Gone With The Wind
Story: Scarlett O’Hara, southern belle and resident of Georgia, has her life turned upside-down by the Civil War. She meets and eventually marries Rhett Butler, a southern gentleman and war-time blockade runner, all the while pining away for her “true love,” Ashley Wilkes. An excellent historical fiction detailing the lives and morals of pre-Civil War southerners and how it all changed afterward. Made into what has been commonly accepted as the Greatest Film of All Time.
Review: I feel kind of silly reviewing one of the greatest works of American literature. After all, millions have gone before me. But I would like to put my mere two cents’ worth in, because it is an achievement worthy of praise. I am grateful that Ms. Mitchell was properly lauded for this novel before her untimely death. By the way, “GWTW” was her first published book.
Eaters Of The Dead
(reprinted under the title The Thirteenth Warrior)
Story: A fictionalized account taken from the manuscript of an Arabic ambassador to the court of the Caliph of Baghdad. Ahmad Ibn Fadlan was sent north as the ambassador to the King of the Bulgars but was diverted along the way. His account of his exploits with the Norsemen he encountered was published, lost, and then found again centuries later. Crichton’s retelling was eventually made into the film The Thirteenth Warrior.
Review: Crichton begins by explaining in excruciating detail about how and where he found this story, as well as his reasoning behind retelling it. He seems to have put a great deal of effort into researching the book, which always wins an author extra points with me. I enjoyed the film version, especially Antonio Banderas’ portrayal of Ibn Fadlan, but as usual the book is better.
Carter Beats The Devil
Story: Carter the Great is showcasing his latest and greatest illusions, including the most complex of the show, “Carter Beats the Devil”. President Warren G. Harding is on a tour of America and attends Carter’s show – but is dead the next morning. Is Carter responsible for his death? And just who is Charles Carter anyway?
Review: This book is a complex mix of history and fiction, mostly fiction. Charles Carter really did exist, plying his trade from the vaudeville stage to the Orpheum shows to grand exhibitions of magic, rivaling magicians as famous as Harry Houdini. Glen David Gold takes historical fact and seamlessly blends it with fictional fancy that results in an excellent read.
Cabal
Story: Boone believes he is responsible for several horrific deaths; at least, that’s what his psychiatrist says. But after he’s killed at a small Canadian cemetery in a confrontation with the police, he learns much more about his own nature and that of the Nightbreed of Midian.
Review: I was lucky enough to find the hardcover version of this book in some discount bin somewhere, and smart enough to purchase it. Barker made a film from this novella called Nightbreed. The film version was quite graphic, but the impact wasn’t nearly as strong as the book’s. Barker can flesh out characters like no other horror author, except perhaps Stephen King. It’s no wonder Steve professes to enjoy Clive Barker’s books over any other horror author’s. I found myself rooting for Boone even though I thought he was a mass murderer, and especially during his encounter with the nightbreed. The woman he loves, Lori, acts somewhat like the reader – always confused by Boone’s activities but sticking with him until the story comes to its amazing conclusion. When the story moves into the supernatural, one finds oneself drawn into a world fully imagined and matured by an author with a truly macabre point of view.
Babylon 5: The Scripts of J. Michael Straczynski – Season One (Vol. 1 & 2)
Story: Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski republishes the scripts from the episodes he wrote; in addition to the shooting scripts, Straczynski provides a brand new introduction discussing each episode and the series in general. Photos and memos are also included to provide a look at the show’s development.
Review: These two books are part of a planned 14-book series of script collections that Straczynski and his partners are publishing through CafePress. They include only the scripts that Straczynski himself wrote, which he has the rights to republish due to Writers Guild rules. It’s a pretty simple presentation, right down to the bare-bones cover, but the books hold together well, the typesetting’s legible, and the copy-editing is better than on some of the academic books I’ve read recently, so I have nothing against the do-it-yourself approach. The scripts themselves are the heart of the books, and if you don’t already know if you like the episodes in question, this book is not for you. (I did, so I guess it is.)
Boarding The Enterprise
Story: A lively mixture of SF writers (many of them with connections to the original Star Trek) and other essayists look back to the dawn of Star Trek, dissecting the original show to ponder its meaning, and stepping back to analyze the meaning that the Trek phenomenon has taken on over time. Contributors include David Gerrold (who also co-edited), D.C. Fontana, Norman Spinrad, Howard Weinstein, Eric Greene, Michael Burstein, Robert Metzger, and several others.
