Reviews Tagged “Science Fiction”

• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ★★★★☆ Jules Verne (F.P. Walter Translation)
  Even though marine science and geology have passed it by, it’s still a gripping episodic adventure through a strange, hidden world of marvels.
• Automatic Noodle ★★★★★ Annalee Newitz
  A short but joyful tale of creating the future you want out of the present you’ve been stuck with, told by robots who would rather make noodles than war.
• Babylon 5: The Lost Tales ★★★⯪☆ It’s mixed. The first segment is essentially a bottle episode. The second is much stronger, and feels like a real return to Babylon 5
• Battlestar Galactica: The Plan ★★★⯪☆ Pulled together a consistent story from elements that were originally unconnected, but depended on the audience remembering the series and still felt like a clip show.
• The Birthday Of The World (And Other Stories) ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  A collection of stories set in Le Guin’s Hainish universe, on worlds with vastly different gender relations. Plus a couple of stand-alone stories. Mostly ranging from good to great, with Solitude and Paradises Lost being my favorites of the batch.
• Calculating God ★★★★☆ Robert J. Sawyer
  What if there is scientific evidence out there for a supreme being, but to find it you have to correlate knowledge from multiple inhabited worlds across the galaxy?
• Changing Planes ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  Lighter than most Le Guin I’ve read, Changing Planes is a Gulliver’s Travels for the present era, the social satire made possible through interdimensional travel.
• City of Illusions ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  How can you be yourself when you don’t know who you really are? A story of isolation, adaptation, kindness, cruelty, trust and hope, and above all, how to piece together the truth (or at least pick out the lies) on a future, depopulated Earth.
• Cordwainer Smith: Short Fiction ★★★★☆ Paul Linebarger
  Three mid-century science-fiction stories about the future of war, space travel, symbiosis, and the dangers of cutting off your own humanity.
• The Defiant Agents Andre Norton
  An enjoyable space western with Apaches as the good guys, wrapped up in the cold war and tossing in the Golden Horde, a lost alien city and Russians with a mind-control ray.
• The Downloaded ★★★★☆ Robert J. Sawyer
  A short, fast tale of frozen people reawakening after the fall of civilization, built around the premise that you need to keep a frozen person’s consciousness active in VR, and there are very different reasons you might put people into cryo storage and a simulation. Not a lot of plot, mainly concepts and character studies.
• Eifelheim ★★★★☆ Michael Flynn
  Detailed and thoughtful exploration of first contact with aliens in the midst of the Black Death.
• Five Ways to Forgiveness ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  Five loosely-connected stories set in the final years of a color-based enslaving society, the war for liberation, and the messy aftermath.
• Flash Forward (TV Pilot) ★★★★★ The first episode of Flash Forward is one of the best-constructed pilot episodes I’ve seen in a long time, especially of an arc-driven series.
• FlashForward (Novel) ★★★★★ Robert J. Sawyer
  A fascinating exploration of time, destiny and free will after everyone on Earth gets a glimpse of the same moment 20 years in the future.
• Four-Day Planet ★★★☆☆ H. Beam Piper
  A fun frontier/sailing adventure, but nothing special. Sort of Moby Dick in space with everyone based out of a corrupt frontier town.
• Fuzzy Nation ★★★★★ John Scalzi
  Not sure it’s better, but it is more enjoyable than the original, with better characterization and less deus-ex-machina. Same overall story of colonization, corporate greed, enviromnental exploitation and who counts as people, but different enough to enjoy both.
• Fuzzy Sapiens ★★★★☆ H. Beam Piper
  Continuing the Mad Men approach to ecological space colonization, this sequel explores the growing pains of a company town becoming a democracy, a corporation losing its monopoly, and two species of people figuring out how to live together.
• Galactic Derelict ★★★☆☆ Andre Norton
  A decent outer space adventure from the anything-goes era of science fiction. The story drags a bit after it switches from time travel to space travel.
• Head On ★★★★★ John Scalzi
  The sequel to Lock In is a fast read with intriguing concepts, fun characters and an interesting mystery. This time locked-in FBI agent Chris Shane investigates the death of a locked-in athlete in a sport too extreme for human bodies, played with remotely-controlled robots.
• Heaven’s Vault ★★★★★ You play as an archaeologist, sailing among the moons of a habitable nebula linked by rivers, exploring ruins, interacting with townspeople, and translating ancient inscriptions. What starts as a simple quest to find a missing person ultimately reveals surprising truths about the history of the nebula and its people.
• Heaven’s Vault (Novels) ★★★★☆ Jon Ingold
  Aliya and the robot sail the Nebula, seeking clues to its history and future. The first two novels tell a story similar to the game, just different enough to feel new. Ancient writing appears throughout, sometimes translated and sometimes left for the reader. Book three picks up both after the game and long before, exploring a changed Nebula and the Loop.
