Tag Archives: space opera

Summer Based Book Sale 2025 is Coming

based book sale

Image taken from the “Based Book Sale” substack.

Cool books are coming on sale for one week and you don’t want to miss out.

The 2025 edition of Summer Based Book Sale will run from July 30th to August 4th. This year the focus is “based books for men.”

All books featured on the sale will be priced from 99 cents down to FREE and available for download from Amazon onto your Kindle device (it’s possible some paperbacks will also be part of the sale).

I’ve known L. Jagi Lamplighter for some years now (online) and she’s responsible for publishing a number of my fantasy short stories in various anthologies including “The Price” in Fantastic Schools: Volume Six.

I responded to her “Do Men Read” survey on X/twitter and followed up by reading her Do Men Read? substack.

It’s often believed that men don’t read or don’t like to read, and because of that perception, bookstores don’t stock books for men thinking they wouldn’t sell.

The real problem is finding books that men want to read.

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Book Review of “To Sleep in a Sea of Stars” (2020)

to sleep

© James Pyles

I just finished reading To Sleep In A Sea Of Stars (2020) by Christopher Paolini and was really impressed. One of the biggest points for me is that the book is over 800 pages long and it didn’t drag at some point.

From the blurb on Amazon:

Kira Navárez dreamed of life on new worlds.

Now she’s awakened a nightmare.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she’s delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn’t at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.

While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity’s greatest and final hope . . .

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A Look Back at the Beginning of the Series “Andromeda”

andromeda

Promotional image for the TV show “Andromeda”

I’ve been deciding which classic science fiction television series to start watching for quite a while now. However, it was a chance post on X/twitter that made me choose Andromeda, created from a concept developed by the late Gene (“Star Trek”) Roddenberry and starring Kevin Sorbo.

I made my decision when “Andromeda” was described as sharing a lot of the thematic “DNA” with a favorite show of mine Firefly.

The show ran from 2000 to 2005 which would make it seem pretty successful, but it didn’t attain anywhere near the notoriety, let alone the legend, that Roddenberry’s Star Trek achieved as a franchise.

I’ve only watched the first two episodes so far, but what I’ve seen shows promise, if also presents as flawed.

Keep in mind, two episodes isn’t enough to judge an entire series and “Star Trek’s” first season, although thoroughly enjoyable, was also greatly inconsistent.

Oh, this will be loaded with spoilers, so you have been warned.

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Review of “Cosmic Convocation” A Space Opera Anthology” (2022)

cosmic

© James Pyles

I expected Cosmic Convocation: A Space Opera Anthology published by Starry Eyed Press, to contain an uneven collection of stories and that’s exactly what I found. I won’t mention all of them (although I took notes for every single story), but here are some of the more mentionable works.

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My Novel “Our Legacy, The Stars” Got a Five-Star Review

tom corbett

Cover art for my book “Our Legacy, The Stars: A Tom Corbett Adventure.”

I’ve plastered this all over social media so I might as well say it on my blog as well. My space opera novel Our Legacy, The Stars: A Tom Corbett Adventure has received its first five-star review on both Amazon and goodreads.

As many of you know, this novel was originally presented on Amazon Vella as a 16-episode series, much like the old magazine and movie serials of the past. Classic speculative and adventure fiction, everything from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan” and “John Carter of Mars” as well as Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” stories were originally serialized in magazines (no, I don’t hold myself up to those masters at all, I’m just making the point).

In the movie serials of the 1930s and 40s, science fiction adventures from Flash Gordon to Buck Rogers were presented in theaters a chapter per week, bringing audiences back again and again to see how the hero or heroine was saved from the latest cliffhanger.

Tom Corbett: Space Cadet was a child of that era, specifically the early to mid-1950s. He’s also appeared in everything from books to comic books and now, finally, has emerged into our 21st century, updated for the science, backstories, and characterization.

