Category: Book Reviews

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Book Reviews History Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology

Picturing The Space Shuttle: The Early Years

1 min read

Order this bookStory: The authors – both journalists who covered NASA from the inception of the shuttle program to its completion – trace the history of the space shuttle from the earliest (and in some cases most fanciful) proposals through the first four test launches, in a huge number of often previously unpublished photos and accompanying text.

Review: If ever there was a coffee table book aimed squarely at this reviewer, Picturing The Space Shuttle: The Early Years is it. While it tells a story of which some of the broad strokes are already fairly well known, the granularity of detail combined with the spectacular photography is what sets this volume apart. It’s a vivid trip back to a point in history when we had sent astronauts to the moon and back, and the universe – or at least so the NASA promotional material said – was ours for the taking. All America had to do was build a next generation spacecraft of unprecedented complexity. … Read more

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Blake's 7 Book Reviews Prose Fiction Series

The Clone Masters: The Rule Of Death

2 min read

Story: The Liberator receives a message directed specifically at Blake: the copy of him grown by the Clone Masters is in failing health, and needs his help. Despite Avon’s repeated warnings that this is almost certainly a trap, Blake insists on following the signal to its source, which means gaining an audience with the last survivinging Clone Master who remains after their order was destroyed, which involves a side trip to gather – or steal – the necessary funds to pay for that privilege. Even that task is costly, nearly costing Vila and Avon their lives. Nearly everything about visiting the Clone Master’s new inner sanctum involves being defenseless, which is, of course, when Avon’s warnings are proven to be correct.

Review: Oh, thank goodness, someone actually came up with a good reason to revisit the Clone Masters’ copy of Blake. Introduced in the 1979 Blake’s 7 TV episode Weapon, the Fake Blake has cropped up again and again in fan fiction, often as a way of circumventing the series finale (which was more final than most shows’ series finales). That episode also saw the only appearance of the Clone Masters (who seemed like they were being set up as a Big Deal, narratively speaking, only to disappear from the story thereafter), as well as the only appearance of Rashel, a freed slave who turns the table on virtually everyone in that story, winning her freedom and that of Blake’s copy. And of course, as far as the television series went, that was all we got of that story. … Read more

Categories
Biography Book Reviews Computers / Video Games Prose Nonfiction

Creating Q*Bert and Other Classic Video Arcade Games

1 min read

Order this bookStory: The designer/programmer behind the 1982 arcade hit Q*Bert discusses how he got into computer programming and then into game design after being hired at the very young video game division of legendary Chicago pinball manufacturer Gottlieb. A free-wheeling work environment give him the freedom and time to develop the graphics and game play concepts that led to the highly marketable hit game, but massive changes in the industry meant that he didn’t always have that kind of environment.

Review: When I was a ten-year-old kid more in love with “cute” games than with shoot-’em-up games, the summer of Q*Bert’s arrival in the local arcades was practically a flashpoint memory. Even when I wasn’t playing the game, the character stuck with me enough that drawings of him started to fill up the margins of my school notebooks that fall. As much fun as the game was, I’m not sure anyone gives Q*Bert enough credit for scoring an important first: the appearance of the character was unified in just about all of its marketing, something that couldn’t be said of Pac-Man or even Mario at that stage. That a ten-year-old could draw him was a bonus. … Read more

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Behind The Scenes Book Reviews Media Prose Nonfiction

The Odyssey File

1 min read

Order this bookStory: Replicating a lengthy electronic correspondence, The Odyssey File recounts the collaboration between filmmaker Peter Hyams, who was not only slated to direct 2010: The Year We Make Contact, but to adapt it into screenplay form, and legendary sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke, who had already published the hotly-anticipated literary sequel 2010: Odyssey Two. The two ruminate over their foray into an untested system for communicating across international distances, discuss the often large changes Hyams wished to make to Clarke’s story, and slowly but surely, get a movie made.