• Interference ★★★★☆ Sue Burke
  An intriguing followup to Semiosis that weaves several drastically different sentient species (both plant and animal) into a story about factions, community, freedom, communication and war.
• Invasive ★★★★☆ Chuck Wendig
  Swarms of killer ants genetically altered to target humans are as much nightmare fuel as you would expect.
• The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport ★★★★★ Samit Basu
  Starts as a cyberpunk take on Aladdin and gleefully launches into a glorious mishmash of robots, legacies, secrets and political upheaval in a crumbling spaceport slowly sinking into the mud on a backwater planet.
• Jurassic Park (Movie) ★★★★★ Steven Spielberg
  The original Jurassic Park film is still great, more than 30 years later. The dinosaurs are still impressive, it’s well-paced and dramatic, and despite contemporary reviews, the characters are engaging.
• Justice (ST:TNG, Season 1) ★☆☆☆☆ Some old TV shows are better than you remember. Planet of the Jogging Bimbos…isn’t.
• The Kaiju Preservation Society ★★★★★ John Scalzi
  Escaping the pandemic by learning to survive on a world with gigantic monsters.
• Key Out Of Time ★★★★☆ Andre Norton
  Lost in time, lost in space, out of their depth, a handful of humans are caught in the middle of a four-way power struggle on the high seas of an alien world.
• The Lathe of Heaven ★★★★★ Ursula K. Le Guin
  A surreal tale of dreams changing reality, global stakes anchored by the three people involved. Be careful what you wish for.
• Little Fuzzy ★★★★☆ H. Beam Piper
  An enjoyable tale of first contact, colonialism, environmental stewardship, corporate greed vs. ethics, and most importantly, who counts as “people” on an alien world that turns out not to be uninhabited after all.
• Mrs. Davis ★★★★★ A friendly world-dominating AI vs. a surly nun. A tale of our dependence on technology and the lengths people will go to feel appreciated, wrapped in the weirdest take on the Holy Grail I’ve ever seen. Seriously absurd, and occasionally absurdly serious.
• Murderbot Season 1 ★★★★★ A pitch-perfect adaptation of All Systems Red. Alexander Skarsgård is dead on as the socially-anxious security cyborg who just wants to be left alone to watch its shows, but has to protect its humans from alien creatures, their own naivete, and rival corporations willing to kill.
• Mysterious Galaxy ★★★★★ Bookstore specializing in sci-fi and mysteries, involved in local community and conventions.
• New Spring (Comic Book) #1 The first issue of the New Spring comic book was surprisingly good.
• New Spring (Comics): The Long Publishing Saga It’s taken a long time (and three publishers) to complete this adaptation of the Wheel of Time prequel, even though it only covered eight standard-sized comic books
• No Man’s Sky ★★★★★ Open-ended, self-directed sandbox game of exploring space. Amazing graphics. Gameplay switches smoothly between solo and multiplayer modes.
• Nomad of the Time Streams ★★★⯪☆ Michael Moorcock
  A 19th-century British soldier in India is flung into three wildly different future wars, forcing him to reexamine the world he thought he was building.
• The Old Iron Dream ★★★★★ David Forbes
  An extended essay tracing the strand of military authoritarianism and white male supremacy in science fiction, from John Campbell through Heinlein, Pournelle and other major names up through the then-present of 2013.
• Outer Wilds ★★★★★ A fascinating game of discovery in a finely-crafted, tiny solar system trapped in a time loop. In a ship made of plywood, sheet metal and duct tape. Where you can roast marshmallows on every planet.
• The Outer Worlds ★★★★★ Immersive space RPG that at once satirizes corporate control while asking you to make hard choices within it.
• Overgrowth ★★★⯪☆ Mira Grant
  Invasion of the Body Snatchers from the POV of an alien plant person who grew up human. Now the invasion has started, and she’s sorting out friends, family, and who she can trust from either planet.
• Parable of the Sower ★★★★★ Octavia Butler
  Hard to put down. And hard to pick up again. It’s certainly not a fun book, but it’s extremely engaging, despite the bleakness of the slow-apocalypse setting and story.
• Paradise The ST:DS9 episode “Paradise” tries to make a point about self-reliance without technology, but misses the mark by not actually showing any benefits.
• Paradises Lost ★★★★★ Ursula K. Le Guin
  An intricate novella about the middle generations of a multi-generational spaceship, and the religion they’ve developed that believes nothing outside the ship is real, and both Earth and their destination are myths.
