Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 25

Of Rockets and Hugos

The final Star Trek Picard review is coming and I also have something new planned for this blog that you’ll hopefully enjoy. But for now I have two other things to share.

For starters, I was interviewed by the wonderful Andrea Johnson on the Retro Rockets podcast and talk about old and new SFF, being a Hugo finalist and lots of other things.

You can listen to the episode here.

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In other news, I assembled my Hugo Voter Packet for 2022 and and if you’re a member of Chicon 8, this year’s Worldcon, it will be available soon, together with the rest of this year’s Hugo Voter Packet.

However, if you want to get a headstart on your Hugo reading, even if you’re not a member of Chicon 8, you can now download my Hugo Voter Packet for free in the e-book format of your choice at StoryOrigin.

What can you find inside? A hopefully representative selection of everything I wrote in 2021, ranging from fiction and media reviews via essays, genre commentary and interviews to humor pieces.

Finally, I also want to show off the gorgeous cover, courtesy of the hypertalented Tithi Luadthong. Not only does it strike the balance between retro and modern, there also is a rocket in the image.

Star Trek Picard Plays “Hide and Seek”

Here is my take on the penultimate episode of season 2 Star Trek Picard, very late, because I’m very much trekked out at this point. Though this is not the last of the Star Trek reviews, for Paramount in its infinite wisdom is blessing us with even more Star Trek in the form of Strange New Worlds. For my take on previous episodes and seasons of Star Trek Picard, go here.

Warning: Spoilers below the cut!

When we last met Jean-Luc Picard and his Merry Men and Women, they had to deal with a nosy FBI agent, a dying Q and a Borg Queen on the loose in Agnes Jurati’s body and eager to assimilate Los Angeles/the world/the future. Worse, the Borg Queen has enlisted the aid of Dr. Adam Soong a.k.a. the member of the Soong family who has crossed the line from arsehole to straight up villain. And for reasons the show never quite makes clear, Dr. Soong has the ability to summon a whole squad of special forces soldiers, all of whom the Borg Queen promptly assimilates. Wouldn’t borgifying approximately fifty soldiers completely mess up the timeline, since none of those fifty soldiers will go on to do whatever they were supposed to do in the original timeline? Who cares? At any rate, the Borg Queen now has an evil henchman and an army and she’s coming for La Sirena to start building the Borg Empire four hundred years early. Yes, the whole thing doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the series just asks you to roll with it.

This episode, entitled “Hide and Seek”, plunges us straight in medias res with the Borg Queen and her army launching their assault on La Sirena. And for once, the episode title is completely accurate, because the bulk of this episode consists of Picard and friends playing hide and seek with the Borg Queen and her cronies inside and around Chateau Picard, while the most notable subplot involves Picard remembering playing another significant game of hide and seek in the bowels of Chateau Picard.

There really isn’t a lot of plot here – the episode is mostly people running around, shooting at each other and fighting each other in and around Chateau Picard, which looks less like a French vineyard and more like a modern recreation of a Tuscan villa in California and a random studio backlot dungeon set every time we see it. On the good guy side we have Picard, Seven, Raffi, Tallinn, Rios and holographic Elnor (the real one having been killed in episode 3) with Doctor Teresa and her son Ricardo as bystanders in peril, while the bad guy side consists of the Borg Queen in Agnes Jurati’s body, Dr. Adam Soong and a squad of borgified soldiers. Amazingly, the shooting and explosions going on at the supposedly deserted vineyard (even though the vines itself look remarkably intact) don’t attract the attention of anybody else. And yes, I know that rural France can be very isolated, but not so isolated that the people on farms and in villages in the vicinity would not notice a huge battle going on in a supposedly deserted chateau and call the local gendarmerie. Maybe they were all drunk because of some kind of festival or party that night.

Picard, Seven and Raffi first use Tallinn’s transporter to beam to Chateau Picard and then to rescue Rios, Teresa and Ricardo from the ship that’s about to be taken over by gun-toting Borgs and beam them into the Chateau. However, the Chateau only offers limited protection, because the borgified soldiers are bearing down on it and they have riot gear, assault rifles and nightvision equipment. Meanwhile, of our heroes, Tallinn is the only one who’s actually armed with two Romulan guns, one of which she gives Seven and Raffi, who also procure a knife, a corkscrew and an ice pick as additional weapons. Early on in the exchange of fire, Rios is shot in the arm, so Tallinn beams him as well as innocent bystanders Teresa and Ricardo back to her apartment.