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“Our Legacy, The Stars: A Tom Corbett Adventure” Now Available as a Digital and Paperback Book

tom corbett

Cover art for my book “Our Legacy, The Stars: A Tom Corbett Adventure.”

It’s here!

Once a 16-part serial adventure on Kindle Vella, Our Legacy, The Stars: A Tom Corbett Adventure is now available on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats (It might still take a couple of days for Amazon to actually link and stock the book in all markets).

Based on the 1950s television show Tom Corbett Space Cadet, the book is updated in terms of our modern understanding of science as well as more nuanced characterizations and plot.

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Book Review: “The Warship – Rise of the Jain, Book Two” (2019)

warship

© James Pyles

A few nights ago, I finished Neal Asher’s 2019 novel The Warship: Rise of the Jain, Book Two. I read and reviewed the first book in this trilogy a little over a year ago. That’s really too long a space between these volumes.

As with most of Asher’s novels (and there are plenty of them), the action takes place in the “Polity” universe (basically the Earth/human domain of space) and involves the primary protagonist the Prador, but they’re not the “big bads” in this story.

As with every one of Asher’s books I’ve read so far, one of the main challenges is keeping track of the numerous individual characters, their races and other things (the Spatterjay Virus for instance) that distinguishes one person/group from another.

This trilogy focuses on a species called the Jain or rather their technology and a number of mysteries that surround them.

Asher’s great at misdirection, so the Jain don’t necessarily occupy center stage through most of the scenes, even if the reader is led to believe they do.

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My Space Opera “The Fallen Shall Rise” FREE This Week!

me

Cover art for “The Fallen Shall Rise”

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

My space opera novelette The Fallen Shall Rise, a 224-Verse tale published by Starry Eyed Press is available to download onto your Kindle device FREE!

From today (as I write this), December 17th through Saturday the 21st, just go to the book’s Amazon page and download it absolutely free.

The Amazon blurb for my book says:

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Book Review of “Ascension, The Ymir Trinity” (2023)

ymir

Cover art for “Ascension: The Ymir Trinity” by A.M. Leishman

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

Last night I finished A.M. Leishman’s short novel Ascension, The Ymir Trinity (2023). It’s supposed to be book one in a series, but so far, no other books have been published.

I first encountered Leishman on twitter/X but he’s also on bluesky. We indie authors have to stick together.

I won’t lie. For me, it was a hard book to get into. I felt like I was walking into the middle of a movie. Cute, teenage psychopath Dawn encounters older and more reserved Alma walking into her local public library and fairly swoons over her. The two have been in contact with an entity named Ymir who has been giving them instructions about an impending interstellar war and pushing them to ally themselves specifically with the U.S. Military.

The two of them plus General David Trauger form an alliance that takes them to the highest levels of power, both on Earth and beyond.

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Book Review of “House of Suns” (2008)

house of suns

Cover art for the Alastair Reynolds novel “House of Suns.”

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

I just finished Alastair Reynolds’ 2008 science fiction novel House of Suns. The book’s scope in time and space is vast, so it’s difficult to summarize let alone absorb.

Warning: Spoiler Alert!

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, a few individuals including one Abigail, decide the only practical way to explore the galaxy is to replicate themselves (almost) into a vast number of copies or “shatterlings.” Eventually, these shatterlings organize into Houses (such as the House of Moths and the House of Flowers) and inside the Houses family lines, such as the Gentian Line. This Line has emanated from Abigail, a person who was kept in childhood medically for decades before being allowed to become an adult and lead her family.

We get glimpses into Abigail’s early life up to her decision to create the shatterlings and to become one herself. These events parallel what occurs much, much later involving the shatterlings Campion and Purslane.

These two travel with each other albeit in their own spacecraft. Shatterlings, through a combination of relativistic speeds and stasis chambers, travel throughout the Milky Way and only have reunions with the other members of their Line once every “circuit” of the galaxy.

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