Apple TV - Sugar - Season 1

Series Review + Apple TV + Sugar

Ah... What to make of this...

Good, but...

Apple TV - Sugar - s01e01

Series Review + Apple TV + Sugar

Season one episode one. Very weird, but I love it. I've just finished episode one, and... this is weird.

Who is John Sugar? What is John Sugar?

Can you still find that (SF) movie, or has Enshittification (TM) taken over full force?

Science Fiction

Let's try to watch some SciFi...

Note: this isn't a 'top 10' kind of list. I was just wondering where you could watch them (legally)...

Note that I'm based in The Netherlands, and availability strongly depends on the region you live in...

Rachel Bach (Rachel Aaron) - Paradox Series - Fortune's Paw / ...

Audiobook Review

Down-on-her-luck wannabe-warrior falls in love. Add exo-suits, aliens, baddy evil to fall in love with, an empire, a love story, and Rachel Bach's writing skills.

And what you end up with is a great series.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008) and a little Summer Glau

Series Review

Summer Glau has a pendant for Sci-Fi 'nerdish' shows. Unfortunately, they're not all successful, but apparently her choice in roles matches my taste in television...

Elliot Kay - Poor Man's Fight 6 - No Man's Land

Audiobook Review

Another space opera / military sci-fi series. Main protagonist might be a little too much of an anti hero in the 6th book, but it’s quite readable.

Series starts with greedy corporations that unload endless debts on wannabe students, then moves on to an interstellar conflict between several races. 

Faith Hunter - Junkyard Cats / Junkyard Bargain / Junkyard War

Audiobook Review

Entertaining set of 3 (now 4) novels, in which a post-apocalyptic junkyard owner becomes a kind of queen bee, driven by biotech, and assisted (hampered?) by gen-engineered cats, after aliens overcame earth’s finest.

The Verdict: great read. Looking forward to book 4!

Countdown to 2025 - #3 - Best SF & Fantasy books ever (my Top 3)

Countdown + Scifi books + Fantasy books

You may have noticed that a large part of this blog consists of nothing but SciFi and Fantasy book reviews. I'm 58 now, and I've done nothing but reading SF and Fantasy over the last 40 odd years. There has been the occaisional side trip into other genres, but in the end I always return to my roots 😇 So, what are the best books I've ever read?

Countdown to 2025 - #5 - Disney+ - The Marvels (and my Top 3 of how humanity will fail)

Countdown + Movies Review + Disney+

The preceding show Ms Marvel isn’t that bad, except for an overly short season. This one though… yeah, this one didn’t work. It’s a pity because it had some promising elements, but the end result is a hasty mess.

The verdict? Skip it.

Wallpaper - Who is going to save Humanity? (Part I)

Wallpaper

Can AI save us from aliens, or can aliens save us from AI?

(One day someone is going to make a remake of 'V' that actually becomes a smash hit...)

Joshua James & Daniel Young - Legacy of War - First Encounter / Enemy Lines / Invasion Force

Audiobook Review

Another space opera, and unfortunately it fails in the typical areas of science and logic. The story might have been a lot better with a little more work on the technical aspects.

Here are more of my usual gripes with much of the SF Space Opera and Military SF out there:

Ann Gimpel - Earth Reclaimed - Earth's Requiem / Earth's Blood / Earth's Hope

Audiobook Review

Sometimes I sample ultra cheap offers on Amazon / Audible. Here's one of those... It's another typical fantasy / romance with some 'porny' chapters inserted ('She took his cock in her mouth' etc.)...

Unfortunately, though the premise is promising (post apocalypse, Celtic gods, latent magic etc.) the books as a series fail to hold my attention, and I don't need the porn scenes to spice it up. (It isn't romance, it's porn. Duh.)

HBO Max - Peacemaker

Series Review

Peacemaker is completely silly, rude, irreverent, immature, and yet it’s fun. If you like foul-mouthed superhero stuff like Deadpool, then this is your thing.

John Cena stars as Peacemaker, reprising his role from The Suicide Squad.

The (Dis)honest Romance Writer

Writing + Reference

The following is a completely dishonest, biased, male-viewpoint, misogynistic, unfair and unhinged :-) approach to writing romance. So, take it for what it is: a very cynical outlook on (broken) hearts.

And before I start: there is nothing wrong with reading or writing romance! If you like it, go for it! It's not better or worse than other genre, in any way.

Farscape

Series Review / Wallpaper.

Farscape returned! Okay, that's a lie... but I'd love for it to happen.

Say what? Farscape? You didn't even know? What?!? You did not even watch?!?!? You don't even  know what Farscape is?!?

You must be one of those people comforting their Nielsen boxes 😔

Wallpaper - Tabula Rasa

Wallpaper

Some of these wallpapers are just pretty images, others may have a story behind them. Some of those stories are intense, emotional, have a personal meaning (and I might simply not share the associated wallpapers) but others only go skin-deep.

This is one of the latter 😇 Ever heard of the game Tabula Rasa?

Ernest Cline - Armada

Audiobook Review.

Another take on Ready Player One, another love song to the eighties. Well written, but frankly I find this new take on the same trip down memory lane a little shallow. It's well written, but it's well-written fan fiction. Yet... where some fan fiction dazzles with new ideas and fresh characters I found Armada to be somewhat meh.

Netflix - Alien Warfare (2019)

Movie Review

Should I spend even time on describing this? I actually like the cast, but the aliens are plastic / rubber-suits, and the movie brings absolutely nothing new.

Synopsis: team of four is send into a base where everybody has been blown to dust by an alien weapon (that turns out not to be a weapon). Sigh. Why is anyone spending money on making this, or wasting time watching 'm?

Netflix - Breach / Anti-Life

Movie Review

I know he does it for the money, but Bruce, please... You can do better.

So, what do we have here? A simple Scifi / Horror cross-over, heavily inspired by Aliens, with a little infusion of Event Horizon.

I'm not impressed. Go see both Aliens and Event Horizon, that's a way better way to spend your precious time. Note: this movie is also known as Anti-Life.

Marion Zimmer Bradley - Seven from the Stars (1961)

Book Review

More old stuff dating back to the golden era, this is the second part of an Ace 'Double', a pocket containing two novels in one book.

The aliens, so different from humanity at the beginning of the book, blend in a little too easy. The whatever-the-name-enemy from another dimension is not convincing. And the story didn't age very well.