Seven and Raffi as well as Picard and Tallinn split up (because that’s such a great idea in a crisis – or does no one in the 25th century ever watch any 20th century horror movies?) and try to separately make their way back to La Sirena to wrest the ship from the Borg Queen’s control. As a tactic, it may not make a lot of sense, but it does give us some nice scenes of Seven and Raffi bonding, while kicking Borg butt. Also, can I just say how much I love it that pop culture currently has plenty of women in their fifties, several of them women of colour – Jeri Ryan, Michelle Hurd, Ming-Na Wen, Michelle Yeoh, Sandra Oh, Orla Brady – kicking arse and taking names these days? Because girls and women really need more role models that show us that life does not end at thirty, forty, fifty or whatever the cut-off point is and that “boring sitcom or soap opera mother” or “nagging cop wife” or “older woman lawyer in a legal drama” isn’t the only future open to you and that yes, it’s possible to be awesome and do cool stuff even in your fifties and beyond. More of that, please.

While everybody else is fighting or running, the Borg Queen struts around naked aboard La Sirena (though only seen from behind). She absorbs some Borg tech from the original Borg Queen’s corpse and then Alison Pill gets to strut around in the cleavage version of the traditional black leather Borg garb.

However, the Borg Queen finds that she cannot access La Sirena‘s controls, because Agnes, who is still present inside the Borg Queen’s head and fighting back and using the hormones released by negative emotions to do so, has locked and encrypted them, which makes this the umpteenth time someone has done this with La Sirena. The Borg Queen threatens Agnes to rummage through her mind, until she finds the code, but Agnes tells her that she did not memorise the code. Instead, she gave it to the most trustworthy person she could think of, namely a holographic version of Elnor. Because apparently, La Sirena can make holograms of everybody who has ever been on board. Of course, the original La Sirena could do this, which does not necessarily mean that the evil Confederation version can do it as well. And the original La Sirena also only ever recreated a squad of different versions of Rios, but who cares? Here’s the excuse for this week’s contractually required Evan Evagora cameo and this time, he actually gets to kick some Borg butt instead of just making mooey eyes at Raffi.

Meanwhile, Dr. Soong is trading barbs with Picard, who tries to persuade him to give up his evil plans for the sake of the future. Dr. Soong, however, only cares for one future, namely the one where he gets to be the hero and saviour of humanity. And if that means that the racist and xenophobic Confederation is the future of humanity, then so be it.

Brent Spiner is clearly having a lot of fun letting out his inner supervillain. And in fact, all the actors seem to be having a lot of fun making this show. I just wish that the actual result were better.

Picard finally tells Soong that if he and the Borg want to kill him, they’ll have to find him first. Then Picard and Tallinn take off into the tunnels under Chateau Picard, which triggers – hurray – yet another round of flashbacks to Picard’s childhood. Annoying as the many endless flashbacks in The Book of Boba Fett were, at least they happened, while Boba was resting in his bacta tank, not in the middle of a fire fight, which is about the worst possible time to have flashbacks.

Still, apparently we haven’t fully explored Picard’s deep dark traumatic childhood (TM) yet, so another round of flashbacks we get. Though at least we do get another brief scene of James Callis as Maurice Picard, which is always a plus. There’s also young Jean-Luc playing with what looks like a vintage Enterprise toy.

Basically, Jean-Luc’s mentally ill mother had a thing for playing hide and seek with her young son in the catacombs underneath Chateau Picard, no matter how often her husband warned her not to go down there. One day, when Jean-Luc’s mother went to play hide and seek with her young son in the catacombs again, Jean-Luc had an accident – of which we saw extensive flashbacks two episodes ago – and Maurice Picard locked his wife in her bedroom. Now we get the continuation of that story. Because it turns out that Jean-Luc snatched the key from his father and opened the door to let his mother out. Whereupon his mother went and hanged herself in the greenhouse. Young Jean-Luc found her and Picard has felt guilty for letting his mother out of that room and thus contributing to her suicide all his life.

I’m sorry, but there is so much wrong with this whole scene. For starters, Yvette Picard hangs herself in a poofy white dress that is remniscent of the dress Jane Fonda wears in the famous hanging scene in Cat Ballou. Now hanging oneself is a theatralic form of suicide, but there’s no way I’m buying that a severely depressed woman like Yvette Picard can even muster the energy to dress up like that. Never mind that there’s no way that dress would be as pristinely white after someone has hanged themselves in it.

Furthermore, what the fuck is wrong with Maurice Picard that he locks his mentally ill wife up, but then repeatedly leaves her alone with her young son instead of sticking around to keep watch or better yet get her treatment? After all, this is not the nineteenth century with the stereotypical mad woman in the attic. This is the 24th or early 25th century and probably takes place around the time of the Original Series episode “Dagger of the Mind”. Even in our time, there are better and more effective ways of treating bipolar disorder or depression than locking up people in attics. There surely will be even better ways in the 24th or 25th century.

