My writings, old and new...

I've been an avid reader since I was 10 and my parents subscribed me to ''Boy's Life''. We lived in a small town without TV for 3 years; my family read as many books as we could! (My wife still occasionally mentions TV shows I've never seen; I think the books I read did me more good!) I'm going to put my opinions of books I've read and especially those I could not finish.

Friday, October 05, 2001

I've got to mention two books in the "Gateways" series of "Star Trek" books. These are recent publications.

The first book, "One Small Step" by Susan Wright gets thumbs up. The second, "Chainmail" by Diane Carey doesn't get any thumbs up at this time; it might not even get me to read beyond about page 15 actually!

One Small Step is set in the timeframe of the episode in which Kirk and company destroyed the computer at the Kalandan outpost. This was the episode in which a computer generated hologramme of a woman was trying to kill Kirk, Spook, Sulu and McCoy. A group of aliens interviens in order to steal the ancient technology.

This story is a nicely done one of different cultures interacting and deception and combat. I liked it and recommend that it be read.

On the other hand, "" starts out with a Federation away team beaming aboard on aliend vessel. Then, the story got hazy about which character was "speaking", made references to alien races and alien political groups that I'd never heard of. I put the book down earlier this afternoon and decided it was a "rumgo" (bad idea?). I then went out to buy some anniversary gifts for my wife (our 22nd anniversary is tomorow).

I think I'll pick up "Chainmail" tomorrow and see if I can make much sense of it by starting the book over. It would be a shame to have bought the book and then just leave it! (Although, I've good a coupleof dozen unread books sitting on top of the dog's kennel in the living room.)

More on "Dirge" by "Alan Dean Foster".

I finished this book several weeks ago. It was very nicely written and I enjoyed it.The friendly aliens turned out to be all out bastards and ended up in a major war. The humans and Tranx attacked the villien's home planetory system. I saw home planetory system since the villiens had fortified their astroid belts and wereholding off the righteous attackers. How does it end? Well, think Dien Bien Pu {sp}, the Alamo and Waco...(yes, that is a bit of a spoiler!)

This book tells the origion of the SCRAM shells used so effectively by the future Human/Thranx Commonwealth. It also mentions the origion of the Sting ships, without going into detail of the human-computer-thranx interface that made those ships such effective and efficient hunter-killers.