness opens up an interesting angle to approach the original Star Trek series. Since the Stardates for the various episodes can be extracted, and the episodes put in order, we can approach the series from the perspective that the characters themselves theoretically encountered the various incidents depicted in the show. We can, therefore, watch the shows in Stardate order. This is likely to result in some quirky inconsistencies, as pulling shows from one season to another will probably result in random oddities cropping up, but the effort seems to me to be worth it. The only real problem with watching the shows in Stardate order is trying to figure out what to do with the five episodes - Mirror, Mirror, The Omega Glory, Assignment: Earth, Day of the Dove, and That Which Survives - that do not have Stardates associated with them. Because we are reordering the episodes anyway, I decided to assign them Stardates that place them in the same position that they would have had in production order, although this does mean they are shuffled around with respect to the position of other episodes in the series.

So the end result is that I am planning on introducing Star Trek to my son by showing him the episodes in an order that the creators probably never intended that will intentionally put some of them completely out of order. I know this seems strange, but I think it is likely to be a fun way to present the show to a first time viewer. And because this is what I do, I'll be reviewing the episodes as we watch them, and reviewing them in Stardate order as well. For traditionalists, I'll also arrange them so that you can read the reviews in air date order and production order as well, but the reviews will be written and posted in Stardate order.

As a side note, I'm not starting with The Cage, even though that should technically be first. The primary reason is that I want my son to be able to fully enjoy the two part Menagerie story, and in my opinion watching The Cage first would ruin those two episodes for him. So we are starting with the second pilot Where No Man Has Gone Before, and then proceeding from there.

Go to First Star Trek Review: Where No Man Has Gone Before

Star Trek: The Original Series     Television Reviews     Random Thoughts     Home

2011 Mythopoeic Award Nominees

Location: Mythcon 42 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Comments: The two fiction categories in the Mythopoeic Awards have always accepted nominations consisting of the aggregate of an entire series of books, as opposed to a single discrete work. But while this rule has only occasionally been invoked in the Adult Fantasy Literature category, it seems to result in at least one series nomination in the Children's Fantasy Literature category in almost every year. This seems to reflect the seemingly currently accepted wisdom in the book publishing industry that young adult books, especially young adult fantasy books, should be published in series format, with publishers more or less chasing after the same audience that made Harry Potter a worldwide phenomenon. These sorts of trends come and go, but I always wonder what gems publishers are skipping over while trying to chase the mirage of a cyclone that has come and gone.

Best Adult Fantasy Literature

Winner:

Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord

Other Nominees:

The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia A. McKillip

A Cup of Normal by Devon Monk
Troubled Waters by Sharon Shinn
Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay

Best Children's Fantasy Literature

Winner:

Queen's Thief series (The Thief, The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, and A Conspiracy of Kings) by Megan Whalen Turner

Other Nominees:

The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman

I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett
Incarceron and Sapphique by Catherine Fisher
Toads and Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson

Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies

Winner:

Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Michael Ward

Other Nominees:

Arda Reconstructed: The Creation of the Published Silmarillion by Douglas Charles Kane

Middle-Earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien by Bradford Lee Eden
The Power of Tolkien's Prose: Middle-Earth's Magical Style by Steve Walker

Tolkien on Fairy-stories: Expanded Edition, with Commentary and Notes by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson

Myth and Fantasy Studies

Winner:

The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale by Caroline Sumpter

Other Nominees:

Cheek by Jowl: Essays by Ursula K. Le Guin

Metamorphoses of the Werewolf: A Literary Study from Antiquity Through the Renaissance by Leslie A. Sconduto

Out of My Bone: The Letters of Joy Davidman by Don W. King
Rhetorics of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn

Go to previous year's nominees: 2010
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2012

Book Award Reviews     Home

Follow Friday - A Quarter of a Century

It's Friday again, which means it's time for Follow Friday. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Host (Parajunkee) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the Featured Blogger of the week - Angela at Angela's Anxious Life.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: What do I do when I am not reading?

I'm going to assume that "work" is not the answer here, and the question actually is asking what I do when I am not spending my days representing the U.S. government as a lawyer, but is rather mostly concerned with how I spend my other time. A lot of my non-work, non-sleeping, non-commuting time is taken up with school these days. Yeah, I'm mildly insane and decided I really wanted to go back to school and get those economics degrees I always wanted, so now I go to school a couple nights every week, and do homework a couple others. My other time is usually spent blogging, or making sure my books are cataloged properly. Plus, there's family - my wife and two kids. Oh, and there's Tae Kwon Do classes three times a week.