As for the one scene in The Next Generation where Picard sees his mother as an old woman offering him tea, that is retconned as Picard imagining what his mother would have been like as an old woman, had she lived. Because losing his mother to suicide was so traumatic for young Jean-Luc that he just suppressed the memory. As for Picard’s brother Robert – last seen in The Next Generation episode “Family” – he is completely absent throughout this entire drama. It seems the show has forgotten he ever existed, just as Star Trek tends to forget that Spock and Michael had an older brother named Sybok.

Now it’s very obvious that losing his mother to suicide and finding her and blaming himself for everything, too, would be extremely traumatic for young Jean-Luc. But would it really be the life-defining trauma as which the show portrays it? I’m sorry, but I’m not convinced. Because I happened to know someone who had an almost identical experience to young Jean-Luc. She, too, lost her father to suicide by hanging – though it was an attic, not a greenhouse – and she, too, was the one who found him. But while this event was undoubtedly traumatic for her, she still went on to have a long and happy life, get married, have children and grandchildren. Just as Jean-Luc went on to have a long and productive life as a Starfleet captain who had countless adventures and saved hundreds of lives. So in short, this whole thing feels like an example of the “Just add instant Deep Dark Trauma (TM) and stir” Hollywood school of characterisation. Pop culture has gotten a lot better about portraying trauma, so that this feels like a throwback.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Dr. Soong finds the entrance to the tunnels under Chateau Picard, so the chase is on. As before, the tunnels underneath Chateau Picard are filled with all sorts of likely and unlikely equipment. There are chains, grated metal doors, a torture post with chains, dusty crates of wine (probably the only thing that does make sense) and crates of weapons left there since WWII, which still miraculously function eighty years later. Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Picard and Tallinn had also stumbled upon the Castle Grayskull dungeon grate with its monstrous tentacly things or the Orb of Power or the portal to the underworld that can be found in the dungeons underneath Castle Joiry, cause that would make as much sense as anything else.

While everybody else is running around Chateau Picard, Rios is stuck in Tallinn’s retro apartment together with Teresa and Ricardo. Ricardo is in shock, torn between being terrified by Borgified soldiers shooting at him and thinking that this is the coolest thing that ever happened to him. Kids in films and TV shows, including the many versions of Star Trek, are often portrayed unrealistically, but Ricardo does behave and react like a real kid would, when thrust into that situation.

Teresa removes the bullet from Rios’ shoulder, marvelling at his medical tricorder, which she calls “an ER that can fit into her pocket”. Rios, meanwhile, is eager to get back to the fight and La Sirena, but Tallinn has wisely locked her transporter, so he can’t get back for now. Not that this stops Rios, who keeps tinkering with the transporter to unlock it. Come to think of it, pretty much everything Teresa has ever seen of Rios is Rios either being injured and needing medical attention or Rios tinkering with various equipment or people pointing guns at Rios. Nonetheless, Teresa has fallen for him. Well, Rios is hot, he’s clearly a good guy and would make a good Dad for Ricardo and he’s a hotshot space captain from the future.

Since Teresa has fallen for Rios (and vice versa), she doesn’t want him to go back to the fight with the Borg. She also doesn’t want him to go back to the future, at least not alone. Rios tries to tell her that this isn’t his time or even his timeline and that he doesn’t belong here, while Teresa does, though he doesn’t seem too convinced himself. I have to admit that I hope that Rios, Teresa and Ricardo end up together in some timeline, if only because they’d make a great couple and a great family.

But as it is, Rios manages to fix the transporter, grabs a phaser and beams himself back into Chateau Picard, just as Dr. Soong and the Borg soldiers have cornered Picard and Tallinn in the greenhouse of deep dark trauma (TM). Rios manages to knock out the soldiers, but Dr. Soong snatches his phaser in the shuffle and points it at Picard, Tallinn and Rios, smugly noting that he doesn’t need to know how exactly a phaser works to pull the trigger. I’d have laughed if Rios or Picard had said, “That’s a medical tricorder, you idiot.” But what actually happens is as much fun. For Rios smugly replies, “Well, it only fires, if you have the right DNA. If not… BOOM.”

Which is exactly what happens. The phaser explodes, knocking out Soong and the remaining soldiers, so Picard, Tallinn and Rios can get away.

