Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Seattle? Yes. Starbucks? Bit too early for that.

Ishmael by Barbara Hambly

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When my mother was attending University, the drama professor had Mom and others pickup Jim Steranko, Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov and most importantly for this review Gene Roddenberry at the airport and drive them around when they had been booked for a series of lectures they gave at the school.  So I have heard all the stories told at these lectures. Combined with my maternal aunt’s love affair with all things Star Trek (until my mother took her to see A New Hope; then it […]

“Well, that’s science fiction television for you, though,” Abnett said. “Someone’s got to be the red shirt.”

Redshirts by John Scalzi

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This book is a satirical love letter + wink + elbow nudge for fans of Star Trek. As any Trek fan knows, those wearing redshirts get killed. Minor background person you don’t know anything about getting more backstory? Killed. Someone about to do their “last away mission” before moving on? Super killed. Though on the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid (which exists in a different universe) the redshirts are dying in a similar fashion, they band together to try to figure out what is going […]

Listen to me or don’t. But if you don’t, you’ll be dead. And then where will you be? Dead, that’s where.

Redshirts by John Scalzi

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The failure mode of clever is ‘asshole.’ ― John Scalzi, Redshirts If knew you were going to drug me, kidnap me, and take me back to the dark ages with out my pants, I never would have slept with you. ― John Scalzi, Redshirts Andy Dahl has seen plenty of strange things. A former acolyte of an alien religion, Andy was scooped up by the Universal Union when the religious factions on his adopted planet went to war. Now, with a couple of years of […]

Oh Oh, We’re Halfway There

Vanguard #4: Open Secrets by Dayton Ward

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This is the fourth book in the nine-book Vanguard series. This story arc, written in the 2000s-2010s, is set concurrently with Star Trek: The Original Series television show. In fact, Captain Kirk and the Enterprise show up from time to time, either in person or through Starfleet scuttlebutt. While the series is a throwback in terms of Starfleet eras, the subject matter is contemporary with a lot of sci-fi of the time – advanced, ancient tech (Mass Effect, Halo); the internal politics of Starfleet (Battlestar […]

We can’t go faster than light but maybe spacetime can!?

The Science of Sci-Fi: From Warp Speed to Interstellar Travel by Erin Macdonald

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This year is my “No-Buy Year,” so I’m trying (and mostly succeeding!) to cut way back on buying books in any form. I already have so many that I haven’t read! So right now I’m going through a backlog of Audible books on my now-defunct account. (I switched to Libro.fm last year to support local indie bookstores with my audiobook purchases. Highly recommend!) A benefit of the No-Buy Year is rediscovering the myriad things you previously thought highly enough of to purchase, but then shortly […]

The Kind of Fame That’ll Warp My Brain

Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir by Wil Wheaton

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CBR Bingo: Star (Both because Wheaton is a celebrity, and also because of Star Trek) It feels like there’s been a lot of talk lately about child stars, what with Jennette McCurdy’s book coming out and the recent allegations against Fred Savage. Between all that, reading Still Just a Geek, and reading snippets from House of Hilton about Kim Richards, I’m starting to think maybe we should just ban Hollywood from using child actors? In the early 2000s, Will Wheaton published a book of essays (Just a Geek) […]



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