Previous Follow Friday: I Was Twenty-Four When I Got Married for the First Time
Subsequent Follow Friday: Twenty-Six Is Only Evenly Divisible by Thirteen

Follow Friday     Home

Review - World of Ptavvs by Larry Niven

Short review: Larry Greenberg reads the mind of an alien. Larry Greenberg thinks he's an alien. Larry Greenberg and the alien threaten to destroy humanity.

Haiku
Larry Greenberg and
The thrint Kzanol, now awake
Fight to rule us all

Full review: Although this is not the first story set in his Known Space, this is one of the earliest (and as far as I can tell, is the first novel). As a result, the parameters of the fictional future that Niven has mapped out over most of his writing career were not particularly well-defined when World of Ptavvs was written. Through the novel one can see glimpses of the elements of Known Space in embryonic form, but the details are hazy and in some cases have been altered by subsequent books.

The basics of the story revolve around two individuals: Larry Greenberg, a human telepath who has spent a fair portion of his adult life trying to communicate with dolphins, and the thrint Kzanol, a a powerful alien telepath from the past whose race held sway over much of the galaxy when he went into suspended animation in a desperate attempt to save his own life. Their paths cross as a result of an experiment on an archaeological find with less than happy results. The conflict between these two individuals holds the fate of humanity in the balance, and Larry must use his hard won insight into the mind of the thrint to try to stave off humanity's eternal servitude. These events all play out against a backdrop of political tension between Earth and the Belters that the revelations caused by the Greenberg/Kzanol conflict threatens to push into open war.

(As an aside, one wonders what would have happened to humanity when the events of Angel's Pencil taken place had the events in this story taken a different turn, probably nothing good for us it seems).

As noted before, this is a fairly early example of the Known Space setting, and it shows. A lot of material that will be fleshed out later is merely hinted at in this story. In addition, Niven's storytelling style is fairly linear and direct. In the resolution of the story, Niven makes what I consider to be one misstep, in that he seems to argue that technology can be suppressed merely by throwing out an example of that technology, which I find implausible. On the other hand, a large chunk of the subsequent Known Space stories revolve around suppressing technology with military applications via the organization known as the ARM, so it isn't really unexpected.

Although not a good as many of his later works in the Known Space universe, World of Ptavvs is still a good action story with enough mystery and science to jump it above the average. Though his writing career began in the 1960s, Niven's material tends to be similar in tone to the writers of the 1940s and 1950s, so fans of Heinlein and Asimov will probably be comfortable with his output. While not some of Niven's best work, Niven's average fare is better than the best many other science fiction writers turn out, so this book is worth reading.

Larry Niven     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Event - InConJunction Recap, July 1st-3rd, 2011

Me and author/rock star Catherine Asaro

On July 1^st-3^rd, 2011 I attended InConJunction in Indianapolis, Indiana. The Author Guest of Honor, and the main reason I went, was Catherine Asaro, author of about two dozen science fiction novels, mostly set in the Skolian Imperialate. The convention also featured a Dr. Who room running constant episodes of Dr. Who (I watched a couple, including the superlative Neal Gaiman authored episode The Doctor's Wife), as well as an Anime room running Japanimation twenty-four hours a day, and a Movie room which featured a constant stream of mostly grade B science fiction and horror movies. As is usual for conventions, more was going on that any single human could possibly hope to do, so I missed a lot of events. One pair of guys I ran in to were Wayne Deal and Kevin Harris who run I'm Not Wearing Any Pants Games, who had some very nifty t-shirts and some interesting looking games. I also took the opportunity to visit the dealer room where I found a very nice pocket watch to replace my currently broken wristwatch. Carrying it around makes me feel like I belong in a Jules Verne or H.G. Wells story. I also picked up a couple of nice t-shirts from Off World Designs. Their designs are all so geeky-cool that I could have bought a dozen and not gotten every design I wanted, but I satisfied myself with three.

Catherine Asaro performing with her band The Diamond Star Project

Among the highlights of the convention were performances by the band Five Year Mission and Catherine Asaro's band The Diamond Star Project. I went to see them both on Friday night, and both were really fun to watch.

