This story is hard to describe. It’s an alternate history story, but it’s set in modern day Seattle. It’s a modern crime investigation, but the deaths are being discovered in the 1800s. It’s science fiction, but it’s also a murder mystery.

I started reading this book and immediately got hooked. The main character, Gina Stone, is engaging and interesting. She presents a believable portrait of a beleaguered police officer who has decided to take a less stressful job in a small town. It’s just that her small town is New Essex and it’s across a portal in a world where the American revolution never happened.

A few years ago I got to read and review the book Gift of Change by D. T. Sanders (Buy on Amazon). So when the sequel came out, I was intrigued. From the very first page, Friends Change did not disappoint. It is just as fast-paced and fun as the first book, but with a lot more characterization.

Jason and Fallon Change A Lot

The change in the title of this story is not a misnomer. Jason and Fallon go through momentous changes in this book and come out at the end almost inhumanly different. Their lives are very scary and I would not want to live them, but reading about them sure is a lot of fun! The first section sees Jason and Fallon barely making it back to the space port with their ship practically in pieces. It’s a miracle that they were able to get there at all. Almost immediately they are captured in the guise of getting them healing. And Fallon and Jason have to get free of a sadistic group of sex peddlers who only keep them alive because they hope they can figure out the technology keeping Fallon and Jason alive.

[pods name=“book” slug=“2”] [/pods]Peacemaker is the fifteenth book in the Foreigner series. And the protagonists for this book are Bren Cameron and Cajeiri the heir. It starts almost immediately where Protector leaves off, with a bit extra at the beginning and end. I read this book as a Kindle ebook, so I realize that a lot of the issues I had were because of poor formatting in that version, but it still made it hard to finish completely. But let me start at the beginning. The first 12% of the book (according to my Kindle) was exposition explaining how the characters got to the point we were at in the book. I realize that after 14 novels in a series, this type of thing is needed for people who haven’t been reading it since book one, like I have. But let me tell you, exposition gets very boring after a while. I struggled with completing that first section, and considered skimming until there was some action several times. But I did wade through it. If you’re going to skip, I recommend moving to when the train they are on gets to the Bujavid. It’s pretty boring up until that point. The next portion of the book was the actual story. It jumped between Bren and Cajieri and was basically a build up to Cajieiri’s fortunate ninth birthday. There were three human children from the space station visiting Cajieiri and Jase-aiji was there from the station as well. Meanwhile Bren and his bodyguards are enlisted to clean up the assassins Guild. If you’re wondering why the description is so sparse, it’s because the book was pretty sparse. There was very little from Jago, and even Bren didn’t have much action. Banichi had been injured in Protector and he was still injured in this book, and so that was repeated many times. Even the hijinks of the kids were pretty tame, as they were all on good behavior. The worst thing to happen was Cajieiri forgetting his birthday speech, and so making one up on the spot. Bren was hit in the head in the Guild operation, but other than being light headed, he was okay too. The only other excitement was Cajieiri’s mother. But I won’t say what in case you want to read the book. At the end of the book is another 8% of exposition in the form of a report from Geiji-ji and commented on by Bren. This report is basically a summary of the events leading up to book one in the series and then covering the actions that happened during the series. I honestly don’t know everything it covered, as I got bored again and stopped reading. However, if you’re not already interested in Bren and Cajieiri, I would give this book a pass. I would have liked it more if there were either more action or less exposition, or best, both!

Do you have ideas for SciFi stories that keep popping into your head? I do, and I’ve decided to write them down here. Just so I can remember them and stop waking up in the middle of the night thinking about them.

• Vision - Our vision is largely made up by our brains. We only really “see” what’s right in front of us, and only when we want to. What if there were a being that could use this feature of our vision to hide in plain sight? Like it only moves in the millisecond of time when our eyes aren’t moving and thus can’t see it. Or it relies on our brains to fill in what we “know” should be there and so can stand right in front of you without you knowing it.
• Senses - Have you ever had the sense that someone was looking at you, staring at you? What if this were a real thing - and that empaths or telepaths really are walking among us and can sense that type of thing. What if someone honed that skill to an art form?
• Computers / Ghost in the machine - teh interwebz are getting pretty big now, and it might be large enough for sentience to evolve. But what if it evolved in the internet and then decided that it didn’t want to reveal itself to us? If it were smart, hiding would almost certainly be a safer strategy. But would an artificial sentience be willing to sacrifice people to protect itself? Would an AI have morality? Or would it do whatever it took to stay alive and hidden, and protect the secret of its existence at all costs?

I’m sure I’ll come up with more as time goes by.

I don’t know why I’m so surprised. But I was holding out hope that Fox would have learned its lesson from “Firefly” and actually let a good SciFi show carry on. But no. Instead, they handled “Almost Human” in almost exactly the same way they handled “Firefly.” It’s like they have a playbook for how to kill a good show:

• Air the episodes out of order, so that any over arching theme is confusing at best and most likely destroyed at worst.
• Make sure that the episodes that introduce the characters most effectively are buried somewhere in the middle of the season, since you’re already airing them out of order. That way any casual viewer will see no reason to give a rats ass about what’s going on.
• Skip weeks with no information on when (or if) the show will be back on the air.
• Then return with a show that clearly should have been aired earlier in the season because, well, because you can.
• Don’t bother with PR. If the fans cared, they would watch.
• And when they do watch, ignore them.
• Make sure that whatever ads or PR you do do for the show focuses solely on violent car chases or robots getting blown up. Because the only demographic for SciFi is 18-year-old male. And those same males only like car chases and blown up robots. Oh and maybe a sexbot or two.

Maybe they’ll add to their playbook:

  What a glorious list of images.

