Tag Archives: review

Book Review of “Ancillary Justice” (2013) by Ann Leckie

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Cover of Ann Leckie’s novel “Ancillary Justice”

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I first heard about An Leckie’s flagship novel Ancillary Justice by reading an article at Tor called Power, Responsibility, and Revenge: Ancillary Justice Ten Years On by Adrienne Martini. The book is now ten years old, but I’ve never been known as being on the bleeding edge of whatever’s new and fresh in science fiction.

This part of the article got my attention:

In that early scene, Leckie efficiently sets up one of the key features of this world: the Radchaai language doesn’t gender people. Breq defaults to she/her pronouns for everyone unless she is speaking the language of the colonized. We only know Seivarden is a “he” because a bartender on Nilt refers to him that way. Frequently, Leckie shows Breq struggling with finding the right pronouns for the languages that require them.

Oh, good grief. If there are two words associated with this novel that are bound to set my teeth on edge, it’s “justice” and “gender,” both of which have taken on rather magnified meanings in the 2020s, at least in social media.

Martini gushes glowing praise upon Leckie’s book. In fact, her debut novel has the distinction of having won a Hugo Award, Nebula Award, BSFA Award, Arthur C. Clarke Award, and Locus Award for Best First Novel. That’s some novel.

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Review of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

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Poster art for the film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”

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Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) obviously would have been a completely different film if Chadwick Boseman hadn’t died. However, it also would have been a very different film if the role of the Black Panther/T’Challa had been recast.

As it was, the movie started with T’Challa’s funeral. Later in the film T’Challa’s and Shuri’s (Letitia Wright) mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett) tragically dies. Shuri has to bear the burden of both their deaths and indeed, the overarching theme of the film is loss, remorse, vengeance, and recovery.

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Scene from the film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”

Add to this the story of how Namor (Tenoch Huerta) lost his mother. In fact there’s a scene toward the end of the film of how both Namor and Shuri each “buried” their mothers. Riri (Dominique Throne) recalls her father’s death as well.

We can only imagine the ultimate resolution for Namor and Rini but we see Shuri’s acted out as she has to decide who it is she will be as the Queen of the Wakanda and the Black Panther.

Overall, the film was satisfying. I can’t say it was on par with the Black Panther (2018) but (and this is going to sound bad) it was much better than I expected.

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Season One Wrap Up Review of Quantum Leap

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Promotional image for the television show “Quantum Leap.”

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I won’t lie. What kept me coming back to Quantum Leap each week for the first season was “the mystery.” Who is Janice (or Janis) Calavicci? Why did Ben leap? Eventually that mystery included Who is Leaper X? Why did Ian of the future leap back? What danger is Ben supposed to save Addison from?

But let’s go back to the beginning. I’ll take a selective tour of my previous reviews. It wouldn’t be a very good season review if I didn’t start with my review of the pilot.

Oh, I should say it’s impossible to watch and review this series without delving deeply into the social meaning of the stories involved. Science fiction and time travel are only transport mechanisms for discussing social justice, representation, and inclusivity issues from the perspective of the 2020s.

As the show opens, we are introduced to co-workers and friends including Ben, Addison, the engaged couple, as well as Magic, Jenn, and Ian. Addison is revealed to be the potential first leaper, but the project is years away from human trials.

We see a mysterious woman at the project going over information at a computer terminal and saying, “That can’t be right.” To this day, I’m not sure I know what Janice was talking about, especially if Ben’s leap were already planned and programmed into Ziggy.

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Book Review of “The Case for Cancel Culture” by Ernest Owens

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© James Pyles

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I don’t normally review books such as Ernest Owens’ The Case for Cancel Culture: How this Democratic Tool Works to Liberate Us All on this blog, but having inadvertently encountered one of the author’s tweets on twitter, I was intrigued.

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Screen capture from twitter

Note that general replies are disabled on that tweet, and this from an author who wants to “liberate us all.”

At first, I thought this was a gag. I mean, these are gifs, for crying out loud. But in reviewing his twitter stream, I saw he was absolutely serious. Looking up his official bio gave me a clue as to why:

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep 17 “The Friendly Skies”

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A scene from the Quantum Leap episode “The Friendly Skies”

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Finally got the bandwith to watch Quantum Leap S1.E17 The Friendly Skies where once again Ben leaps into a woman with absolutely no reaction to being in a female body.

I happened to mention on twitter the other day that just in season one, Ben has leapt into more women than Sam (Scott Bakula) did during the entire five season run of the original series, and Sam was never a fan of leaping into women. It occurred to me that a man leaping into a woman is at least drag (because actor Raymond Lee has to dress…at least sometimes…in specifically female clothing. At most, it almost makes him trans…almost.

Anyway, I was politely shot down as far as the idea goes. Statistically, if Ben’s leaps are truly random, he should leap into women about half of the time. But we don’t think the leaps are random.

IMDb synopsis:

When Ben leaps aboard a 1970’s passenger jet as a flight attendant, he must outwit its hijackers before it mysteriously crashes into the Atlantic. Worse? He has to do it all without Ziggy’s help.