• People of the Crater ★★★☆☆ Andre Norton
  Standard fantasy rescue-the-princess adventure with sci-fi trappings, nodding vaguely toward Hollow Earth tropes.
• Planet of Exile ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  A tighter story than Rocannon’s World, with better-drawn characters, and more ambitious in its worldbuilding and themes.
• Quantum Night ★★★★☆ Robert J. Sawyer
  Intriguing premise, well explored: Quantum entanglement, psychopaths, and mob behavior. Can we reboot humanity amid a rising tide of xenophobia?
• Ready Player One (Book) ★★★☆☆ Ernest Cline
  Back when I read it, the nostalgia and scavenger hunt were enough for me. Now, not so much.
• Ready Player One (Movie) ★★★★☆ Steven Spielberg
  Better than I expected, having soured on the book by the time it came out. Not a straight adaptation so much as a rewrite of the same premise that’s more character-driven and yes, more cinematic. With Spielberg.
• Rocannon’s World ★★★☆☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  A serviceable quest story that melds fantasy and sci-fi. Engaging enough, but I’d only recommend it to someone who’s read her later work.
• Semiosis ★★★★★ Sue Burke
  A fascinating take on space colonization, intelligence, and language, following multiple generations of humans on a world dominated by sapient plants.
• Short Circuit ★★★★☆ The comedy about a robot coming to life and the humans trying to catch him or help him escape holds up better than I expected.
• Solitude ★★★★★ Ursula K. Le Guin
  The people of Eleven-Soro live alone except for a bare minimum of human interaction. But what is that bare minimum, and what does it mean for people who avoid all other contact?
• Solo: A Star Wars Story ★★★☆☆ Solo isn’t high art, and it’s got some rough edges, but it’s a fun ride.
• Space Oddity ★★★★⯪ Catherynne Valente
  Not quite as fun as the first book, but it’s just as absurd and chaotic, and exactly what I needed in the weeks leading up to the 2024 election.
• Space Opera ★★★★★ Catherynne Valente
  Fun sci-fi social satire from Catherynne Valente. The world is a mess, but we can find the sublime in chaos.
• Stan Lee’s Starborn Stan Lee, Chris Roberson and Khary Randolph
  An unpublished writer discovers that the science fiction saga he’s been building since childhood is actually very, very real. And it wants him dead.
• Star Born ★★★★★ Andre Norton
  An adventure woven through the post-war struggles of an alien world, with humans caught on both sides, exploring identity, colonialism and prejudice. Definitely worth the read.
• Star Hunter ★★★☆☆ Andre Norton
  A standard survival adventure with mismatched partners and ruthless rivals, only with weird stuff going on and in space.
• Star Trek (2009 Movie) ★★★★☆
• Star Trek: Discovery - Season 1 ★★★★☆ Star Trek with the pace of Farscape, weaving through existing lore and focused on one crew member’s quest for redemption.
• Star Trek: Discovery - Season 2 ★★★☆☆ The stand-alone episodes are good, and the Burnham/Spock family dynamics, but the main arc gets really frustrating in the second half.
• Star Trek: Discovery - Season 3 ★★★★☆ I liked Season 3 a lot better than season 2. It finally got to be its own Trek. And they did some really interesting things with the future of the 'verse and how the Discovery crew adapted to it.
• Star Trek: Discovery - Season 4 ★★★★☆ Burnham comes into her own as captain, the Federation faces a large-scale scientific hazard, and people make disastrously bad choices, along with some cool xenoarchaeology and a fascinating first contact with aliens who are very much not human.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks ★★★★★ Hilarious self-parody of TNG-era Star Trek. Funny on its own, but even better if you know the shows it’s riffing on.
• Star Trek: Picard - Season 1 ★★★⯪☆ I have mixed feelings about the first season of Picard. But later seasons have given me a new appreciation for it.
• Star Trek: Picard - Season 2 ★★★☆☆ Hard to pin down, with a weird start, then a few good time travel episodes, before throwing in not just the kitchen sink but everything in the sink.
• Star Trek: Picard - Season 3 ★★☆☆☆ If season one was like The Last Jedi, this is The Rise of Skywalker, complete with gratuitously resurrected villains, young characters freaking out about their genetics, a family/found family theme that only sort of makes sense, and a galactic-level threat that can only be defeated by taking out that one resurrected villain.
• Star Trek: Section 31 ★★☆☆☆ As a Star Trek pilot it’s merely OK. As a stand-alone movie, it’s a mess. It could have been retooled as a good heist film, but wasn’t.
• Star Wars: Andor - Season One ★★★★☆ A more serious take on Star Wars, with a bit more personal scope showing how oppression grinds people down, and what sacrifices rebellion can require.