I had the opportunity to write a guest article for the About.com Classic Literature site. And because my passion is Science Fiction and Fantasy, of course I wrote about that. What do you think? Can SciFi Be Considered Classic Literature? Or should it remain in the sub-genre basement as “Classic SciFi” and not compare it to other genres.

One of the things I miss from science fiction these days are the hard core space opera novels My favorites right now are the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks, The Lensman series by E. E. “Doc” Smith, and the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. Banks and Bujold are still writing and adding to their series’, but there aren’t a lot of other authors writing space operas right now. So, when I got the opportunity to read the book Gift of Change by D Sanders (I received a review copy from the author), I was very pleased to get to read true space opera, it’s been a long time waiting.

I am really enjoying Existence by David Brin but it is hard to read. Perhaps it’s because I’m reading it late at night, or perhaps it’s just me, but I find I’m only able to read about two pages a day. Which, since the book is 560 pages long, means I’ll probably be still reading it sometime in 2017. As someone who typically reads 2–3 books or more a week, this means that the book is a slog. But I’m loving it! Don’t get me wrong, this book is really interesting and fun, it’s just hard and slow to read. My biggest frustration right now is that there are so many POV characters that I get frustrated when the scene switches to someone else – until, that is, I get into their POV again and then I’m frustrated when we switch back to the first character. There are several engaging characters:

[caption id=“attachment_210” align=“alignleft” width=“300”] Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech[/caption] This weekend was fabulous! The NASA Mars rover Curiosity landed last night successfully after 7 minutes of abject terror. The landing was a success and now we can look forward to lots of new images from Mars. I love that this is not fiction but fact! We are exploring Mars in my lifetime! I have read books like Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson and thought they were amazing, but not likely something I would see. But with these successful rover landings it seems so much more likely! Curiosity’s landing will generate a lot of geological and chemical data about the makeup of Mars, but it also paves the way for getting larger landers and landers that can land on Mars and then return, and finally landers that can bring people to Mars. I love it when science fiction becomes science fact!

“To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.”

— Jerry Pournelle

“I’m a sci-fi girl. If I can have anything in life, I’d want tons of great science-fiction movies and stories. It’s so progressive, beautiful, and imaginative.”

— Zoe Saldana

“The powerful don’t make revolutions.”

— Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time

Nora Ephron didn’t direct Science Fiction movies. But her death is a loss to all of us, and especially women. She made movies that women like, movies for and about strong, caring women. Science Fiction movies, on the other hand, tend to be for, by, and about men. Even when women are in them, they are either glorified sex objects or men with breasts. Part of the reason Sigoourney Weaver was so funny in Galaxy Quest was because she was playing the only role women have had in most Science Fiction movies — the phone operator. It was especially ironic to cast her in that role when she’s best known as Ripley in the Alien movies. But Hollywood seems to forget women all the time. When the Avengers came out, 40% of the opening day tickets were bought by women, and yet the only strong female character was reduced to acting as a dogs-body and gopher for all of the other “real” super heroes. Why is this and why do women tolerate it? Yes, Ripley is a powerful female character, but even though I can name dozens of strong female protagonists in SciFi books, I can’t name even ten strong female characters in movies. Here’s what my husband and I came up with. We were able to come up with 9 when we included TV as well.

“Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”

— J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

“If you want to catch something, running after it isn’t always the best way.”

— Lois McMaster Bujold, Borders of Infinity

“A book’s alright when the weather’s foul and there’s nothing else to do, but why sit and read when the wind is calling your name?”

— Mercedes Lackey, By the Sword

I love to read, I always have. But as I get older I find myself more and more willing to stop reading mid-stream. Ironically, eBooks have made this even more likely, as I stop reading something, thinking “I’ll come back to this…” all the while knowing that, well, I won’t. Devil’s Punch (2012) by Ann Aguirre Thus we come to today. I finished Devil’s Punch by Ann Aguirre. This was a good book. It’s the third I’ve read about Corine Solomon and I’m enjoying the ride. Corine is a woman who can sense the history, especially strong emotional history, of items when she touches them. In recent books she has undergone some changes to become more of a witch, but as is the course of many urban fantasies, she has to make choices that on the face of them are evil and so has been branded a black witch by most other practitioners. When her best friend is stolen by demons and taken to hell (Sheol), Corine puts her life and soul on the line to go save her. That is some friend! Of course, in the course of getting to hell and saving herself and her friends, she has to make more gray choices. There were bits in the middle that were confusing, especially as Corine is slowly being subsumed by a demon queen who has been a parasite on the Solomon line for hundreds of years. But right before the point where I would get so confused about who was in control of Corine’s body, it would be made clear again. The action was fast paced and fun, and the story didn’t stick to standard tropes in fantasy, so I was surprised at how she ended it. The story starts in Mexico, moves to Sheol, and ends up in London. And Corine saves her friend, but with a large cost to herself and her soul. After the break are two more reviews of a book I’m reading and another that I am starting to read. Warrior (2010) by Zoe Archer This was the book I interrupted to start reading Devil’s Punch. I got through 49% before my library copy expired, and I was almost relieved that that happened, as then I wouldn’t have to slog through it any more. The problem with this book was not that it was bad — it wasn’t. It is a mystery set in the early 1900s or late 1800s about a mystical group that is dedicated to protecting the world’s natural magical wonders from falling into the wrong hands. The problem was it felt like it was trying to be two types of book at the same time:

“It is not wrong to be different. Sometimes it is hard, but it is not wrong.”

— Elizabeth Moon, The Speed of Dark

“Pain means I’m still here, fighting.”

— Corine Solomon in Devil’s Punch by Ann Aguirre