Five Year Mission is a local Indianapolis band, but I'm thinking they will become much more popular soon. The concept of the band is simple: They write and perform songs based upon the episodes from the original Star Trek television series. In the order the shows were aired (with one exception). Thus far they have one CD out (which I got a copy of) with songs from the first sixteen episodes, including The Cage, which is the one "out of order" episode (even though it was filmed first, it was not actually aired as its own episode and not within the Menagerie two part story until well after the original series had ended). They also make a video for each of their songs. Here's the one for The Cage:


The first CD also contains songs for The Man Trap, The Naked Time (with the chorus "Vulcans don't cry"), Miri (with the chorus "Bonk bonk. Bonk bonk on the head"), Balance of Terror, The Corbomite Maneuver ("someone get me a Tranya"), and my favorites The Menagerie Part I, Charlie X, The Conscience of the King, and Shore Leave. Every song is stuffed with Star Trek goodness. Not only is every song geeky fun, they are good songwriters and musicians so the songs are catchy and fun to listen to. The band has a website at Five Year Mission where you can get their CD, t-shirts, and other band related paraphernalia. They also have their videos on their site, and they also have a YouTube channel under the name fiveyearmission with all of their videos as well. I took some pictures of the band performing, but unfortunately they all turned out too dark to really see much of anything. If it is any consolation, you can see their band banner in the background of the pictures of Catherine Asaro singing (since she went on right after Five Year Mission had completed their set). If you get a chance to go see them, do. You won't regret it.

The Diamond Star Project is an
outgrowth of Asaro's recent Skolian
Saga novel Diamond Star

After Five Year Mission, Catherine Asaro's band The Diamond Star Project came on. Also featured in the band was the Con's Music Guest of Honor Donald Wolcott. The band is an outgrowth of Catherine Asaro's twenty-fourth novel Diamond Star, which features an interstellar rock star. Naturally, as part of writing the book Asaro had to write songs for her protagonist to sing. This led to a collaboration with the band Point Valid that resulted in the Diamond Star soundtrack CD, which can be obtained from Starflight Music. After the CD was released, Asaro and Point Valid went their separate ways and Asaro gathered the musicians that make up her current band The Diamond Star Project. The new lineup produced a second CD that is mostly cover songs, with a reorchestrated version of No Answers Within Paradisum. Their Friday set was mostly the cover songs, with a couple of originals from the Diamond Star soundtrack thrown in. The band is quite good and gave an enjoyable performance. I only had two complaints: they started very late in the evening (which isn't really their fault), and their rendition of Layla was too fast, although that is more of a personal preference than anything else.

Catherine Asaro signing books post-interview

The next day Catherine gave an extended interview which I was able to attend. Over the course of the hour she talked about how she got started writing, her early writing career and how she and her husband managed living in Germany and bringing up an infant while making time for her to get her novels written. She also talked about raising a gifted child and why she made the decision to home school her, and how that led to her taking up the role of a math coach for a number of home schooled children in Maryland. She also talked about how The Diamond Star Project came about and how she got started singing. Afterwards she took questions and signed books (including some books for me - she signed my copies of The Ruby Dice, Sunrise Alley, and The Quantum Rose). This interview was one of the best parts of the convention, and cemented my opinion that Catherine Asaro is one of the most brilliant, witty, kind women I have ever met. Plus, she writes really good books.

I believe this is Richard Propes.
I know this is from the "So, you want to
become a sci-fi/fantasy blogger?" panel

