Book Review of “Star Wars: Dark Force Rising” (1993)

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Cover of the novel “Star Wars: Dark Force Rising”

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I finished reading Star Wars: Dark Force Rising, book 2 in the Thrawn trilogy and I have to say I’m having a blast.

It doesn’t quite nail down the original film trilogy, but it comes close. I suppose because more details can be packed in a novel than a two-hour film, those details take a little away from its “Star Wars-ness.”

The race is on to find the derelict Katana fleet, a group of Dreadnoughts dating back to the Clone Wars. Both the New Republic and the revitalized Empire are in desperate need of ships.

Supposedly Talon Karrde, head of the smuggler’s guild, knows the secret location and might be persuaded to tell the New Republic, but then there are others.

Following her promise in the last novel, Leia, Chewbacca, and Threepio meet with their Kashyyyk contact in orbit around Endor. Leia and the rest leave the Millennium Falcon and travel with their companion Khabarakh to his home world in an attempt to convince this warrior race to abandon the Empire and join the New Republic. Eventually, she finds evidence of the Empire having poisoned their planet during the clone wars, rather than the Rebellion, convincing them they have been betrayed by the Empire.

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Review of the Movie: “Demolition Man” (1993)

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Poster for the 1993 film “Demolition Man”

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Last night I finally got around to watching the 1993 film Demolition Man starring Sylvester Stallone as Detective John Spartan (some of these made up names are lame) and Wesley Snipes as Simon Phoenix. This is an action/adventure science fiction film with some unique insights on the future, but I’ll get to that.

The story opens in 1996 Los Angeles. Spartan is in a helicopter with two other cops (the pilot Zachary Lamb is played by Grand L. Bush, who played “Little Johnson” in the 1988 classic Die Hard).

Spartan is closing in on his nemesis, the notorious criminal Simon Phoenix, who is holding hostages taken from a commercial aircraft. This L.A. is even more brutal and lawless than the actual Los Angeles in the 1990s, already establishing a break between the film and the reality of the audience.

In typical “Rambo” style, Spartan breaks into the bad guy headquarters and caps off all of the baddies before confronting Phoenix. A heat scan didn’t show any signs of the hostages and Spartan and Phoenix fight over where they are. But Phoenix has rigged enough gasoline and C4 to blow the building into orbit.

Spartan drags Phoenix outside just in time before the whole building goes up (there’s a reason Spartan is called “The Demolition Man”). Turns out the hostages were in the building all along. Phoenix said that Spartan knew that and didn’t care. I guess L.A. coroners in this movie are dumb because they should have figured out Phoenix killed the hostages (no heat signatures) well before Spartan’s arrival.

Both Phoenix and Spartan are convicted of their crimes. Spartan is sentenced to 70 years cyrofreeze. While he’s under, his brain will be reorganized to give him more productive behaviors upon thawing. So both of these men undergo a deep freeze.

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Counting Down From Seven

boardwalk

PHOTO PROMPT © Peter Abbey

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How did I get to be so old? No, don’t answer that. Maybe I’ll just sit on a bench here on the pier. That’s better. Only us retirees out on a Wednesday. What time is it? Says nearly 9:15 a.m. on this funky handheld the alien gave me.

Well, he said he was an alien. Looked human to me when he accosted me in the Safeway parking lot last week. Countdown says seven minutes as of now. I wonder if I should have warned someone like he said? Too late now. Asteroid’s going to hit dead center of this pier.

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“I Believe In Science” (Wait! Let me Explain)

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“Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd) in a scene from the 1985 movie “Back to the Future”

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For years, the concept of “science” as been politicized, as if it were possessed ONLY by one political party, as if the other political party and its members were still in the literal stone age.

Worse, this party says “I believe in science” as if science were a theology or philosophy. A Christian would say “I believe in Jesus” because the Bible says belief alone in Jesus is significant and leads to eternal life.

But how can you “believe” in science? What is science?

According to the Understanding Science page at the UC Museum of Paleontology at the University of California at Berkeley (just to assure my critics that I’m not citing from some far-right, dodgy, unintellectual source):

Science is both a body of knowledge and a process. In school, science may sometimes seem like a collection of isolated and static facts listed in a textbook, but that’s only a small part of the story. Just as importantly, science is also a process of discovery that allows us to link isolated facts into coherent and comprehensive understandings of the natural world.

I tend to reframe that definition to say that science is a standardized, methodical examination of anything in the observable universe. It’s a lot of asking questions. It’s also continuing to test information believed to be substantiated even decades ago. Nothing is static in science. We’re learning new things and upgrading our understanding of our world daily.

The Berkeley source also says:

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The Word

room

PHOTO PROMPT © Susan Rouchard

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Griffith had been searching for the last syllable, the last few letters of The Word for twenty centuries. It was rather anti-climactic that he should find it on a cheap bookshelf in this hovel.

