A stronger-than-average episode features the truth about Winn’s connection to the Toyman, a decent villain performance by Henry Czerny, an expanded role for J’onn J’onzz, and a crucial discovery by Maxwell Lord.
J’onn points out that humans accept aliens when they look like blonde cheerleaders. The Other is okay, so long as it’s not, you know, too Other.
An amateur astronomer in Utah was the first person on Earth to realize that something unusual was happening. Moments earlier, he had noticed a blur flourishing in the vicinity of the Reiner Gamma formation, near the moon’s equator. He assumed it was a dust cloud thrown up by a meteor strike. He pulled out his phone and blogged the event, moving his stiff thumbs (for he was high on a mountain and the air was as cold as it was clear) as fast as he could to secure the claim to himself. Other astronomers would soon be pointing their telescopes at the same dust cloud—might be doing it already! But—supposing he could move his thumbs fast enough—he would be the first to point it out. The fame would be his; if the meteorite left behind a visible crater, perhaps it would even bear his name.
His name was forgotten. By the time he had gotten his phone out of his pocket, his crater no longer existed. Nor did the moon. (1)
It’s been a long time coming, but the most monumental SF novel of 2015 receives its review. Is Neal Stephenson’s apocalyptic epic worth negotiating its 800+ pages?
This week, The Expanse gives us uneasy alliances, top secrets, and torture.
Note: our next review of this series will be posted once the first season has ended.
The influential British musician and pop-icon fell to cancer. His music often contained SF themes and references, “Space Oddity” was performed by astronaut Chris Hadfield from the ISS, and Bowie himself played an alien in The Man Who Fell to Earth (and many times on stage, as Ziggy Stardust).
This experimental YA novel, published in October, gives us space opera, corporate wrongdoing, deranged AI, virus-afflicted psychokillers, teen love, and weird typographic effects. It has received substantial praise. Does it live up to expectations? Would an older reader enjoy it?
Terry Brooks’s Tolkienesque fantasy arrives on television, courtesy of MTV. The first episode, with its High Fantasy tropes, post-apocalyptic setting, and millennial hipster cast, proves a strange ménage indeed.
With “Back to the Butcher,” The Expanse reaches the halfway point of Season One. The episode will be highlighted, but the review considers the first five episodes.
Supergirl continues to encounter difficulty reconciling its stories and tones. The goofy, Cat-thinks-Kara-is-Supergirl plot underscores the ridiculousness of our hero’s double-identity and disguise.* It’s also hard to see how these events could be unfolding simultaneously with the more intense alien invasion / hostage storyline. What works in a Silver Age comic doesn’t always fly on contemporary television. In the end, it depends on what one wants out of the series…
Check below for some recent and past-year stories of interest to Bureau browsers:
The plot picks up in Episodes 3 and 4, with a riot, an attack, and the connections among the various strands becoming clear–