Review: As a long-time admirer of both filmed instances of Arthur C. Clarke’s genre-defining saga, I naturally already have a battered, not-getting-any-younger copy of Clarke’s The Lost Worlds Of 2001, a book that’s about as old as I am, and it’s fascinating stuff, mainly offering glimpses into roads not taken by Stanley Kubrick’s original 1968 film. The close collaboration between Kubrick and Clarke is very well documented. And so, it turns out, is the much more space-age collaboration between Clarke and 2010 director/screenwriter Peter Hyams. … Read more

Categories
Book Reviews Prose Nonfiction Science / Technology

Chasing New Horizons: Inside The Epic First Mission To Pluto

1 min read

Order this bookStory: From the moment that Pluto fell off the itinerary of worlds to be visited by the Voyager spacecraft during that mission’s planning stages, scientists wanted to find a way back to what was then regarded as the outermost planet. Inspired by the outcome of the Voyager missions, Alan Stern takes on the task of heading up the “Pluto Underground” in the late 1980s to begin to build support for a robotic mission to Pluto, a goal that will encounter far more obstacles than he anticipates.

Review: A warts-and-all history of the mission that, after many permutations, false starts, and NASA cancellations, became known as New Horizons, this book does include the romance of discovery, but it also includes the political machinations that go into mission proposals and NASA’s competitive mission selection process. The mission doesn’t launch until around halfway through the book. What takes up the first half is startling, sobering, and maybe just a little bit unnerving. … Read more

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Behind The Scenes Book Reviews Doctor Who Prose Nonfiction Series

The Long Game: 1996-2003 – The Inside Story of How the BBC Brought Back Doctor Who

1 min read

Order this bookStory: From the immediate aftermath of the American/Canadian-made 1996 TV movie starring Paul McGann through the announcement in 2003 of the show’s imminent return under the creative guidance of Russell T. Davies, including a lengthy period of time during which no one at the BBC seemed to know the scope of what rights had been assigned, or for how long, in order to get the 1996 movie made, this book tracks the bizarrely meandering path from one Doctor Who comeback to another, more enduring one.

Review: The “wilderness years” of Doctor Who are a peculiar thing to track – because which “wilderness years” are we talking about? The seven years from the concluding chapters of the original BBC series in 1989 through the one-off 1996 revival movie, or the period from 1996 to 2003? This book covers the latter, which, in hindsight, is truly an underexamined epoch in Doctor Who history. There’s already an excellent book about how Big Finish Productions came to be, more or less, the de facto makers of Doctor Who in 1999 (and in fact, we’ve already reviewed it here). But what was going on at the BBC? That’s what Paul Hayes covers here. … Read more

Categories
Book Reviews Graphic Fiction Series Star Wars

Star Wars: The Original Topps Trading Card Series, Volume One

2 min read

Order this bookStory: Didn’t hang on to all of your Topps Star Wars trading cards from the 1970s? Fear not, they’re all in this book – every last one of them, front and back – along with “director’s commentary” discussing image selection, the relationship between Topps and Lucasfilm, the occasional gaffe, and more. Really, the only thing missing is the smell of bubble gum.

Review: I have never really been a card collector, but once upon a time in the 1990s, I realized that I had an entire box of Topps Star Wars trading cards that had defied the odds, survived many a purge of childhood personal belongings, and had moved out of the house with me. I decided it was time to treat this seriously, and purchased many, many pages of those clear, semi-flexible card holder pages that would fit in a three-ring binder, and started organizing the cards, trying to put them more or less in numerical order, and trying to get my head around how complete a collection I had, and what the value of it might be. As it turns out, I had a nearly-complete collection – my greatest deficiency was in the second wave of cards with red borders – and in very good shape. The binder was put on a shelf and kept moving with me, from Arkansas to Wisconsin and back again, though when I had kids, I decided perhaps it was time to start parting with some of that collection, because kids always need to eat, and these cards… well, they were just taking up shelf space and not really being appreciated. And when I discovered this book, parting with the cards became a lot easier. … Read more

Categories
Behind The Scenes Book Reviews Doctor Who Prose Nonfiction Series

Script Doctor: The Inside Story of Doctor Who, 1986-1989

2 min read

Order this bookStory: In the wake of the making of a troubled 1986 season that saw the show’s script editor quit abruptly, Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner hires a new script editor, Andrew Cartmel, after a job interview in which Cartmel states that his aim with Doctor Who’s future storytellign is “to topple the government.” Cartmel recounts that tale, as well as the dozen multi-part stories he helped usher to the screen – some admittedly better than others – in great detail, drawing from diaries he kept at the time of production, describing the events and personalities behind late ’80s Doctor Who in great detail.