Review: I’ve been an admirer of BenBella’s Smart Pop books for some time now, enjoying the variety of ways of looking at their subjects that the standard-issue scattershot of writers brought to the table for each book. Sure, there are the occasional bone-dry essays, and there have been a few occasions in the past where attempts at humorous essays flatlined like badly-written internet humor. Generally, though, I look forward to the more-or-less factual essays, examining their subjects from an angle that I might not have previously considered. And if there’s an occasional essay from someone who’s worked on the show, that’s icing on the cake that elevates it slightly above the other “Unauthorized! And Uncensored!” books about various pop culture phenomena that are already on the market. When you look at the short list of honest-to-God Star Trek luminaries lining this book’s table of contents and credits, it’s clear that “Boarding The Enterprise” has hit something of a home run.
Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom
Story: It’s the future, and the human race has given up the habit of dying, or, for that matter, the habit of killing over resources. Everything is plentiful because much of the human experience has shifted into the virtual realm; after death, people can be restored from their most recent backup brain-dump, their copied consciousness injected into a rapidly grown clone body. Money is a historical curiosity, replaced by “Whuffie,” a constantly-updated “feedback rating” given by others to reflect on one’s deeds and words. Julius, a resident of Disney’s Magic Kingdom (whose rides and attractions have each been taken up by “ad hoc” organizations who live or die by the popularity and collective Whuffie of their attraction), works on the Haunted Mansion and Hall of Presidents displays with his girlfriend Lil, who carries some weight in the “ad-hocracy.” When Julius’ old friend, an unconventional, somewhat rebellious sort named Dan, turns up with no Whuffie and talking about suicide – an unheard-of act in a world where people routinely “deadhead” until events are interesting enough for them to come out of cryogenic sleep – he insists than Dan move in with he and Lil and take a job at the Magic Kingdom to build up his Whuffie again. When Julius is murdered, however – also a very rare event – he is rebooted into a new clone body from his most recent backup, and his life and relationships begin to unravel as he obsesses over who killed him.
Review: Quite the heady futurist trip, “Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom” is very much a story of the Now. With Whuffie serving as a kind of eBay feedback rating of the soul, and a so-called meritocracy still boiling down to little more than a popularity contest, “Down And Out” takes plenty of “social networking” internet concepts and applies them to the bigger picture to show how these things might work – or might not. At times, it all almost feels like life-by-way-of-an-internet-message-board, with all of the attendant petty disagreements, blatant dramatic cries for attention or pity, back-biting and bitchiness.
Empire
Story: What happens when a would-be world conqueror actually succeeds? An armored military genius named Golgoth is about to find out, as only a small corner of the globe sits outside of his empire. That empire is far from peaceful; not only is a rebellion brewing, but Golgoth’s own inner circle is far from trustworthy. Golgoth keeps their ambitions in check through his control of Eucharist, a highly addictive drug. The source of Eucharist is a closely guarded secret, but Golgoth has surrounded himself with men and women who will go to any length to achieve their ends . . . how long can the secrets last?
Review: “Empire” was originally meant to be an ongoing series from the late and lamented Gorilla Comics imprint. Gorilla shut down after only two issues were printed – and if you can ever get Mark Waid to tell you that story at a convention, go for it – but DC stepped in to finish off the first arc as a miniseries. This book definitely concludes with the feeling that there is more to the story, and sadly Waid and Kitson have not gotten around to telling it yet.
Star Trek: Mission To Horatius
Story: The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise is growing restless after months without shore leave. Unfortunately, a distress signal has been sent to Star Fleet from the Horatius system and Captain James T. Kirk and the Enterprise are given the mission to find out which of the distant planets of the system has sent the message and help if they can. When they arrive at the system in question they find three planets colonized by humans, all in various stages of stunted development. Travelling to each one by one, the crew of the Enterprise try to determine who is the victim and who is the aggressor.
