Tag Archives: scifi

Read My Serial “Our Legacy, The Stars – A Tom Corbett Adventure” Now!

tom corbett

Promotional image by “Starry Eyed Press.”

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I am totally thrilled to announce that my 16-part serial “Our Destiny, The Stars” featuring Tom Corbett, Space Cadet is now available through Kindle Vella.

If you’re old enough, you may remember the Tom Corbett television show which ran from 1950-1955, pretty much pre-dating even me. When the fine folks at Starry Eyed Press asked me if I’d write a brand new Corbett adventure, one modernized with our current understanding of space travel and knowledge of our solar system, I was over-the-moon excited.

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Book Review of “The Andromeda Evolution” (2019)

AS3

© James Pyles

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I heard about Daniel H. Wilson’s novel The Andromeda Evolution almost by accident and found that my local public library had a copy.

I read Michael Crichton’s 1971 novel The Andromeda Strain way, way back in the day and I’ve seen the 1971 movie adaptation a number of times and enjoyed them both.

But fifty years later and written by another author, even with the Crichton family’s blessing, how would this turn out?

A lot better than I expected.

The book started out very slowly and I was afraid it would be a hard slog all the way through. On top of that, Wilson sometimes decided to lecture the reader on the evils of colonialism and how bad white people and civilization is for indigenous people (the main action takes place in a protected reserve in the Amazon). I thought if this was going to be the tone of the book, it would be tedious and I almost stopped reading it once or twice.

Fortunately, Wilson didn’t belabor the point too much and then things began to pick up.

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Book Review of “Cobra” (1986) by Timothy Zahn

cobra

Original cover art for “Cobra” by Timothy Zahn

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When I first read Timothy Zahn’s Cobra back in the 1980s and I liked it. Decades later, I still had that feeling but only vague memory of the book’s contents.

So I downloaded it onto my Kindle Fire and finally got around to reading it.

The novel holds up well. It’s really the “hero’s journey” of Jonny Moreau, a young boy from a backward frontier planet, who volunteers to undergo surgical procedures and specialized training to become an augmented soldier, a cyborg known as Cobra.

His idealism is stripped away when he and his fellow Cobras are sent to another world in their Dominion to fight the alien enemy known as Trofts. He sees destruction, death, and loss. He also first experiences distrust from his own allies. Cobras are highly dangerous. They were created that way. But because there was always the possibility they could turn on those they were helping, no one wanted to get too close.

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Get “Spring Into SciFi 2024” Today!

2024

Cover art for “Spring Into SciFi 2024.”

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It’s here!

Spring Into SciFi 2024 from Cloaked Press is available TODAY!

Download it from Amazon onto your Kindle device and start reading right now. The price is very reasonable.

If you’d rather have the paperback, that’s available too for $15.99 USD.

This anthology features my short story “I Don’t Want To Be Human.”

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Book Review of “Star Wars: The Last Command” (1994)

last

Cover of the novel “Star Wars: The Last Command.”

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I just finished reading the third book in Timothy Zahn’s “Thrawn Trilogy,” The Last Command. Oh “spoiler alert,” it is Thrawn’s last command because he dies, which I didn’t see coming.

Grand Admiral Thrawn having acquired the “Katana fleet” in the previous book and with a massive army of clones to man them, proceeds to press the offensive, even to Coruscant.

Leia has her twins and cares for the infants with the help of her aide Winter, but that doesn’t keep her out of the action as the story progresses.

The clone of Jedi Master Joruus C’baoth goes further off the rails, claims the Empire, galaxy, and the whole universe for his own, and is still raving about having Luke, Mara, Leia, and her babies as his apprentices. He decides to leave the Grand Admiral’s ship for the planet Wayland, which is where Thrawn originally found him. Thrawn grants this, but turns the tables. He makes C’baoth his prisoner in the Emperor’s own throne room in the mountain fortress where the clone factory and all of the Emperor’s other secrets are hidden.

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

demo poster

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

children

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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Zone 7

farm

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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Inheritors

bishop ring

Artist illustration of a Bishop Ring space habitat. Image Credit: Neil Blevins – 2018

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Cornell Jackson’s hands were shaking as he and Administrator Rosa Mendez were forced at gunpoint to disable the alarms on the secure wing of the Achyuta ring’s top security facility in the spinward end of Rama City.

“I want to see it for myself. You said you had the answer.” Hunter Moran had been a Major in Perumal ring’s defense force, but that was before the biospheres of the first four Bishop’s rings started dying. Now he was a terrorist. No, that wasn’t fair. Cornell felt the same panic as he did, as everyone did. After over a hundred-and-fifty years of developing the five colony rings in orbit around Alpha Mensae, their biospheres started to collapse. Excess carbon dioxide was impossible to purge, food crops were dying, and oceans and lakes on each ring were developing toxic algae growths. In less than a decade, almost all life, especially human life, would go extinct and no one knew why…well, almost.

Moran and his military coalition from the other four rings arrived two weeks ago. They had overridden the automatic meteor guard, landed their shuttles along the rim spaceports, and declared Martial Law on the last viable ring.

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