None currently. The last one was "Blake's 7 Afterlife" by Tony Atwood. I also read the novelization of the episode "Avalon".
Afterlife could easily be the show's fifth season. If you saw the program itself you know the last frame was Kerr Avon raising a stolen pirates' rifle towards the camera. Afterlife picks up shortly thereafter and contains several distinct sections.
Avalon has some differences. In the book Cally and Jenna are in opposite roles: Jenna stays on the ship while Cally goes down for the meeting. This makes more sense from a continuity standpoint but was changed to focus more on Jenna's recon skills than her piloting. Also in the book the female mutoid played by Glynis Barber is male instead.
Next up I'm probably gonna dig into the Voyager novels or maybe Escape From Tenopia and Escape From the Kingdom of Frome, two of my favorite gamebook series.
I‘m currently reading Jean-Remy von Matt‘s autobiography; he‘s probably Germany‘s most successful and well known person in advertising.
Since I work in Sales and Marketing I find it very insightful and I can relate to quite a few of the situation‘s he‘s describing. What I also really like about him is how he became successful because of his creativity and unconventional approach to many things in life.
I‘ve always admired people like that who went against the grain (same with Rick Rubin and Kanye West, at least before the latter lost his mind).
Australian Indie Book Series called: Revolt. Read the first 2 books but unsure if I'll read the 3rd when it comes out.
It's hard describe the feelings and overall verdict. There's two sides to the series. One is really, really good and other is well, not. It's either a sci-fi sport story about the main characters being able to finally enter the sport late and a lot of personal conflicts that come with that, and the other is side is a lore based sci-fi about a rebellious gang known as the Revolt taking over the world from the shadows abusing the fractured state of the rebuild.
The sports side is the really good part. It uses the characters dynamics well to sell you on the bloody fights the happen frequently, I find myself rooting for the POV character at any given time to win constantly cause I end up being invested in what they are personally going through. It plays really well in contrast too with some great mixing of drama and comedy as well as some really tough hard hitting emotional stuff that feels earned with how interesting they make the character dynamics. There's one character who is just the biggest pompous 🤬 who would hateable in most stories but in the context of the book, I love him. His friends treat him like a wild animal who needs to be constantly yanked on his chain when he goes overboard and his friendship forming with the main character after they originally hated each other is really great to see develop, they play off each other so well.
The lore side is really boring and unnecessarily cruel, Revolt have no interesting characters to speak of and feels like its just dragging with vagueness to pretend something interesting is happening and the POV character that ends up getting dragged in this mess just get tortured constantly that serves nothing to his character. It's not even the Revolt torturing this character, the Revolt only want to capture him (for reasons not explained) the narrative is just making him do it to himself in a desparate attempt to escape.
Eventually at the end of the 2nd Book, some details of the lore side intersect with the sports side and it just begins to weigh it all down so I don't think I'll proceed further.
EDIT: Thinking more about it, theres still enough nice and interesting details to keep me going and the divide is still fascinating to dissect so I will read Part 3
Just finished Atlas Shrugged for the first time; I feel like I'll be revisiting this one in the future. The plot's a bit exaggerated, to the point of cheesiness at times, as dystopian novels tend to be, but overall I really enjoyed this one, having a similar 'personal accountability' view toward life and how a government should interact with the society it's supposed to oversee.
And now I've started this gem (there may be a theme here, haha), Diary of a Psychosis by Tom Woods, and already the stupid memories of pandemic restrictions and public discourse have come flooding back. It's a collection of his email 'newsletters' that he sends out to his subscribers, from the time as events were unfolding. Chock-full of 'official' data surrounding the virus, social media comments from influential figures, etc...
Been doing my yearly review of I, Robot, and have the trilogy of four by Douglas Adams for afters.
I really should stop reading the same books year after year.
Just finished Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness." Basically, it's about how everyone who hit puberty around 2010 and later got mentally screwed over by the advent of smart phones, social media, and the over-protective parenting that had been accelerating since the late '70s; and what we as a society can do to reverse the damage going forward. I'm not a parent and don't really care to be, but I strongly recommend the book to anyone who is. His previous book, "The Coddling of the American Mind," pairs nicely with it, if interested.