Of course, the convention wasn't just hanging out in the dealer room, watching Dr. Who episodes, seeing Five Year Mission and Catherine Asaro perform, and listening to Asaro being interviewed. There were a bunch of interesting panels that I went to, the most relevant being Richard Propes panel titled "So, you want to become a sci-fi/fantasy blogger?" Propes runs The Independent Critic, a movie review website, and also appears on the Comcast on Demand show Sandy on the Scene as the show's film critic. He offered some useful advice on running a website and putting together a blog. As usual, even though I've been doing this for a little while, I picked up plenty of helpful hints. Other panels that I attended that were quite interesting included "Forgotten Classics of Sci-Fi" (which was mostly interesting because I was the only person in the room who had read any number of the books under consideration, and that included the moderator), "Beyond Blade Runner: The Work of Philip K. Dick in Fiction Cinema" with an excellent panel that discussed Dick's life, religious faith, and mental illnesses, and how that was reflected in his writing. As far as movies go, the general consensus was that most of the movies based upon Philip K. Dick's stories pretty much bastardize Dick's work. Another interesting panel was "Is an SF renaissance around the corner?", which the panelists immediately said "no", based upon their assertion that young readers are not being drawn to the genre - dismissing Harry Potter as a starting point for new readers on the grounds that kids who read Harry Potter books don't go on to read other genre fiction books. But as the panel went on, it became apparent that this is not necessarily the case: Kids move on to the Eragon books, and the Percy Jackson books, and other speculative fiction books. The problem from the panel's perspective seemed to be that kids aren't reading the right kind of genre fiction books, which seems to me to have been a somewhat out of touch stance to take. One thing they got right was that it is probably a bad idea to try to get a young reader into science fiction by handing them a copy of Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, on the grounds that books like the Heinlein juveniles aren't relevant to kids today. But while I agree that Have Spacesuit, Will Travel has aged badly, many of the other Heinlein juveniles like Red Planet and Citizen of the Galaxy hold up quite well and would, I think, be as entertaining to a twelve or thirteen year old now as they were when they were published.

However, one of the few elements of InConJunction that seemed to me to be badly organized was the panels. Specifically, the panelists themselves. This is not to say the panelists weren't interesting or that they did a poor job, but the program did not list who the panelists for the various panels were, and apparently the panelists were not told ahead of time who would be joining them on the panels so they could contact one another and coordinate their presentations prior to the convention. This caused some problems, such as during the "Forgotten Classics of Sci-Fi" panel, when only one of the expected panelists showed up. I believe this was Ronald Hawkins); however, because I didn't think to take notes, I only remember a few of the names of the panelists.


Me and author Rosemary Laurey

One panelist whose name I do remember is Rosemary Laurey, who appeared on both the "Romance in science fiction" panel and the "Getting Published" panel. Laurey is an author who writes "paranoral, contemporary, and sensual romance". She also writes fantasy under the name Georgia Evans, and her website is Rosemary Laurey. The "Romance in science fiction" panel was interesting in part because no one on the panel seemed to be able to agree on exactly what "romance" meant. Suggestions were advanced that ranged from "any story with two characters who are together" to "the book has to describe body parts" to "lots of sex scenes". The panel eventually degenerated to mostly talking about the character relationships in Firefly and Babylon 5 highlighting the relationships between Sheridan and Delenn, Mal and Inara, Kaylee, and Simon, and Zoe and Wash. (I suggested Lennier and Delenn, which everyone liked, and Jayne and Vera, which no one took seriously). Other than Laurey, most of the panelists confirmed that the stereotype of science-fiction fans as unsocialized nerds has some basis in reality.

The other panel Rosemary Laurey appeared on was the "Getting Published" panel. Actually, saying she appeared on it is something of an understatement. Once again, the lack of organization in identifying panel members resulted in only a single person showing up for the scheduled panel. Mrs. Laurey recruited another author friend of hers to join her on the panel, but unfortunately I cannot remember his name (if anyone who was there remembers, please let me know). This was a very informative session, as Mrs. Laurey recounted her own story detailing her path from teacher to published author, including all of the mistakes she made along the way. Her co panelist also recounted his story, and then they shared some wisdom about publishing contracts, editorial requests, and the distractions that you have to put aside to be able to actually finish your work, because work that isn't finished is unpublishable. Of all the panels I attended at InConJunction, this one was the most informative, despite the slight confusion concerning the panel members.

InConJunction is held every year on the weekend in July that is closest to July 4^th. In 2012, InConJunction: It's the End of the World as We Know It will be held on the weekend of July 6^th-8^th. I am already planning on returning.

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Follow Friday - I Was Twenty-Four When I Got Married for the First Time

It's Friday again, which means it's time for Follow Friday. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Host (Parajunkee) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the Featured Blogger of the week - Lisa at Read. Breath. Relax.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: Let's step away from besties . . . What is the worst book that you've ever read and actually finished?

Some of these Follow Friday questions are hard for me to answer. This one is not. The worst book I have ever read is unquestionably PureHeart (read review) by Rita Hsu Syers. This book is truly awful in every way possible: bad writing, bad story, offensive theology, an incomprehensible and inconsistent plot, and terrible copy editing. As bad as it sounds in my review, the actual book is worse. Much, much, much worse. I still have the book which I keep as a service to humanity: as long as it is sequestered on my shelves no other person will be tempted to read through its horrible awfulness.