Review: “Mission To Horatius” has the distinction of being the first original Star Trek novel, published two years before James Blish’s “Spock Must Die”. It is also the only one published during the show’s original run. Reflecting the view of the day that Science Fiction was meant for children, “Mission To Horatius” was printed in a hardcover format similar to the “Hardy Boys†and “Nancy Drew†novels (and proudly boasts of being an “Authorized TV Adventure†on the spine).
Superman Archives – Volume 1
Story: Rocketed from a doomed planet as a child, Clark Kent grows up to find that he is endowed with super-human abilities. He takes a job as a reporter at a great metropolitan newspaper and fights for the good of all under the name of…Superman!
Review: When DC Comics decided to start producing a series of high-quality, hardcover reprints of their classic comics, they naturally began with Superman. But instead of beginning with Action Comics #1, they began, instead, with the first four issues of Superman’s eponymous title. This was natural enough, as Superman shared Action with several other series, while Superman was for the Man of Steel alone. Since the early issues of Superman mainly reprinted (and sometimes expanded) the stories from Action anyway, the decision makes even more sense.
The Forgotten Network
Story: How does a television network die? These days it might just be a lack of sustainable advertising revenue, or a merger with a competitor, but then, there are so many networks on the air today on satellite and cable. But before those two means of delivering a signal were widespread, television pioneer Allan Du Mont tried to put into practice his dream of creating a new television network, and completely rewrote the rules of the nascent broadcasting networks. Within a decade, however, the DuMont Television Network was already no more – even though the other networks were now playing by DuMont’s rules. The author makes, and convincingly backs up, a case that DuMont signed off the air because the Federal Communications Commission, at the behest of its lobbyists within the “Big Three” networks, sabotaged the new network at every step.
Review: You know, there’s an epic movie somewhere just waiting to be made out of this story. It could be a dry pile of politics and technical jargon, but the author does a great job of putting the understanding of those two elements within grasp, and then spends even more time on the true soul of the story – Allan Du Mont’s almost cheerfully Ed-Woodian, “carry on regardless” spirit that infuses the story of his short-lived network from its beginning to its near-tragic end. I say tragic loosely, because it’s the death of a dream and an ideal rather than the death of a person, and yet by the end of the story my heart ached for the dream and the people who dared to dream it.
Star Trek: Voyager – A Vision Of The Future
Story: A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the first two seasons of Voyager, including the torturous pre-production process of developing the show’s premise.
Review: This book received much pre-release hype as being a product of the same author who penned the justly acclaimed 1968 behind-the-scenes story of “The Making of Star Trek”, though this time writing under his own name instead of the pseudonym of “Stephen E. Whitfield.” Since Poe’s definitive tome inspired many later works, including the excellent books by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, it stands to reason that surely he can exceed his own previous work and give us a Star Trek behind-the-scenes book like no one else can.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual
Story: Covering not just the DS9 space station, the Technical Manual also spreads out to delve into the Defiant, runabouts, phasers and tricorders, Cardassian and other alien ships, and more. The text is written from the Starfleet perspective as of DS9’s seventh season, locked into a bloody war with the Dominion, making it an interesting departure from the cheery “enjoy all the great features of your new Oldsmobile” owner’s manual approach of the TNG Technical Manual.
Review: This book is long overdue; even the introduction by producer Ira Steven Behr asks the question “Why the hell did this take six years?” of the book’s own publishers, and even notes that the long-promised “Deep Space Nine Companion” (which, at the time, had been a tentative ghost on the Pocket Books schedule since 1995 or so) is even more overdue. (With respect to Mr. Behr, considering DS9’s probable lack of a big-screen future, it made a bit of sense to wait for the end of the series to come, since it would be silly to publish a DS9 companion volume in 1998 and then wait a couple of years to release an updated version with only one additional season’s worth of information.)
The Making Of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Story: The authors go behind the scenes of the first two seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, talking extensively with producers, writers, designers, make-up artists, special effects technicians, oh, and actors too – from the original premise and character lineup to the changes that were made and why they were made, touching on every step of the production process along the way.
Review: It’s rather ironic that the most poorly-marketed Star Trek spinoff (with the possible exception of Enterprise) has turned out to be the best documented one. Paramount initially threw tons of money at the launch of Deep Space Nine, and then backed off – there was a new Trek movie to promote, as well as yet another spinoff series upon which an entire network, and not just syndicated advertising profits, would be riding. From about the middle of year 2 onward, DS9 got the short end of the Star Trek stick.
