Tag: Star Wars

Traveling the Star Wars Universe with Lando Calrissian

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Science Fiction9 Comments
An omnibus, the title I read is covered by a sticker…oh well.

I’ve had a Star Wars itch lately.  It might be because I was listening to Professor Fears talk about the fall of the Old Roman Republic, giving way to the Empire.  The parallels, in terms and sometimes beyond that, are pretty obvious.  Or it might be because Asimov’s Foundation books made me nostalgic for another galaxy with humans on every planet and an enormous empire spanning the systems.

I’ve also had a bit of a memory itch.  Some time very long ago I read a book about Lando Calrissian.  There was a robot in it, they were in the ruins of an ancient civilization, and at some point they got separated and time started moving at different speeds for each of them.  And that’s pretty much all I remembered.

My Star Wars itch made me decide it was a good time to try to hunt down this vague book memory, and fortunately it wasn’t nearly as hard as you’d expect.  L. Neil Smith wrote a trilogy, The Lando Calrissian Adventures, and the first one, Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu, involves a search for an ancient artifact.  I decided to gamble that was the one I remembered, and sure enough–there’s Vuffi Raa as his android sidekick, and that bit about time moving at different speeds was exactly the way I remembered it.

This was a really fun idea for a book series.  I can only comment on the first one, but it starts well.  Lando is not really in the original movies all that much, and I haven’t seen him in other books a lot either.  But he’s got that charming rogue thing going on that Han Solo has working for him too.  He clearly has plenty of adventures in his past, so why not some books about them?  This trilogy (or at least the first book) is set well before the original movies.  Lando recently won the Millenium Falcon in a game of chance, and if he’s met Han yet, it hasn’t come up.

Other than the ship, and of course Lando himself, there’s minimal connection to anything recognizable from Star Wars.  The technology and the universe structure is right, but there are hardly any references to the Empire and I can’t remember a single one to the Jedi (which makes sense, as during this period they were wiped out).  For a Star Wars fan, this is an interesting delving into a supporting character, and for a non-Star Wars fan, I think this could easily be read as an independent sci fi book.  Apparently this was written very early on, which explains a lot.

I really enjoyed the characters here.  Lando is a gambler, not a fighter.  He’s a rogue and a conman and he can fight if he needs to, but he’d rather avoid trouble when he can.  Vuffi Raa, as frequently happens with Star Wars droids, is the most endearing character.  He’s a mix of programming and independent thought–for instance, he’s programmed to be unable to commit violence, but he occasionally finds a work-around when the situation calls for it.  He’s very loyal, has a sense of humor, and has deep compassion for other machines (which baffles Lando, prompting a stern and insightful lecture).

The plot, as mentioned, is about a search for an ancient artifact belonging to a lost race.  It’s a decent quest, though the characters, the ruins (which are on an impossibly large scale) and the mystery of the lost race were what grabbed me.  In a funny way, this felt more like a Star Trek book than a Star Wars one.  I’ve always thought it was all about that last word for each of them, and this book is more about the journey than the battles–and, like Trek, about the characters and the alien races.  That doesn’t mean there aren’t fight sequences, and there’s good tension and climactic moments.  It wrapped up a little quickly, but that’s a minor criticism.

All in all, a very good book I think I could recommend to a wide variety of sci fi fans–the dedicated Star Wars fan, the tentative Star Wars fan, a Star Trek fan, or anyone who’s feeling a bit of a Star Wars itch!

Other reviews (by more dedicated Star Wars fans than me!):
Expanded Universe Project
MiB Reviews
Rancors Love to Read
Anyone else?

Science Fiction Experience Round-Up

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations5 Comments

The Science Fiction Experience at Stainless Steel Droppings runs from January to February, so that makes it time to assess how it went.  (I’ll have an update on other challenges at the end of next month.)

I’ve had such a good time with this challenge (experience).  I haven’t done much on other challenges, but that’s all right, I have the rest of the year for those…  This was exactly the impetus I needed to finally read a lot of books I’ve been meaning to read for ages–especially some sci fi classics, new Star Trek books, and revisits to old Star Wars books.  Last year I read twelve sci fi books in the entire year–I matched that in these two months.

I’ve also really enjoyed the community around this experience, reading other people’s posts–and thank you to the people who came by here too!  I’m already thinking about what I’ll read during Stainless Steel Dropping’s Once Upon a Time Challenge in the spring.  🙂

Here’s the sci fi I read in the last two months.  If you’re curious about something that doesn’t have a review, just ask!

1) Five-Odd, edited by Groff Conklin

2) I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

3) Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

4) Star Wars: The Crystal Star by Vonda N. McIntyre

5) Star Trek: How Much for Just the Planet? by John M. Ford

6) Mister Creecher by Chris Priestly

7) Star Trek: Memory Prime by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens

8) Star Wars: The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton

9) Predator’s Gold by Philip Reeve

10) Journey Between Worlds by Sylvia Louise Engdahl

11) Doctor Who: The Doctor Trap by Simon Messingham

12) Infernal Devices by Philip Reeve

Not sure why the reviews ended up totally weighted for the first half of the list…it wasn’t planned.

