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Showing posts from January, 2024

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - A Review

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It's an old trope: The brat kid of a robber-baron hitches off with a band of misfits hoping to find a more mundane life. But she ends up finding even more adventure instead. This is the basic premise behind Becky Chambers' book, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. The main character, Rosemary, wastes a bunch of her family's dirty money in order to buy herself a new identity. Then she joins the crew of a run-down spaceship called the Wayfarer. Her skills are immediately useful, and this allows her to work well with the crew, but they intrinsically know something's up with her. When she uses her linguistic skills to prevent a band of alien marauders from leaving them completely stranded, it becomes clear that there's more to Rosemary than meets the eye. The crew itself is exotic. Sissix is a reptilian-like pilot, an Aandrisk, and Rosemary has to correct her thinking regarding their fundamental differences: complicated family structures, no concept of personal space

Best of 2023

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  Well, here we are again. Time to look back at 2023 and name what the best items were for TV, movies, and books. Here's what the most recent meeting of the Milwaukee Science Fiction and Fantasy League came up with for our Best Of lists. See if you agree: Best Movies: By full consensus, it was agreed that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was probably the best sci fi film overall. But there were lots of others that created a huge impression. For example, the movie They Cloned Tyrone was an excellent turnaround of "blacksploitation," to say nothing of outstanding performances by John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, and Teyonah Parris. Also agreed upon was Poor Things , and not just because our local heroes, Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe, starred in it. Also included in our best of the best list was The Creator, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves , and Godzilla Minus One . We also couldn't help but list Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 . Although it disappointed a little