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion
Story: A season-by-season guide to the television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Includes season overviews, episode summaries, behind-the-scenes info and insights, photos, production drawings, and anecdotes.
Review: As a huge fan of Deep Space Nine, I had patiently waited for a definitive episode guide to my favorite Trek incarnation. Fortunately for all of us with limited budgets, Pocket Books refrained from releasing a guide until the series had run its course, instead of releasing three or so versions with a little added each time.
So it was with great glee I ripped open that box from Amazon.com and grasped the official episode guide to DS9. The first thing that struck me was that it’s friggin’ huge. Weighing in at over 720 pages, the thing nearly has its own weather! The cover is also very nice, with a nice collage of the station, wormhole, and Sisko. And as much as I like the U.S.S. Defiant, I was pleased to see it absent from the cover. After all, the show was really about the three entities thusly displayed.
Field Of Dishonor
Story: Honor Harrington has known fellow starship captain Pavel Young for her entire career – going back to their academy days, where he used his family’s privelege to get out from under charges that he tried to rape her, and back to Basilisk Station, where he tried to hang her out to dry…and back to the battle for Hancock Station, where Young ordered his ship to flee formation during a critical moment, causing the loss of thousands of Manticoran lives. But just as Young has made a career of slipping through the fingers of justice, Honor has made a career of surviving, and when Young is court-martialed for fleeing, he tries to even the score one last time by hiring an assassin to force a duel with Honor’s lover, Captain Paul Tankersley – a duel Paul doesn’t stand a chance of winning. Already laying low to avoid the press during a political firestorm, Honor sets out for vengeance, even if it means destroying her career in the process.
Review: I didn’t really set out to review two consecutive Honor Harrington books, but “Field Of Dishonor” reads at a white heat and it’s hard to put down. With its own inevitable rhythm of a march into battle, “Field” takes on the issue of letting politics dictate military policy (and leaves no doubt that author David Weber thinks it’s a bad idea).
Midnight Nation
Story: Los Angeles Police Lieutenant David Grey tries to arrest a suspect in a pair of drug-related murders, but instead finds himself at the wrong end of a beating by otherworldly creatures called Walkers. Rather than kill him, the Walkers’ leader takes David’s soul and sends him to The Place In-Between – the world of the homeless, the out-of-work, the out-of-date, and the out-of-luck, where people and things fade to after they are forgotten or abandoned. David soon meets Laurel, an emissary from the Walkers’ opponent in an ongoing metaphysical conflict, and the two set off on a cross-country walk to New York to confront the Walkers’ leader and reclaim David’s soul before he becomes trapped In-Between forever.
Review: In some ways, I consider “Midnight Nation” to be Straczynski’s most successful work. Babylon 5 was certainly a more ambitious and more admirable undertaking, and probably his greatest accomplishment, but the realities of TV meant that sometimes things didn’t quite click right. With Midnight Nation, Straczynski revisits many of B5’s themes, but in a more personal story that is still cosmic in scope and works tremendously well in this collected format.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Story: Harry Potter, who is just about to celebrate his 11th birthday, lives a sad life with his nasty aunt, belligerent uncle and fat cousin on Privet Drive. But on that very fateful birthday, Harry learns that he’s a wizard and that he is now old enough to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry has no clue about what this means to his life, or how much it will change!
Review: There has been so much hype surrounding this book and the ones that have followed that there could be something lost in the mix. That something would be the fact that the Harry Potter series is some of the best children’s reading ever to see publication. Even though it is geared toward kids from about age 8 up, it is thoroughly entertaining reading for people of all ages.
Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
Story: Freewheeling Dave Lister has ignored a great deal of advice in his time, but he may yet live to regret not following the advice of whoever told him never to go into space. After a few benders and a few misadventures, Lister winds up signing on to the mining ship Red Dwarf, where he lands a low-ranking technician job and bunks with an undeservedly snobby fellow technician named Rimmer. But then Lister gets busted for bringing an unquarantined animal aboard, is sentenced to stasis, and – in suspended animation – rides out a catastrophe that kills everyone else on Red Dwarf. The ship’s increasingly senile central computer, Holly, doesn’t awaken Lister until the radiation drops to a safe level – three million years or so, give or take a century – and that’s when things get really interesting.