He ran a grateful finger over the binding of the black tome on the lower shelf. The spine contained a letter only he could read. Once he assembled The Word and spoke it, a peace beyond all understanding would encompass the globe.

A sound from the doorway. “You have led Legion on a merry chase, Griffith. Or is it that we let you bring us here?”

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Book Review of “Children of the Lens” by E.E. “Doc” Smith

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Cover art for “Children of the Lens” by E.E. “Doc” Smith

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Yesterday, I finished Children of the Lens (1954), the last in E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen series.

By rights, it’s a book I should have started and finished over fifty years ago. The works of Smith as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs and others were hugely popular in paperback in the late 1960s. All of my male friends in Junior High were devouring them.

But when everyone else was reading the Lensmen, I was reading The Skylark series, so I missed my opportunity the first time around.

Today, if I have anything to complain about the Lensmen series (or Skylark for that matter), it’s that they’ve aged. With each passing novel, the powers, technology, and scope of the books became larger and grander. I can’t read these stories without also imagining them taking place between the 1930s and 1950s.

Even back in the day, “Children” was criticized for two-dimensional characters and juvenile storyline, but at the same time, it was highly popular with young (and not so young) men and boys as a source of adventures and heroics.

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Book Review of “Star Wars: Heir to the Empire” by Timothy Zahn (plus a few extras)

heir

© James Pyles

Yes, this is a book review, but I need to lay a little groundwork first.

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When online strife over what “Star Wars” as a franchise has become gets to be too much, I always return to watching the original trilogy. Nothing seems to capture what “Star Wars” is to me like those films.

I haven’t watched the prequels in some time. I’d probably enjoy them. I did when I first watched them. At the same time, the thrill wasn’t the same. For one thing, Anakin’s eventual fall to the dark side didn’t have the same horrific tone as did Luke’s final battle with Vader in Return of the Jedi (1983). After all we expect Anakin to become Darth Vader. No one knew for sure what would happen to Luke until it did.

As far as the sequel trilogy, I won’t even get into it. It was too flawed from the beginning to be able to carry the legacy of Lucas’ vision. The fact that Disney in general and Kathleen Kennedy in specific were in charge didn’t help.

I haven’t watched any of the Disney+ shows although I have heard all the angst about them on social media.

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Zone 7

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PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

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“The recorder’s on. Go ahead and read what’s on the card.” Mr. Newman had a soft voice and it sounded creepy, not like Dad’s or Grandpa’s.

“My name is José Raymond Phillips. I’m ten years old. My family has been assigned to Zone 7: Jordanville in upstate New York. How am I doing, Mr. Newman?”

“Just fine, but keep to the script. Its just for your records.”

“Okay. Well, anyway…I live in Zone 7 on the Jordanville farm with other families. We are happy here and enjoy the work and the outdoors. My Dad let me drive the tractor for the first…”

“That’s not in the script, José.”

“Sorry, I just got excited.”

“I’m turning off the recorder. Take a few minutes to compose yourself. Then we’ll try again.”

“Why do I have to make this recording?”

“It’s for your official records.”

“You mean like school records?”

Newman chuckled in a way that was scary. “No, not exactly. We just want to show people that you like being in a zone and that you are happy. You’re happy, aren’t you?”

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Dinnertime

farm

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

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Sam grasped the fence post as nausea doubled him over. The throb on this right side spread around to his back. He wondered just how long seventy years of debauchery would take to kill him.

“Can’t be.” He tried to shake off his headache and clear his vision. “It is. But it can’t be. They’ve been dead for over 50 years. The old farm was sold at auction. It’s a damned subdivision now.”

Grandma stepped out of the barn and waved at him. “Sammy. Dinner’s about ready. Come on home.”

The twelve-year old boy scrambled down the path toward Heaven.

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2024 Hugo Award Nominations Meltdown

solar flare

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO

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I didn’t think I’d ever write about the Hugo Awards, Worldcon and SFWA again. I entered the game too late for the 2015 Sad Puppies drama and trauma (and I’m glad I did).

However, that event and the chatter in subsequent years led me to take a hard look at Worldcon and the Hugos. When I was a much younger science fiction reader, I thought winning a Hugo, a Saturn, or some other big name SF/F award meant it passed a rigorous and objective test of quality.

Boy, was I an idiot.

I found out that, in the modern era, science fiction works pass a rigorous test of political and social alignment with the (far) left by several hundred voters max, and that’s what wins an award.

What a disappointment. I can (sort of) see why the people behind the “puppies” did what they did in the misguided belief that they could balance the scales and make these awards more egalitarian. However, breaking into someone else’s party just to spike the punch, so to speak, is bad form, too.

I figured Worldcon et al., had finally purged all traces of conservativism and offensiveness from their ranks, the last trauma of such being the George R.R. Martin 2020 Hugo Controversy (which fortunately didn’t affect the popularity of Martin’s books).

So, I was surprised when I found out that currently there is Panic at the Hugos. What happened now? Can’t they ever create a perfect echo chamber for themselves?

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