Review: It’s become so accepted in Doctor Who fandom to praise the last season of Sylvester McCoy’s tenure in Doctor Who while simultaneously complaining about nearly everything in his first two seasons that it’s a bit tiring. (There is, of course, a subset of fandom that complains about this whole era, as well.) One thing that most everyone does seem to agree on is that there was an uptick in the quality of the scripts (if not necessarily the production itself) thanks to incoming script editor Andrew Cartmel, who had the thankless job of filling the void that had been left rather suddenly by the acrimonious departure of his predecessor. There was no handoff period, no pep talk, no wisdom imparted from Cartmel’s predecessor. … Read more

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Book Reviews Prose Nonfiction

The Interstellar Age: Inside the Forty Year Voyager Mission

1 min read

Order this bookStory: From its inception as a pie-in-the-sky mission to the planets beyond Mars, dreamed up when no such missions to these places had ever been attempted, to its resounding success in the face of technical, political and budgetary hurdles, the Voyager program’s history is retraced through interviews with those who devised and operated the two Voyager spacecraft and their onboard scientific instruments. The author also adds his own experiences as a student gofer, and later an undergrad student, during the later Voyager encounters.

Review: It’s taken a while to get here, but this is the kind of book I’ve been wanting about this mission for years. If you were roughly the same age as I was, and were so inclined, the pages of magazines like Astronomy and National Geographic were peppered with the names of Voyager project leads and scientists – Ed Stone, Rich Terrile, Carolyn Porco, Larry Soderblom, Torrence Johnson, to name but a few – and these people, in my mind, were rock stars. “The Interstellar Age” elevates them to that status again, and it’s long overdue. … Read more

Categories
Book Reviews Graphic Fiction SF Blueprints / Schematics

Space: 1999 Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual

2 min read

Order this bookStory: A thorough, beautifully illustrated guide to Moonbase Alpha for new recruits and existing crew members alike, detailing the history of the lunar base (including the moon’s catastrophic departure from Earth orbit in 1999, and events since), technical specifications of Alpha’s stun guns, spacesuits, and its fleet of support vehicles including Eagles, Hawks, and other variants, and a complete directory/biography of Alpha’s command staff. Wait, where does Moonbase Alpha get new recruits so far from home? Have you been through a security checkpoint?

Review: The 1970s were the heyday of fan-produced material based on presumably inert IPs – countless in-universe Star Trek manuals and reference texts, and similar projects covering elements of Irwin Allen’s numerous genre TV series, or Gerry Anderson’s. Often these would be advertised in the pages of Starlog Magazine, though the relationship between not-quite-licensed products and magazine was a bit more symbiotic than was let on in some cases. One product of this not-really-licensed-and-yet-not-completely-unauthorized pipeline was the Moonbase Alpha Technical Notebook, written primarily by David Hirsch with contributions from fellow Starlog staff writer David McConnell, and artwork by Geoffrey Mandel and Anthony Frederickson, both of whom had contributed to unofficial Star Trek technical manuals long before becoming contributors to studio-produced Star Trek. Hirsch had also, in his capacity as a Starlog staff writer, assisted ITC in preparing their late ’70s/early ’80s package of syndicated “movies” created by splicing together pairs of otherwise disparate episodes of Space: 1999 and UFO. The chances that Gerry Anderson and his production staff didn’t know about the Technical Notebook hover somewhere around zero, but it wasn’t an officially blessed and licensed product, either. The Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual, a lavish coffee table book in a “widescreen” format, is very much as official as one can get – and, as much love as I have for fannish endeavours like its predecessor, it’s a gigantic improvement. … Read more