📚 Cadet Kirk by Diane Carey

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16/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The final and best of this YA series. The main trio finally end up all adventuring together, as a simple shuttle hop gets sidetracked by mercenaries. Overall, while all of the books have a certain amount of overly-convenient happenstance to get the characters together, they’re a quick entertaining read as one “what if?” version of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy’s Academy days.

A note on the illustrations: Oddly, it kind of felt like the illustrator just skimmed the plot, if that, particularly with this book. Much of the action takes place aboard a shuttle, clearly described as an early version of the TOS “box on two cylinders” shuttlecraft, but the cover and one of the interior illustrations shows a more angular, TMP-style shuttle with warp sled (but the sled is outfitted with the cylindrical TOS nacelles rather than the flatter TMP style). And towards the end, a character described in the text as human (at least in appearance) is drawn as a TOS-style Klingon, complete with gold sash. Odd mistakes to make (and while the target audience for these books might not notice these things, they do stand out to me).

Me holding Cadet Kirk

Year 50 Day 289

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Me leaning against a doorway, wearing a black shirt with tiny white skeletal hands.

Day 289: An unexpected work conversation:

“Michael! My computer’s on fire!”

“What?!”

“I can’t touch it and it smells like burning!”

The computer hadn’t gone to sleep properly when unplugged and closed before being dropped into its computer bag to sit for an hour while class was being taught…so it just sat in its bag and overheated itself.

Thankfully, after a couple hours of cooling off, it booted, apparently none the worse for wear (or, at least, not enough worse as to prevent it from working).

I’m used to being the office ad-hoc “so we don’t have to call IT” IT person. But I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear “my computer’s on fire” when I came in to work today.

📚 Aftershock by John Vornholt

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15/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A few years after the first book in this TOS Starfleet Academy trio, McCoy is at the Academy’s medical program and ends up being paired with cadet Spock for a disaster relief mission. But somehow these earthquakes don’t seem to be entirely natural…. Not bad, though both McCoy and Spock perhaps felt a bit too much like their adult selves rather than less mature versions.

Me holding Aftershock

Year 50 Day 288

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Me in my office at work, sitting in my chair with my feet up on the desk. I'm wearing a black short-sleeve button-up shirt with white X's and O's, black jeans, and bright pink Converse shoes.

Day 288: Got a number of compliments on both my shirt (X’s and O’s and the occasional heart) and shoes (bright, all-over pink Converse) today. Just right for Valentine’s Day!

Year 50 Day 287

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Me wearing a black short-sleeve button-up shirt with white line drawings of donuts.

Day 287: I got asked today if the design on my shirt was donuts or bagels. It’s definitely donuts. Nothing against bagels! I like bagels. But as a fashion choice, I definitely go for donuts.

Year 50 Day 285

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Me using a piping bag to drizzle white chocolate over pretzels already dipped in milk chocolate.

Day 285: Y’all can have your superb owl. We woke up, had breakfast, went back to sleep for a while, and then after some minor home chores, made ourselves some treats by dipping things in chocolate (Ritz crackers and pretzels, to be specific). Now we’re going to find something non-superb owl-ish to doze in front of for a while.

📚 Clarkesworld Issue 209 edited by Neil Clarke

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13/2024 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Standouts this month are “The Enceladus South Pole Base Named after V.I. Lenin” by Zohar Jacobs, “Kardashev’s Palimpsest” by David Goodman, “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim, and “Lonely Ghosts” by Meghan Feldman.

Me holding Clarkesworld 209 on my iPad