Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
48/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Overall not a bad collection of short stories, and I can see why the book got the high-profile list of authors to do introductions and provide their memories of Beaumont. However, many of the stories haven’t aged well; they may have been “dated but still worthwhile” when the collection was published in the late ’80s, but forty years further on, they’re just “dated and cringeworthy”. Don’t regret reading it, but definitely won’t be keeping it in my collection, either.
47/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Barker’s stories are as dark, twisted, and excellent as ever. This edition has several unfortunate typos and for some reason restarts the page numbering for each of the three included volumes, but those are separate considerations from the content.
46/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A fun adventure mystery in a magical steampunk Cairo of 1912, with djinn and other creatures a part of the world. Really neat worldbuilding and a fun story, though I did figure out the villain quite a ways before the reveal. Can definitely see why this got its Hugo nomination.
Thor: Love and Thunder (2022): ⭐️⭐️: It was…okay? I mean, it more or less held my interest. There were amusing moments, and I wouldn’t really say I was bored through much of it. But the tone was just weird. It felt less like it was done by the same director as Ragnarok, and more like it was done by his understudy who almost but not quite understood what made Ragnarok work so well.
45/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Though the framing story takes place just after season one of Picard, most of the story is set just following the Dominion War, with tensions still high among Bajorans, Cardassians, Romulans, and Starfleet, all on a remote Bajoran planet occupied by the Cardassians. Lots of intrigue and mysteries abound.
44/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
As with the first, there are lots of giggles as Monroe takes ridiculous questions far, far, far too seriously.
43/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1983 Hugo Best Novel
I didn’t find this one to be a strong as the original trilogy, and Asimov’s writing style doesn’t seem to work for me in the context of other Hugo winners published around this time as much as it does with his earlier works. He’s still a very good SF writer, but more obviously one of an earlier era, in both style and in his fumbling around with female characters.
Moonfall (2022): ⭐️: Makes Armageddon look like Carl Sagan’s Contact. If you look hard enough, there are a few brief glimpses of some good hard SF ideas somewhere in there, but they’re so slathered in layers of dreck that there’s nothing of real interest left.
If the basic premise of “the moon falls to Earth and things get real bad” interests you, read Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves for an actually intelligent take on the idea.
42/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Kirk finds that new allies have some hidden secrets. Another entirely acceptable Trek adventure.
41/2022 – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Actually more entertaining than I expected. While it certainly has a number of flaws by modern standards, it wasn’t as bad as I feared. The women, while often very damsel-in-distress being rescued by the heroic men, actually had a bit more agency and capabilities than I expected. The worst aspect, of course, is that the “evolution” from race to race is based in long-outdated theories with a lot of racist underpinnings (darker skin and African features are less evolved than lighter skin and European features). Still, it’s a fast-paced and consistently entertaining adventure in an improbable but enjoyably imagined land. Burroughs definitely had a knack for adventure stories!