Ben leaps into a flight attendant named Lois on August 5, 1971. The aircraft has over the top service. The men are sexist pigs and the attendants are trained for “service with a smile.”

Here’s a trivia piece from IMDb about why the service was styled as it was in this episode.

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep 16 “Ben, Interrupted”

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QUANTUM LEAP — “Ben Interrupted” Episode 116 — Pictured: Raymond Lee as Dr. Ben Song — (Photo by: Ron Batzdorff/NBC)

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Every single time the Quantum Leap people say “this is the episode that’s the best” and so forth, why, oh why do I find that they aren’t quite right?

The Quantum Leap season 1, episode 16 show Ben, Interrupted aired on Monday, March 20th.

Of course, the title is no mystery, it recalls Girl, Interrupted (1999)

Based on writer Susanna Kaysen’s account of her 18-month stay at a mental hospital in the late 1960s.

It also recalls the original series episode Shock Theater. Ben leaps into private detective Liam O’Connell who deliberately has himself committed into a 1954 mental hospital to free a woman named Judith who was committed by her husband for “hysteria,” possibly because she kept miscarrying when they tried to have children (I’d love to have seen that cretin come to justice).

The obvious source I certainly hope everyone who wrote this episode read was Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next. I probably read the book before any of them were ever born.

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Book Review of “The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass”

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© James Pyles for photo

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I was at the public library weeks ago looking for another book when I came across Jim Butcher’s novel The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass. It was published in 2016 as the first of a series, but according to Butcher’s website, the second in this collection will probably be published this year.

I’d never heard of Butcher before, but he’s been Hugo nominated more than once and has written the well-known (to everyone but me) Dresden Files novel series. I’ve been criticized by “real science fiction fans” that I’m not a “true fan” because I don’t have an encyclopedia-like  knowledge of all things SciFi. Oh well.

At 630 pages, it took me a while to read, especially since I can’t always find large blocks of time for reading. So after renewing it once, I finally finished it off this morning. I’m really glad I came across it. I was attracted to the cover mainly and checked it out on a whim.

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep 15 “Ben Song for the Defense”

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QUANTUM LEAP — “Ben Song for the Defense” Episode 115 — Pictured: (l-r) Isaac Arellanes as Leo Diaz, Raymond Lee as Dr. Ben Song — (Photo by: Ron Batzdorff/NBC)

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Last night, episode 15 of Quantum Leap called Ben Song for the Defense aired. The synopsis goes:

Ben Leaps into a harried public defender trying to prove one client innocent when everyone else believes he’s guilty, as well as juggle dozens of other case as well as a romantic relationship inadvertently threatened by a corrupt ADA. Jenn is called in as Observer because of her knowledge of the legal system.

Oh, “ADA” just means Assistant District Attorney.

Although the leap centers on a single client of Ben’s (public defender Elena Ramirez), we see Ben trying to juggle several cases feeling as overwhelmed as the real Elena probably did. In the original timeline, 18-year-old Camilo Diaz (Michael Garza) is on trial for the murder of a gang member who was trying to recruit Camilo’s younger brother Leo (Isaac Arellanes). Camilo threatened the gang member and later was seen fleeing the crime scene. No other suspects present.

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep 14 “S.O.S.”

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Scene from the Quantum Leap episode “S.O.S.”

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I just finished watching episode 14 of Quantum Leap: S.O.S.. Ben leaps into Rossi, the operations officer of the U.S. Navy vessel “Montana” during a wargames exercise in the South China Sea on May 2, 1989. The date is important because it is when a generally unknown Naval disaster occurred and when Addison’s Dad, the ship’s executive officer Alexander Augustine (Brandon Routh) ends his career.

Addison discovers her Dad by recognizing the voice of Captain Bill Drake (Alex Carter), her Dad’s mentor in the Navy. The issue in the original timeline is that the Montana receives a fragment of a distress call from the U.S. submarine the Tampa but Augustine chooses to ignore it.

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Review of Quantum Leap Ep 13 “Family Style”

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Scene from the Quantum Leap episode “Family Style”

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This week’s episode (number 13) of Quantum Leap is called Family Style. Here’s the IMDb summary:

When Ben leaps into an Indian family to try and prevent their beloved family restaurant from burning down, he finds an emotional connection with their matriarch through memories of his own. Magic and Jenn share a surprising revelation with Ian.

Ben leaps into the eldest daughter of an Indian family who owns a restaurant in Portland, Oregon in 2009 (Given that the same basic technology and lifestyles existed then as now, this is less time travel and more “I mysteriously injected myself into someone’s family”). He (again) has absolutely no issues being in a woman’s body (no awkwardness with breasts, no periods, no nothing). In fact the only difference is that he has a nose piercing. He also has mad cutting skills and apparently always wanted to be a chef. I think this is an effect of the writers of the show rather than how a guy would really react (see Sam Beckett/Scott Bakula in the original show).

I’m sorry, but if I woke up one morning with breasts and no penis, I’d lose it.

My wife worked in a professional kitchen for over twenty years and listening to all of her stories, I can confidently say, that Ben suddenly performing well in such a kitchen is bullshit. Being a good “Betty Crocker” in a kitchen at home is light years from working in a restaurant.

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