While everybody else is playing hide and seek in Chateau Picard, Seven and Raffi have actually made it aboard La Sirena. Raffi has a brief reunion with holographic Elnor, who assures her that the real Elnor, who’s still dead, did not blame Raffi for the events that led to his death, but loved her. Of course, Elnor is like a little duckling and loves everybody he imprints upon. It’s a pity that the writers of season 2 couldn’t figure out what to do with him and killed him off, because Elnor is such a cool character.

The tearful reunion cum good-bye out of the way, Seven and Raffi persuade holographic Elnor to unlock the ship and access the systems. Then they beam the remaining Borg soldiers into the walls of Chateau Picard, which is not only a harsh fate, but will also raise eyebrows and questions in the future. Though considering all the other anachronistic stuff already found in the catacombs beneath Chateau Picard, I don’t think soldiers half embedded into the walls will make the place that much more weird. Though I still worry about the implications of willy-nilly killing off so many people who were not supposed to die in the original timeline.

The soldiers out of the way, Raffi, Seven and Holo-Elnor confront the Borg Queen. The Borg Queen is not quite up to speed, since she is still having arguments with Agnes in her mind, but she does use the unlocked controls of La Sirena to get rid of Holo-Elnor and then stabs Seven through the stomach with one of her tentacles. And then, while Seven is literally bleeding to death on the transporter platform, Agnes and the Borg Queen have a little chat.

Agnes reminds the Borg Queen that the Borg Collective already lost the war and was destroyed in the dark future they escaped from. Oh yeah, and the Borg Collective was also about to be destroyed in the regular timeline with more and more Borg rediscovering individualiyt and freeing themselves. Because, as Agnes points out, fearsome and terrifying as they are, the Borg always lose in the end. Every single time, in every timeline.

The Borg Queen insists that it will be different this time, but Agnes insists that it won’t be, because the Borg Queen just doesn’t know when to stop. She won’t stop until she has assimilated the entire universe, because she’s chronically lonely. Agnes knows this, because she is chronically lonely as well.

Now I have been a bit skeptical about the cod psychology of season 2 of Picard, but I do like the idea that the Borg are the result of one woman’s chronic loneliness taken to extreme ends. Because to be honest, the motivations of the Borg Queen never made all that much sense. So far, she always seemed eager to assimilate the universe, because it’s there.

However, Agnes has a proposal for the Borg Queen. Maybe they should stop assimilating unwilling subjects and solely focus on assimilating willing subjects. After all, there are probably other terminally lonely people out there as well as people injured so badly that only Borg tech can save them. And maybe, the Borg Collective could also allow for more individuality. After all, Seven shows what a Borg can be, when allowed to retain individuality.

The whole thing sounds very much like a desperate “Hail Mary” plan, but amazingly the Borg Queen decides to go along with it. She heals Seven in return for being allowed to take La Sirena, though healing Seven requires giving her back the Borg implants in her body. Then, the Queen beams Raffi and the healed Seven off board and takes off in search of willing subjects for assimilation. “That’s my ship”, Rios laments as La Sirena rises into the clouds.

So now we know what the deal with the weird Borg ship we saw at the end of the very first episode was. These were not the regular Borg, but Agnes’ nicer, kinder and more individual Borg. The request to join the Federation was probably genuine and the reason the Borg Queen wore that weird face mask was so we would not see that it was Agnes. This is actually a neat conclusion, though I can’t help but think that there is just enough plot here for a Next Generation two-parter, stretched to ten episodes.

Meanwhile, in case you’re wondering what’s up with Kore, last seen escaping her father’s grip, Q, last seen admitting that he was dying and that he hates it, Guinan, last seen cleaning up her bar, and Agents Wells, last seen having finally gotten the confirmation that aliens exist, well, keep wondering, because this episode never addresses those plotlines. As for Renee Picard, the living Macguffin, before the Borg Queen takes off to willingly assimilate the universe, she points out that in order for the future timeline to be preserved, Renee must both live and die.

I will review the final episode of this season, of course, and I may do Strange New Worlds, since everybody insists that it’s better than the latest seasons of Discovery and Picard. But honestly, I’m just about trekked out. Season 4 of Discovery was lacklustre and often really slow and a little dull. Season 2 of Picard was actually fun, but also an unholy mess to the point that I wonder whether this thing has a script at all or whether they just let the actors do whatever they wanted. Because honestly, it feels like the latter. Either that or the writers are literally deciding upon the plot by tossing coins.

That said, I hope that the review of the final episode will come a bit faster.

First Monday Free Fiction: Rites of Passage

Welcome to the May 2022 edition of First Monday Free Fiction.