Now I'm getting back into my Great Depression studies. I only got a couple books into the subject before I realized that I should probably get a good grasp on economics, something I've only just recently gained an interest in. The plan is to go back and forth between books on the Depression and the surrounding era, and books dedicated specifically to economics in general. "Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy" by Thomas Sowell looks to be a solid place to start. It's said to be good at breaking it down in plain English, and not bombarding me with a vocabulary I'm completely unfamiliar with.
Just finished Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness." Basically, it's about how everyone who hit puberty around 2010 and later got mentally screwed over by the advent of smart phones, social media, and the over-protective parenting that had been accelerating since the late '70s; and what we as a society can do to reverse the damage going forward. I'm not a parent and don't really care to be, but I strongly recommend the book to anyone who is.
Hellblazer #175-#249 (2002-2008) by writers Mike Carey, Denise Mina and Andy Diggle (plus Jason Aaron).
Scottish novelist Mina's run wasn't liked by many fans but I found a soft spot for the way she has John Constantine saves a Scottish town supernaturally gripped by despair by weaponising their shared joyous schadenfreude at an English football defeat by someone else.
Plus this recent mini by Si Spurrier whose writing style and spiky characters always stood out for me.
The School for Extraterrestrial Girls Vol. 3: Girls in Space. It’s a YA GN by Jeremy Whitley (writer) and Jamie Noguchi (artist). I loved the first two volumes, Girl on Fire and Girls in Flight, so this was a foregone conclusion that I would buy it and love it. I got it as a digital download, but I will be buying the hardback version, just like I did with the first two.
In Vol. 1, we meet Tara Smith, a very serious 16 year old girl who spontaneously combusts in class. Instead of dying, she discovers she’s not actually human, but an insectoid alien, and her parents aren’t actually her parents, but her abductors. Given a choice by the government, she opts to attend the School for Extraterrestrial Girls rather than be shipped off to a planet and society she knows nothing about.
In vol. 2, Tara and her new friends have to spend a semester at the School for Extraterrestrial Boys. Oh, and save the world. Again.
Now in Vol. 3, they are sent to a space station. An alien armada is heading towards Earth, and they need to figure out why.
Whitley is one of my favorite comic book writers. He’s written everything from Rainbow Bright and My Little Pony to Thor vs. Hulk, The Unstoppable Wasp, and Vampirella. He excels at creating characters you feel deeply about. And Noguchi is a fun, expressive artist. There is a character, a Russian-raised catgirl, who reacts to everything 100%, and Noguchi’s art of her is as unhinged and fearless as the character herself.
Galaxy: As the World Falls Down by Jadzia Axelrod, Rye Hickman, and Jody Troutman. This is the second YA GN featuring the character of Taylor “Galaxy” Barzelay, although not her second appearance in DC comics. (It feels a little weird to say “DC comics” since DC literally stands for Detective Comics, so I’m saying “Detective Comics comics”.) Her first GN, Galaxy: The Prettiest Star was a surprise hit in 2023, and deservedly so.
There was a small throwaway scene in Hawkgirl #1 (2023) when Batman reveals there was an alien invasion of Earth, but no one remembers it. This is that story.
Fallen down an early middle ages rabbit hole recently. Just finished the Saxon Stories / Last Kingdom series (took about a decade) and “The Anglo Saxons” nonfic by Marc Morris.
Now onto this
Also watching “King & Conqueror” on iPlayer and playing AssCreed Valhalla. I may need help returning to the current millenium.
I'm currently reading "Life Time Entirety. A Study of AIΩN in Greek Literature and Philosophy, the Septuagint and Philo" by Heleen M Keizer. After reading her introductory paper from 2000 called ‘Eternity’ Revisited: A Study of the Greek Word αἰών, I started on her 2011 book that contains all her work in this area. She goes through every single instance of the Greek words Aion and Aionios from 900 BC to 50 BC, deducing the meaning of them from the context alone (obviously not everything from the Septuagint, but you get my drift).
EDIT: I've just finished the book, and the implications for Christian doctrines such as hellfire and annihilationism are not looking good, to say the least!
Just a couple of weeks ago, Gail Simone created a thread on Bluesky about how Godzilla is currently a near guarantee of quality storytelling in comics. It’s a fascinating read.
Here is a weird thing about comics right now. Do you know who is actually practically a guarantee of quality storytelling in comics at the moment? Godzilla. I kid you not. For a long time in America, the Godzilla comics were mostly okay, meant to be fun, lots of monsters fighting. 1/
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