And some sci fi I watched:

Seasons Five and Six of Doctor Who
Selections from Star Trek: The Animated Series
Season One of Eureka
Star Wars: Episodes IV-VI (The Original Trilogy)
Superman: The Movie
Back to the Future
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Men in Black

I feel like this makes me look like I watch more TV than I really do–those aren’t long seasons, and it’s been pretty exclusively sci fi for the last couple months!  I’ve always tended to watch more sci fi than I read.

Battles and Journeys Through the Stars

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Science Fiction6 Comments

A double-feature today.  I recently read a Star Wars book and a Star Trek book, and it seemed natural to put them together in a post.  I don’t have a huge lot to say about either, so why not group up?

Star Wars: The Crystal Star by Vonda N. McIntyre

This is one of the Star Wars books I read long ago, although stumbling over it at the library was a stroke of blind luck, as I certainly didn’t remember the title or author!  I did recognize the plot, though.

Han and Leia’s children (five-year-old twins, Jaina and Jacen, and three-year-old Anakin) are kidnapped by a cultish group that wants to bring back the Empire.  Leia takes a ship in pursuit, disguised as a bounty hunter.  Meanwhile, unaware of the kidnapping, Han and Luke are off investigating rumors about a lost group of Jedi.  They find an old flame of Han’s, and a bizarre creature (even by Star Wars standards) with healing powers and malevolent intent.

The point of view moves between Leia, Jaina and Han, which I found a little disconcerting at first, but I got used to it.  The different plot threads eventually link up, in a way that’s somewhat far-fetched but does work.

The characterization was good here and, like with Star Trek books, I always enjoy books that let me revisit old friends (so to speak).  It was fun to see Leia go off to be heroic without the guys, and I really enjoyed Jaina’s point of view.  As I discussed in my review of Ender’s Game, Jaina is a very smart, brave little girl–who nevertheless seems like a little girl!  I thought that was very nicely done.

I’ve complained about Star Wars books usually being about mopping up the last traces of the Empire, and to some extent that was what happened here…but the group that kidnaps the kids could just have easily been a weird cult with no Empire connection, so that didn’t bother me too much.  The details of it were very different than just being yet another battle.

All in all, a fun Star Wars adventure–not fantastic or Earth-shattering, but a light, fun read.

Star Trek: How Much for Just the Planet? by John M. Ford

I’ve been wanting to read more Trek books, and I’ve been seeing this one in used bookstores for a while.  Doesn’t the cover look good?  It makes you want to know why Kirk’s wearing a suit–and why he has that expression!  I haven’t read Worlds Apart Book 1, but as far as I can tell from a plot synopsis, they have no significant connection.

So I dived in here based on the cover and a recommendation–and sadly, the book wasn’t quite up to its promise.  It actually read a lot like fanfiction–in good ways and bad.  It started so well, eating breakfast on the Enterprise, where Kirk inexplicably wound up with blue orange juice and McCoy grumbled about early mornings.  Then we jump to a survey ship whose computer seems to be an escapee from a Douglas Adams book, and where a mix-up floods a shuttle with peppermint milkshake.

It’s silly and fun and it’s like fanfiction, where writers are more willing to push the boundaries of what’s reasonable for the sake of a laugh.  Believe me, I was the queen of that when I wrote fanfiction.  I flooded the Enterprise with orange juice–twice.

But then the book went too far.  It’s a very, very thin line between really funny, and dragging your characters out of character and into a universe that is, dare I say it, just too illogical.  (And I won’t swear that I never crossed that line myself!)

The actual plot centers around a human-colonized planet, where massive deposits of very valuable dilithium have been discovered.  Under the terms of the Organian Peace Treaty, the Federation and the Klingon Empire can compete for rights to develop the planet.  The Enterprise and a Klingon ship both arrive on the scene for a diplomatic mission.  They beam down into a small town apparently populated by lunatics who can’t quite decide if they’re in a Hitchcock film, a Laurel and Hardy silent comedy, or a Gilbert and Sullivan musical–complete with characters randomly bursting into song.

What works for Gilbert and Sullivan doesn’t work in a Star Trek novel.  Putting song lyrics into the middle of scenes is just odd.  In fact, the whole book is odd, and made worse by the regular characters not quite acknowledging just how odd it all is.  They do think it’s weird, but not to the extent they should.  It’s too bad because there are some funny parts in here–Scotty challenges a Klingon to an honor match of golf, for one example.  The whole novel finally winds up with a food fight.

Part of me wants to love that–but a bigger part of me says that there’s no way Kirk and a Klingon captain, in their right minds, would actually end up throwing pies at each other.  Ford had a good idea here–and then I feel like he ran too far with it.  I love funny Star Trek stories and I love slapstick humor and I might have accepted much more of this if it really had been fanfiction–but it’s not, and I expect something different from published novels and this one just didn’t quite ring true to me.