Review: Obviously, the first Red Dwarf novel has to duplicate a lot of the TV series’ legwork in setting up the characters, though the book offers quite a treat to anyone who’s already seen the series by tracking events a lot further back than the pilot episode, following Lister’s slow descent into the shoes of a third-class technician aboard Red Dwarf. Rob Grant and Doug Naylor created the show and the characters, so they’ve got the voices of the characters down to perfection.
Tales From The New Twilight Zone
Story: J. Michael Straczynski, head writer on the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone, transforms several of his best-known scripts from that show’s brief run into prose.
Review: The late-80’s revival of The Twilight Zone, in all honestly, went completely unnoticed by yours truly. In fact, I’d completely forgotten about it until it was mentioned often in connection with Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski’s past television works. Lo and behold (not necessarily in that order, mind you), I stumbled across a copy of Straczynski’s short-form novelizations of several of the New Twilight Zone episodes. I figured it would be interesting to see his writing style in a new venue – not Babylon 5, and not his excellent guide to scriptwriting. Wow, was I ever in for a surprise.
Demon Night
Story: 1963: eight year old Eric Langren is the only survivor of a single-car accident that kills both of his parents; his father lives just long enough to whisper a cryptic warning to Eric. Over 20 years later, Eric returns to his hometown in Maine for the first time, under the assumed name of Eric Matthews. After several recent inexplicable events, each followed by a voice urging Eric to come home, he’s seeking the truth of what happened – only to find out that something else is happening there, something dark and disturbing, a series of horrific events to which Eric may be more intimately tied than he can imagine.
Review: I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t go reading a whole lot of fiction, particularly not horror – just not my thing, really (working day-to-day in TV news, I suppose one gets one’s fill of inexplicable horrors). I was intrigued to see the re-release of J. Michael Straczynski’s much-sought-after debut novel “Demon Night”, however. Originally published in 1988, “Demon Night” won its share of acclaim at the time, and the finite number of used copies have become collectors’ items in light of Straczynski’s popular SF creations since then.
G-Force: Animated
Story: The authors chronicle the origins and history of, and public reaction to, both the Japanese animè series Kagakaninjatai Gatchaman (Science Ninja Team Gatchaman) and its heavily re-edited American counterpart, Battle Of The Planets, imported by U.S. syndication pioneer Sandy Frank. Cast members and the makers of the shows are interviewed extensively, and the recent revival of interest in the shows are covered in terms of merchandise and an extensive interview with Alex Ross, artistic director of a new latter-day Battle Of The Planets comic. (Ross also contributes the cover artwork.)
Review: A fascinating, one-of-a-kind guide to a classic animè series and its distinctly different but joined-at-the-hip Americanization, “G-Force: Animated” contains a wealth of information I’d never seen or heard elsewhere. It seems like a fairly thin book for the price, but for one thing, it’s an oversized trade paperback, and for another, I imagine a great deal of the price is tied into the licensing from both Tatsunoko Productions and Sandy Frank. It’s also full color throughout (with a great many rare merchandise photos, initial character design sketches, animation cels, and so on). It may not be cheap, but if you’re a fan of either or both of these shows, this is the only game in town.
Battlestar Galactica: The Official Companion
Story: With complete access to the cast and behind-the-scenes crew of Sci-Fi Channel’s new version of Battlestar Galactica, author David Bassom traces the story of the making of the series, from the first murmurs of a revival series under the auspices of Bryan Singer (ultimately abandoned) through the fan reaction to the first season.
Review: It’s hammered home numerous times that Ronald D. Moore wanted nothing less than to reinvent the science fiction genre on TV with this show, and while it can be argued rather easily that he has succeeded in doing just that, “Battlestar Galactica: The Official Companion” spells out his plans for doing so and how he put hose plans into action with this show. From the pitch to sell the re-imagined show through the series bible through material distributed to the cast, a Moore-written document about a less stylized, more naturalistic approach to SF is mentioned. If anything, it’s actually one of this book’s biggest omissions that, as many times as that document is mentioned, it isn’t reprinted anywhere. That aside, it’s at the heart of Galactica’s reinvention.