• Star Wars: Attack of the Clones ★★★☆☆ I think it’s the weakest of the prequels and of the six that George Lucas was actually involved in.
• Star Wars: Dark Forces (Remastered) - First Impressions ★★★★☆ The remastered Dark Forces is the game you remember playing back in the day, not the game you actually played.
• Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett ★★★☆☆ The flashbacks were great! But I couldn’t get into the present-day story.
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi ★★★★☆ The performances are way better than most of the prequel trilogy, and the story is the first theatrical Star Wars to break new ground in ages.
• Star Wars: The Phantom Menace ★★★★☆ Better than I remember. It’s well constructed, and there are incredible subtleties and thematic elements hidden among the flashy (and cheesy) A-plot.
• Stellaris - First Impressions ★★★★☆ An empire-building game, like Heroes of Might and Magic in Space, but more complicated, with diplomacy, espionage and alliances along with base building and battles.
• Subspace Rhapsody ★★★★⯪ The first time through my reaction was: OK, that was fun. The second time I really appreciated the way it was put together and immediately went looking for the soundtrack.
• Tales From The Bully Pulpit ★★★★★ Benito Cereno and Graeme MacDonald
  A sci-fi comedy graphic novel featuring a time-traveling Teddy Roosevelt and the ghost of Thomas Edison, battling a descendant of Adolf Hitler. On Mars. Wearing mecha armor.
• The Telling ★★★★★ Ursula K. Le Guin
  A thoughtful tale of discovery, as an observer from Earth struggles to find and understand fragments of the lost cultures hidden beneath a society that’s thrown away its past in favor of a single vision.
• The Three-Body Problem (Book) ★★★★☆ Liu Cixin, Ken Liu (Translator)
  Not a proper review of the book, but a collection of comments I made while reading it back in 2018.
• Time Breakers ★★★★☆ Rachel Pollack and Chris Weston
  This comic book from the 1990s flips the familiar time-cop trope on its head: Instead of protecting time from paradoxes, the protagonists are trying to create more paradoxes, convinced that the very existence of life depends on it.
• The Time Machine ★★★★☆ H.G. Wells
  A bit dry, but it draws you in, and if the plot is simple, it’s enough to wrap around some thought-provoking speculation about the future of humanity - and a critique of industrial society.
• The Time Ships ★★★⯪☆ Stephen Baxter
  A sequel to H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine that drastically expands the scope across multiple timelines, from the dawn of time to the far future seen in the original. Now with Dyson spheres, nanobots, and a seemingly endless war that can only be stopped in the past.
• The Time Traders ★★★★☆ Andre Norton
  A fun time-travel spy thriller through the bronze age that’s very rooted in the cold war.
• Tin Man ★★★☆☆ The Wizard of Oz meets The Dark Crystal by way of 1930s scifi was fascinating as a concept, but they managed to make it dull and tedious.
• Transformers (Movie) ★★★☆☆ Better constructed than I expected, with impressive effects, plausible story logic, but a lot of the humor is forced and it feels like they missed the big picture in trying to get the details right.
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ★☆☆☆☆ In some ways it wasn’t as awful as I’d heard, and in some ways it was worse. I’m glad I waited for the second-run showing and only spent $1.75.
• Triggers ★★★☆☆ Robert J. Sawyer
  It’s an interesting take on memory and identity, but not one of Sawyer’s best.
• Unofficial Trilogy of Cheese The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Van Helsing, and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow should make a trilogy of sorts.
• Usurpation ★★★★☆ Sue Burke
  A different sort of book than Semiosis and Interference, taking place entirely on Earth long after the second Pax expedition returns. Can the bamboo keep humans’ chaotic conflicts in check? Where do the robots fit in? With so many forms of intelligence, who counts as a person, anyway?
• Vaster Than Empires And More Slow ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  An intriguing story of a dysfunctional crew dealing with each other and a planet that, at first glance, appears to have no sentient life, only plants.
• When The Moon Hits Your Eye ★★★★☆ John Scalzi
  A fast, enjoyable read with a few gut punches hidden throughout. Not so much about the moon turning into cheese as how lots of different people react to the moon turning into cheese.
• The Wind’s Twelve Quarters ★★★★⯪ Ursula K. Le Guin
  A collection of short stories from early in Le Guin’s career, spanning her first sale through the time when she’d begun to be recognized as a major force in the genre.
• The Word for World is Forest ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  Infuriating to read…and that’s the point. A story of colonial exploitation, asymmetric warfare, dehumanization and environmental destruction.
• Worlds of Exile and Illusion ★★★★☆ Ursula K. Le Guin
  Interesting to see Le Guin as she’s developing her craft. Not the best place to start with her work, but absolutely worth reading.

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