trobadora: (Default)
[personal profile] trobadora
Title: Farshalah'kiah for the Modern Orion Woman
Fandom: Starfire series - Weber, White et al.
Characters: Uaaria'salath-ahn, Zhaarnak'diaano (briefly)
Rating: PG
Content tags: Orion Feminism, Women in the Military
Summary: Uaaria and her relationship with Orion concepts of honor.
A/N: For [profile] maat_seshat, who asked: What does it mean to Uaaria to be a maverick among the Zheeerlikou'valkhannaieee? To be a woman?

AO3 | LJ
ed_rex: (ace)
[personal profile] ed_rex

'Steaming like raw meat dropped onto a hot stove'

Image: Cover of The Departure, by Neal Asher

It's not news that one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but I have a soft spot for space opera; I confess, the big space base (which I initially mistook for a starship of some sort) adorning the cover of Neal Asher's novel, The Departure, helped sell me on it.

As it turned out though, The Departure hardly qualifies as space-opera and only squeaks by as science fiction pretty much the way Superman does: on technicalities only.

Though it's set in the future and some of the action takes place in orbit and on Mars, the book is really just a narrated first-person shooter dressed up in some SF tropes — a corrupt and incompetent world government, artificial intelligence, robotic weapons and a transhuman genesis.

But all that is only window-dressing. That spectacular cover is a gateway to lugubrious dialogue, sophomoric libertarian philosophy, hackneyed world-building and, especially, to one pornographic blood-bath after another.

The Departure is one of the worst books I have read in a very long time. More boring than Atlas Shrugged (which I reviewed a while back), it drips with just as much contempt for ordinary human beings. Unlike Rand's John Galt though, Asher's superman does much of his killing at first-hand.

Does this novel have any redeeming qualities? The short answer is "no". The long answer lives behind this link.

wisesong: (Default)
[personal profile] wisesong



WELCOME:

The USS Daedalus is a Rhode Island class vessel serving Bravo Fleet's Task Force 38. She is currently en route to the Raeyan Sector under her captain, Commander Maenad Panne. This is an all original character cast crewing the Rhode Island class science vessel Daedalus, on her mission to explore the Delta Quadrant. We are looking for good, enthusiastic writers to help take up the mantle at any one of our open spots. We have dozens of open positions available for the picking. We invite anyone with an enthusiasm for writing, roleplaying and Star Trek to join us.

OPEN POSITIONS: Chief of the Boat, Assistant Chief Medical Officer, Assistant Chief Science Officer. A number of specialist positions are available in the science and medical departments, please send us an email if you'd like us to create a custom position that isn't currently on our manifest.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Please check out our rules, and our NOVA guide. P.S If you do make up an alien species, you can write up a detailed medical/cultural blurb on them and we will add it to our Wiki. We don't prefer made-up species unless they're well detailed, so please keep that in mind!

That's that! If you have any questions, concerns or ideas for your character that might not be represented well on the manifest, feel free to contact us. Please take a look at our sim wiki for information all about different Star Trek species, languages, items and uniforms, Alpha and Delta Quadrant maps, and more.

CURRENT MISSION: The Way of the Light (2)
UPCOMING MISSION: N/A
POSTS: Read our posts
RULES: We're really not that bad, promise!
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ENLIST TODAY: Join

CHECK OUT OUR NEW PLOT TRACKER FOR EASY CATCH-UP!
trobadora: (Default)
[personal profile] trobadora
Title: Seeing Ghosts
Fandom: Starfire series - Various Authors
Characters: Raymond Prescott, Zhaarnak'telmasa
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Guarding your brother's back involves more than just battle.
A/N: Set just prior to Chapter 25 of The Shiva Option: Prescott and Zhaarnak are on their way to meet Koraaza (and Third Fleet) at Kliean.

( Seeing Ghosts )
ed_rex: (Default)
[personal profile] ed_rex

The Rings of Akhaten" is solid Doctor Who

Decent space opera fun is welcome tonic in a dismal era

The Rings of Akhaten, screenshot detail.

I really enjoyed this episode on my first viewing and, despite hearing from some quarters that it was awful — worse even than "The Bells of Saint John" — I liked it well enough the second time 'round, too. But then I've always had a preference for off-Earth adventures and have a fondness for space stations, so possibly I cut it more slack than I otherwise might.

