For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny. John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a [...]
Archive of posts filed under the sf category.
WIJFR: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
It’s only natural that Alan, the broadminded hero of Doctorow’s fresh, unconventional SF novel, is willing to help everybody he meets. After all, he’s the product of a mixed marriage (his father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine), so he knows how much being an outcast can hurt. Alan tries desperately [...]
Bonding through Star Wars
A few months ago my daughter and I watched “Star Wars: A New Hope” together. We had been playing through Lego Star Wars on the Wii and had ridden Star Tours together over at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and she was really into the characters. Considering I was younger than her when “ANH” was released (I [...]
Star Trekkin’, JJ Abrams style
We wrapped up work a bit early today (Memorial Day) so I decided to walk over to Times Square and catch the new Star Trek movie. I’m a fan of the original series and I have to say I was skeptical of what this “90210″ version of Star Trek was going to be like. Well, [...]
WIJFR: Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut’s absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut’s) shattering experience as an American prisoner of [...]
WIJFR: Childhood’s End
The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city — intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began. But at what cost? With the advent of peace, man ceases to strive for creative greatness, and a [...]
WIJFR: The Gripping Hand
25 years have passed since humanity quarantined the mysterious aliens known as Moties within the confines of their own solar system. They have spent a quarter century analyzing and agonizing over the deadly threat posed by the only aliens mankind has ever encountered, doomed by millions of years of evolution to an inescapable fate. For [...]
WIJFR: Protector
Phssthpok the Pak had been traveling for most of his thirty-two thousand years. His mission: save, develop, and protect the group of Pak breeders sent out into space some two and a half million years before … Brennan was a Belter, the product of a fiercely independent, somewhat anarchic society living in, on, and around [...]
WIJFR: The Ringworld Engineers
20 years have passed since Louis Wu’s escape from the Ringworld. Now, kidnapped by the mate of Nessus, their two-headed alien companion of the previous voyage, Louis and his catlike ally Chmeee are transported back to the Ringworld – now spinning dangerously off-center – in an attempt to discover the cause of the aberrant rotation [...]
WIJFR: Ringworld
Four travelers come to the Ringworld: Louis Wu – human and old; bored with having lived too fully for far too many years. Seeking a challenge, and all too capable of handling it. Nessus – a trembling coward, a puppeteer with a built-in survival pattern of nonviolence. Except that this particular puppeteer is insane. Teela [...]