Previous Follow Friday: Twenty-Three Is the Last Prime Number Until Twenty-Nine

Subsequent Follow Friday: A Quarter of a Century

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2011 Campbell Award Nominees

Location: Campbell Conference Awards Banquet at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

Comments: Another year and another Campbell Award ballot that mostly ignores the contributions of female authors. Sure, two women were nominated, but two women out of a field of thirteen can't be called anything but a farce when it comes to gender equity. On the plus side, the Campbell Award judges seem to have realized that there are non-white people in the world and recognized the work of Charles Yu, giving him a second place finish for How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Even so, the list of nominees was still dominated by authors who were both white and male.

Best Novel

Winner:

The Dervish House by Ian McDonald

Second Place:

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

Third Place:

The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi

Finalists:

Anthill by E.O. Wilson

Aurorarama by Jean-Christophe Valtat
Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis
C by Tom McCarthy
Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear
New Model Army by Adam Roberts
Veteran by Gavin Smith
The Waters Rising by Sheri S. Tepper
Yarn by Jon Armstrong
Zero History by William Gibson

Go to previous year's nominees: 2010
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2012

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Review - Catch the Lightning by Catherine Asaro

Short review: Tina finds a man from space who falls in love with her. Then her troubles begin.

Haiku
Tina's beau is lost
Is he from the far future?
Or just somewhere else?

Full review: Impoverished and orphaned, a seventeen year old Latina named Tina works as a waitress while dreaming of going to college and escaping her gang-dominated neighborhood. Tina was abandoned by her father, lost her mother to circumstances and her protective cousin to drugs and gang violence, leaving her alone to dodge the local criminal strongman. And one night she comes across an imposing but seemingly friendly stranger on her way home from work. And her life changes. And the fate of three interstellar nations changes as well.

Although Catch the Lightning was the second book published in the Skolian Saga, the events depicted in its pages take place near the end of the long story arc of the series. This only becomes clear as the story unfolds, and a reader who has read Primary Inversion will notice that many events described by the main character in Catch the Lightning don't seem to connect well to the events from the first book in the series, which can be disconcerting until one realizes that most of the books in the Skolian Saga take place in between these two stories. In this regard, it seems that Asaro drew from the same well that J. Michael Straczynski often did when writing Babylon 5, showing the reader how the story ends, but not really showing how the story got there. Which highlights that the critical element in many stories is not the ending, but the journey to the ending.

In addition, the story is told as a recollection as Tina recalls the events after the fact, letting the reader know that she survives to the end. But once again, the interesting question is not whether Tina survives or not, but rather what happens to her on the way and where she ends up. And it all starts when she meets Althor, a mysterious man in a black sleeveless outfit, under a streetlamp in Los Angeles in 1987. He seems friendly, but strange, especially once she notices his gold skin, purple hair, and double-lidded eyes. And this, coupled with his odd attire, which she mistakes for gang clothes, makes her question his proffered story that he was on his way to a formal reception with the President and got sidetracked. Of course, his story turns out to be absolutely true, which is just the first revelation that turns Tina's expectations upside down.

One of the recurring themes in the book is the confounding of expectations - both of the reader and of the characters. Tina is frightened by Althor's imposing appearance, but he turns out to be entirely unlike what she expects. His alien appearance and manners (including his blue colored blood) belie his humanity, but at the same time, at times he seems to be more machine than human. Althor is at the same time, a man, a machine, his ship, and himself. Althor's ship is Althor, and yet also not Althor. The story starts in Los Angeles in 1987, which results in the reader making certain assumptions - assumptions that on several points prove to be ill-founded. People that seem untrustworthy turn out to be reliable, and old friends turn out to be enemies. Time travel turns out to not actually be time travel, but instead Reiman sheet transitions. Tina has no measurable power as a telepath, but is able to establish a telepathic connection with Althor and his ship and turns out to be the key to reviving a fading empire's hopes of survival. Over and over again, the novel flips the reader's expectations, leading to a story that is continuously changing, and even though one knows that Tina survives, almost everything else seems to be up for grabs.