Stepping Through The Stargate
Story: Authors and experts in several fields – ranging from experimental physics to parasite pathology to archaeology – chip in to offer their insights on what could make the universe of the TV series Stargate SG-1 work (or, in some cases, which parts of the fiction decidedly don’t work).
Review: Once upon a time, I wasn’t that crazy about books that bore the word “Unauthorized!” on the cover like a badge of unlicensed honor – chalk it up to a not-so-great experience (as a contributing writer) with the author and publisher of such a books several years ago. To me, this basically translated to “we’re tap dancing around the outskirts of legal action as fast as we can without blowing our chance at geting to the bank in time to cash the check.” But I’ve recently become a fan of BenBella Books’ series of pop culture anthologies – sure, they too are “Unauthorized!”, but they at least have some meat between the pages. In “Stepping Through The Stargate”, we learn why the Tok’ra are marginally more plausible than the Goa’uld from a parasitic biological standpoint, some possible explanations as to why the stargate makes such a big “splash” when it opens, whether or not Samantha Carter’s career trajectory in the U.S. Air Force is a realistic one, and even hear from the show’s special effects supervisor and one of its recurring guest stars. Not too shabby.
Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery In Physics
Story: Begin physics lesson: Entanglement is the property of quantum physics which allows for instantaneous movement – regardless of the speed of light. In short, two particles can be generated by a common process (like a photon hitting an excited atom). The properties of these two particles are tied together. When generated, they fly off in opposite directions. If we capture one of the particles and measure its properties, we can say with absolute certainty what the properties of the other particle are. We never have to touch it or see it. What’s better, if we change some property of our particle, we change those properties on the other particle instantly. We can, in theory, change a particle in the Gamma quadrant by tweaking its entangled partner as it passes Earth. End of physics lesson.
Review: In the world of “accessible” science books there are authors and there are Authors. Aczel definitely falls into the latter category. His style shines with the passion he feels for his subjects. When his subject is the precursor to real teleportation, the result is a great read.
Aczel knows how confusing this all is for physicists, so he makes every allowance for us mere mortals. He takes a chronological approach to the story of entanglement, and repeats concepts, definitions, and principles when possible to help the reader grasp the story. And this is a story. Beginning with Thomas Young’s proof that light is a wave in the early 1800s, Aczel takes entanglement from a glint in the eye of a young physicist, through decades of research, to experiments which actually manipulate matter instantly across miles.
Beyond Evolution
Story: Dr. Fox sounds the alarm bell for the proliferation of genetically engineered plants, animals and foods, warning that these man-made creations are bypassing normal channels of FDA approval and are being unleashed into the ecosystem – and our own bodies.
Review: Talk about a book inspiring some mixed emotions. It’s very interesting, though out of necessity it spends a lot of time educating readers in the scientific lingo, as well as the abbreviations and acronyms thereof. But the book boils down to this: a powerful assembly of giant food processing, pharmaceutical and genetic engineering corporations, wielding massive influence with lawmakers and federal agencies, have already placed consumers, small farmers and numerous indigenous cultures in a stranglehold. What’s at stake? Unforseen long-term consequences – diseases, ecological contamination, and the destruction of ecologically necessary regions to make way for industrializd farming. Fox also raises a very real question involving the suffering animals engineered to grow grotesquely overmuscled to produce more meat. This is an interesting aspect of the debate, because on the one hand, the animals are going to be slaughtered and eaten anyway – but should steps be taken to minimize their suffering until that time?
Crowded House: Something So Strong
Story: One of the biggest – and yet most low-key – rock music success stories to emerge from the south Pacific, Crowded House formed from the ashes of New Zealand mondo bizarro supergroup Split Enz, reflecting songwriter Neil Finn’s desire to explore song arrangements more easily duplicated on stage. By the luck of the draw, Crowded House’s first album was boosted by “Don’t Dream It’s Over”, a single which climbed to #2 on the U.S. Billboard charts. But that immense success proved nearly impossible to duplicate later, with no further hits in America and a widespread cult following overseas. The book ends with the last known whereabouts of the musicians, managers, record company execs, friends and family members following the group’s 1996 farewell concert in Sydney, which went down in the history books as the biggest concert audience anywhere in the world that year. Not bad for a group that nobody recognizes by name anymore…
Review: I’ve always been fascinated by both Crowded House and Split Enz, so this book was a godsend for me, finally revealing something about the members of the group and the army of supporters and friends who helped them almost reach the top of the charts (however briefly). All of the group’s members are interviewed, as are all of the key players except for Craig Hooper (a “fifth Beatle” type who was ejected from the band just before their successful first album) and the enigmatic Youth (who produced the fourth and final non-compilation Crowded House album). Considering how many people play a part in generating this kind of success story, that’s not a bad bit of journalism.
Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice – The Death of Hope
Story: On the trail of the captured Jedi Knight named Tahl, Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi finds himself losing confidence in his master, Qui-Gon Jinn, as Qui-Gon allows his personal feelings for Tahl to obscure his loyalties. At the same time, Obi-Wan and his master must try to resolve a conflict between social classes that is tearing the planet of New Apsolon apart.
Review: Boy, I hate the Star Wars Expanded Universe. I have read many Star Wars novels and with the exception of “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye” and the Brian Daley Han Solo books, I have found them almost universally dreadful. (The early Lando books weren’t too bad, either.) Seldom do the authors seem to grasp the storytelling forms used in the films. They seem to have set up their own little view of the Star Wars Universe and are more interested in adhering to that than to the work of George Lucas. (Case in point: you can make an argument for an anti-alien bias in the Empire based on what’s in the films, but the EU makes it an all-encompassing passion of the Emperor far beyond anything that Lucas even suggests.) The one area where I have ocassionally found a more accurate representation of the Star Wars universe is in books written for a younger audience. (They don’t want to mess around too much for the sake of the kids.)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Avatar: Book One
Story: Only a few months after the end of the Dominion War and the disappearance of Captain Sisko in the Fire Caves of Bajor, things still haven’t quite returned to normal aboard space station Deep Space 9. Colonel Kira Nerys has become the station’s commander, though she is shaken when a friend of hers, a Bajoran Vedek, is brutally murdered on the station. Even worse, a surprise attack by Jem’Hadar comes at the worst time, with both the station and the U.S.S. Defiant undergoing much-needed refits. The damage is severe, and Dr. Bashir can’t save everyone. The station’s new security chief, former Starfleet officer Ro Laren (now in Bajoran uniform following the dissolution of the Maquis), seems to be achieving nothing but getting on Kira’s bad side. As Kasidy Yates-Sisko prepares to leave the station and settle in the house that her missing husband built on Bajor, Jake Sisko returns from Bajor with a new mission: a Bajoran Vedek slipped him a few pages of an ancient prophecy that seems to foretell the son of the Emissary retrieving his lost father from the Temple of the Prophets. Jake secretly prepares to undertake this mission, even going so far as to buy his own shuttle from Quark, but what he doesn’t know is that this same Vedek was Kira’s murdered friend – and that the rest of the prophecy, which Ro finds in a book that was in the Vedek’s possession at the time of her death, foretells something else: death on a massive scale on Bajor, something which apparently must happen before Sisko’s second child can be born.
Review: When Pocket Books relaunched its Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel series in the wake of the TV show’s demise, the possibilities seemed endless. Ever the bastard stepchild of the Star Trek franchise, DS9 was effectively being handed over to the authors and editors, who had carte blanche to advance the storyline without having to bring things around to the status quo so the book wouldn’t interfere with future filmed adventures (a requirement that had chased me away from any Trek novels years ago). This almost sounded too good to be true.
Star Wars – The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime
Story: The plotline of “Vector Prime” is very standard sci-fi fodder, not even remotely original. Retreading the plots of such venerable SF franchises as Star Trek: The Next Generation (Conspiracy) and Blake’s 7 (Star One), the book involves an invasion of the galaxy by hostile aliens from the nearest neighboring galaxy. They’ve already slipped a few agents into our heroes’ galaxy to make sure the alarm doesn’t go up, and by the time Luke, Han, Leia and the others find out about the invasion, it’s almost too late.
Review: Sound familiar? It should. Virtually the only difference between this story and the above examples – among dozens of others – is that the aliens are invading the galaxy of Tattooine, Endor, Hoth, etc., rather than invading Earth for once. Speaking as a citizen of the planet Earth, I’m relieved about this development, but as a reader, I found the plot hackneyed and all too predictable.