But that’s all right.  I’ve been asking everyone I can think of for recommendations on Star Trek books to read, and I have MANY more to explore!

Revisiting a Galaxy Far, Far Away

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Science Fiction10 Comments

This sci fi kick I’ve been on lately has led me back around to Star Wars, which I must admit I haven’t paid much attention to for about ten years–and it had probably been that long since I watched the original trilogy.

First, a little history.  The trilogy was re-released in theaters when I was in elementary school, and me and everyone around me became Star Wars fans.  I read probably 10 or 12 Star Wars books too, but lost interest when it began to feel like every book was basically “let’s mop up the last traces of the Empire…and then the last last traces…and then this last one…”  More significantly, I also found Star Trek.  For me, the fandoms co-existed for a while, but in the end, the traveling turned out to be more interesting than the fighting (I’m convinced the difference really is all in that second word of the names).

All of this is to say that I identify as a Star Trek fan, but I like Star Wars too, and there was a time when I really liked Star Wars.  And lately I’ve been thinking I’d like to revisit the galaxy far, far away.  So, over a recent weekend, I dug out my very old, shiny gold Special Edition VHS tapes of the original trilogy (a very big deal purchase when I was much younger!) and rewatched all three movies over three days.

And you know, they really are wonderful.  The characters, the strange landscapes, the magic of the Force…even the battles.  It’s often the characters that count most for me, so let’s start there.  Remember it had been ten years (or thereabouts) since I saw these movies.  The biggest “change” was Luke.  Han is right when he’s calling him a kid at the beginning!  You can’t see him the same way when you’re a kid yourself.  I think you have to be older to properly see Luke’s character arc, from a whiny kid on Tatooine (he really is whiny in spots) to the serene and confident Jedi Knight.  It’s the classic growth of a hero story, and it’s very well-done.  I enjoyed Han’s growth too, from refusing to stick his neck out for anybody, to General Solo of the Rebel Alliance–but still with some of that scoundrel edge.  The one who grows less is Leia–she’s awesome from the first moment and stays that way, whether it’s blasting Stormtroopers or making acid comments to Han.  I remembered she was great, but I think I forgot just how much so.

I thought other characters were excellent too–Threepio, with his constant worried commentary, gets some of the funniest lines.  And at the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the looming and menacing Darth Vader.  I don’t think I ever noticed before–his entrance gets more impressive with each successive movie.  I wonder if they didn’t quite know what they had in the first one.

I thought the plot rockets forward at a nice pace, and each time I finished one movie it made me want to watch the next one.  It’s fun to revisit all the iconic lines and moments, and my memory of the later two movies may have been part of why I wanted to go on to watch them.  The trilogy is also a great example of a story which is complete unto itself, despite previous events which influence the present.

Which leads me around to the newer trilogy.  I watched that as it came out, and I don’t think I had seen the original trilogy since watching Episodes 1-3.  Rewatching Episodes 4-6 largely brought home to me how irrelevant the first three episodes really are.  I don’t feel like they added anything to my viewing of the original trilogy.  It was a bit interesting to see the references in the original to the past, and to know how they expanded those references, except that mostly I don’t much like the way they expanded them.

If anything, the new episodes hamper viewing of the original; now when Leia talks about her mother, I’m stuck thinking about Padme’s really stupid death; when anyone talks about Anakin Skywalker, it’s now harder to think of him as a heroic Jedi when I’ve seen him as a sulky teenager who, after the age of nine, was never all that likable.  And even though I like Padme, seeing Leia again makes Padme look like a poor imitation.  It’s sad, really–the original trilogy points up how far the new ones fell short, and how we really already knew anything we needed to know about the backstory.

If I was going to get more backstory, I think I’d rather have it about the galaxy, not the individuals.  Star Wars has good character development, but not so much when it comes to races.  The Wookies, the Ewoks and the Jawas are the only ones I can think of who have their species name even mentioned in the original trilogy (maybe Jabba–is Hutt a species or a title?)  There are endless bizarre-looking creatures, but most of them we know pretty much nothing about.  We don’t need to know about all of them–but it would be nice to know about some of them.  I suppose that’s another reason I ended up as a bigger fan of Star Trek; there’s much more scope in exploring different alien cultures than there is in mopping up the last traces of the Empire.

But there’s plenty that’s good in Star Wars too, and I think I’m going to do a bit more revisiting.  The new trilogy added nothing to the old one for me, but what I remember of the books did.  I remember Wedge got to be a much bigger character, that Leia became a political leader, that Luke continued that character arc to found a new Jedi Academy, that Han kept trying to balance the general and the scoundrel.  I lost interest eventually in reading new Star Wars books, but I remember I liked several of the ones I did read.  So I think I’m going to track some of them down and see if they’re worth revisiting too!