That said, the novel follows a more or less predictable pattern, first establishing a fish-out-of-water story with Althor navigating Tina's world of gangs and CalTech students in the first half, and then Tina forced to deal with Althor's world of shifting interstellar alliances and dynastic politics in the second half of the book. And though their courtship is established at a break neck pace, and is to a certain extent genetically predetermined, it doesn't seem forced. And even though the reader pretty much knows what Tina will do when presented with the choice to go with Althor to an uncertain and alien future or stay with her familiar life and a relatively safe alternative, the choice she is presented with is a real choice - differentiating the story from many other romantic story lines in which many present the main character with the false choice of a good choice and a second clearly inferior alternative. Despite the knowing which path Tina will take the reader can see that the choice is not an easy one, which makes the subsequent struggles she faces that much more poignant.

Because despite returning to a world in which Althor is not only an elite warrior, but also a prince, they face an uphill struggle. As one might guess, when one has more authority, one has bigger enemies, and Althor's enemies loom large. And once again Asaro doesn't let her characters off the hook, because even though the penultimate villain in the second half of the book is misguided, foolish, and probably insane, his rage at Althor and the regime that Althor represents is justified. As she did in Primary Inversion, Asaro doesn't pretend that those living on the low end of the totem pole  under a government that exalts the elite and effectively disenfranchises the rest of the populace will be happy with their lot, no matter how necessary exigencies may make such a system. It is this refusal to make the opposition wholly evil that separates Asaro's book from lesser works, because even though the ultimate villain is, as with most Traders in the Skolian Saga, an irredeemable monster, the dissent that underlies the actions of those that deliver Althor to him gives the story a depth that merely having a collection of wooden villains would lack.

As it is presaged in the opening pages, it will surprise no one that in the end Tina ends up ensconced deep in the advanced technological civilization that Althor hails from. But what matters is the path she took to get there, and the layered story that Asaro provides detailing that path is well worth reading. Even the end where Tina ends up on a desert planet with sword wielding bodyguards (and why do sword-wielding desert dwellers show up so often in science fiction) contains a few unexpected twists that keep the reader guessing. Overall Catch the Lightning accomplishes the difficult task of being both a good second book and a good continuing volume in the multibook Skolian Saga epic.

Previous book in the series: Primary Inversion
Subsequent book in the series: The Last Hawk

Catherine Asaro     Book Reviews A-Z     Home

Follow Friday - Twenty-Three Is the Last Prime Number Until Twenty-Nine

It's Friday again, which means it's time for Follow Friday. To join the fun and make now book blogger friends, just follow these simple rules:

1. Follow the Follow My Book Blog Friday Host (Parajunkee) and any one else you want to follow on the list.
2. Follow the Featured Blogger of the week - Erika at Let's Talk About Books.
3. Put your Blog name and URL in the Linky thing.
4. Grab the button up there and place it in a post, this post is for people to find a place to say hi in your comments.
5. Follow, follow, follow as many as you can, as many as you want, or just follow a few. The whole point is to make new friends and find new blogs. Also, don't just follow, comment and say hi. Another blogger might not know you are a new follower if you don't say "Hi".
6. If someone comments and says they are following you, be a dear and follow back. Spread the love . . . and the followers.
7. If you want to show the link list, just follow the link below the entries and copy and paste it within your post!
8. If you're new to the Follow Friday Hop, comment and let me know, so I can stop by and check out your blog!

And now for the Follow Friday Question: ACK! Your favorite book/movie character (example Hermione Granger played by the Emma chick) just walked into the room! Who is it and what would be your first reaction? You get extra points if you include visual stimulation.

I don't think anyone will be surprised by my love of all things Tolkien, and normally I would pick Karl Urban as Éomer because Éomer is my favorite character in the Lord of the Rings, but in the movies his role was truncated so much that I just can't pick him for this. I suppose I could transfer my loyalties and pick Miranda Otto as Éowyn, but Éowyn's dialogue with the Witch-King was so butchered in the movie version of Return of the King that I can't bring myself to do that. The real problem for me is that most of the books I really like either have never been made into movies, or they have been made into awful movies (like David Lynch's Dune, which was a truly terrible movie made from a truly incredible book), which means most of the characters I like either have no on-screen counterpart, or their on-screen counterpart is handicapped by being in a terrible movie.

But right now I'm at InConJunction. So I'll have think about this some more and figure it out later.

Previous Follow Friday: Twenty-Two Is the Same Backwards and Forwards
Subsequent Follow Friday: I Was Twenty-Four When I Got Married for the First Time

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