In any case, "The Rings of Akhaten" suffers from special effects more ambitious than successful and, maybe, from a script that was cut down hard to make a two-part story into a single episode, but still managed some decent space opera fun, a welcome dollop of secular-humanist scepticism courtesy of the Doctor and our first chance to get to know Clara Oswald as more than just a mystery with a fetching smile, but as a genuine character.

For my full review, visit "Good news from the Rings, someplace (almost) awesome". Spoilers as per usual.

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[personal profile] wisesong
The GALILEO needs you!




Welcome to the USS Galileo, a Star Trek roleplay set in the year 2389. This is an all original character cast crewing the Nova-class science vessel Galileo, on her missions throughout the galax. We are looking for writers to help take up the mantle at any one of our open posts. We have dozens of open positions available for the picking, so make sure to check us out! This roleplay is for anyone who is interested in the Trek continuity, who enjoys writing and active participation in a roleplay. This roleplay uses the very intuitive Nova software to make writing between multiple people simple and fun. If you love Star Trek, roleplaying and writing, the Galileo is for you.

These are the voyages of the starship Galileo. Her mission, to explore strange, new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations.
To study spacial rifts, wormholes, and time fluxes. To develop and test the latest cutting-edge technologies.
To observe and catalog new life forms...even though they might be slimy and look kind of disgusting....
To boldly go where no research vessel has gone before!


Current mission! » Rules! » Personnel (Writers)! » Roleplay information! » Enlist today!


"Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so."
~ Galileo Galilei
ed_rex: (ace)
[personal profile] ed_rex

 

Awards among the shallows:

Hugos considered as dyptich of semi-precious novels

Vernor Vinge and why the golden age of science fiction is still twelve

 

 

I really ought to know better by now. It doesn't matter whether an award is given out by fans or by peers, critics or the general public, whether the criteria is ostensibly "best" this or "favourite" that.

Awards are a crap shoot, influenced by fashions, by lobbying and by plain old bad taste.

That's right, I said it. Sometimes an award is given out to a book (or a movie, or a play, or a poem — the list is as endless as variations in the arts) that simply doesn't deserve it. That doesn't even merit being on the short-list in the first place.

Let me tell you about Vernor Vinge and why the golden age of science fiction is still 12. My full review lives at Edifice Rex Online. Yell at me here, or there.

ed_rex: (Default)
[personal profile] ed_rex

 

As you might know, I've been serially reviewing the latest Torchwood series, a work that (I presume) is as much the product of Russell T Davies' personal vision as is possible in an inherently collaborative medium.

So it is rather difficult to ignore the irony, that there is more credible social commentary, more humour and more excitement in Peter Watts' 300 page adaptation of a first-person-shooter video game, which (again, I presume) was written strictly for the money, than there has been in the first five hours of Davies' brain-child.

Watts' story, about a an accidental cybernetic soldier's brief campaign on a ruined island of Manhattan a scant 12 years in our future is also fairly rigorous science fiction, as one might expect from the "reformed marine biologist", but probably not from a novel about a super-soldier and his mysterious battle-armour.

If Crysis: Legion is not quite the follow-up to his 2006 hard-SF masterpiece, Blindsight one might have wished for, it's a better book than one has any reason to expect of a media tie-in.

Click here for "Strange bed-fellows". Some spoilers may occur.

seekingferret: Two warning signs one above the other. 1) Falling Rocks. 2) Falling Rocs. (Default)
[personal profile] seekingferret
Anybody know of any space opera operas? I know there are a few science fiction operas (Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffman", Janacek's "Vec Makropulos", Machover's "VALIS"), but I don't know of any that could be called space opera.

I know it's a silly question. But I've learned that our world is so crazy that sometimes all you need to do is dream of something awesome and you'll find out it already exists. And I like opera and I like space opera, so... it seems a natural combination.
holyschist: Image of a medieval crocodile from Herodotus, eating a person, with the caption "om nom nom" (Default)
[personal profile] holyschist
So, approximately 8 years after they were recommended to me, I'm finally reading Lois McMaster Bujold (because I reread all of Elizabeth Moon twice in the last year). Granted, I like space opera a lot more now than I did then.

So I'm starting with the Cordelia's Honor omnibus, and so far I like it quite a lot, although I don't really agree with Bujold that a baby is the natural end to any non-truncated romance.

I see there are a lot more books, and most of them focus on Cordelia's son. How much of a role does she play in them? Are there other interesting female characters? What are your favorite books in the series?
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