To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on the first Monday of every month. At the end of the month, I’ll take the story down and post another.

Pirates are having a moment in pop culture right now, so this month’s free story is a pirate story. It’s called Rites of Passage and was not only one of the first stories I self-published, but is also the oldest of my stories to still survive in a semblance of its original version. I wrote it by hand during a particularly dull class in the last year of school. It was revised and submitted several times and eventually published in an issue of Thriller UK.

The characters are some of the earliest I created to actually make it into published fiction as well. I created Arianna and her supporting cast at the age of twelve and initially intended to write a whole series about them, though this is the only story that exists in complete form.

So follow Arianna Delora, as she undergoes

Rites of Passage

Parla, the dusty orange moon, was hanging low in the afternoon sky. He and his mate Jopla, the pale silver satellite, were the revered gods of this world. They were the movers of the sea, the bringers of the tide, the parents of all people.

Tiro, boatmaster to the pirates of Tasso, looked up. Lord Parla would sink early today, never even showing his full splendor in the dark sky. The night was to be ruled by Lady Jopla alone, bathing the world in her silvery light.

A motion caught Tiro’s eye. A motion where there was supposed to be none. Something or someone was moving among the boats. Tiro’s hand tightened on the grip of his sword as he moved to investigate. As soundlessly as possible he followed the shadow that was moving around between the between the boats and confronted the intruder. Tiro drew his sword. “Who there?” he bellowed.

The shadow turned around and stepped into the light. Now Tiro saw that it was no intruder at all, but Philon, seventeen years, hotheaded and the son of the leader of the pirates of Tasso.

“Tiro, man, you startled me,” Philon complained.

“That is my duty,” Tiro said gravely, “What are you doing here, Philon?”

“I need a boat. Tonight.”

“What for?”

Philon smiled. “That’s private,” he said.

“I cannot let you have a boat, unless you tell me where you want to sail,” Tiro insisted, “Your father’s orders.”

Philon sighed. “Sarava.”

“And what would you want in Sarava? They are our enemies.”

“I have not forgotten.”

“Then what do you want there? Steal their treasures?”

“Just one treasure. The most precious one they have.”

“And what treasure would that be?” Tiro wanted to know. From the way the boy behaved, he suspected that there was something else behind this than just a simple raid, even if it was a raid on Sarava, whose people, pirates as well, were the sworn enemies of Tasso.

“That’s none of your business,” Philon snapped.

So Tiro had been right. “Nevertheless, you will have to tell me, if you want a boat.” Tiro was acting above his station and he knew it. It was not his place to question the boy. Philon was the Captain’s son and his heir to be. Upon a single word of his father he could have all the boats he wanted and Tiro could not do a thing about it. However, Tiro was certain that Philon’s father had no idea what his son was up to and that he would not approve if he found out. Therefore, Tiro would do all he could to discover Philon’s plans and if necessary prevent them.

“So if you must know”, Philon said, “Tonight I am going to take a wife. That’s what I need the boat for.”

The Captain would most certainly not approve of this.

Tiro turned to the boy. “Parla has scarcely twice returned, since you undertook the ritual of manhood, and you already have a mind to take yourself a wife. And a woman from Sarava at that. As if there were no women here that could excite a man’s fancy.”

“No woman like the one I have set my sights on.”

Tiro eyed the boy speculatively, wondering how long it would take to wrest the secret of his sweetheart from him. “You want to tell me more about her?”

Philon hesitated. “I will,” he finally said, “if you won’t tell my father. Swear to me, Tiro, that you won’t tell him.”

Tiro swore, though he had little intention to keep that particular oath. His first duty was to Philon’s father. Should the boy (although he had undertaken the ritual of manhood, Tiro could not think of him any other way) plan some folly because of the pretty eyes of a Sarava girl, Tiro would of course report it to the Captain. Besides, Philon should know that one should never trust a pirate’s oath.

“So listen,” Philon said, eyes gleaming in anticipation, “Tonight Jopla will cast her silvery eyes upon the sacred terrace at Sarava, where Arianna Delora will undertake the ritual of womanhood on this very night.”

Tiro had withstood many a storm in his time, but Philon’s confession nearly knocked him off his feet. “Arianna Delora? That’s the one you want? Are you mad, boy?”

“Not at all. And I am not a boy anymore.”

“But you behave like one, Philon. Arianna is the daughter of old Delor, your father’s mortal enemy. She is his only child. Do you think he will let you have her?”

“Who says that he will have a choice? Listen, Tiro, I have thought it all through. I will take a small boat to Sarava. The cliffs upon which the sacred terrace is set are unguarded. There I will anchor my boat. The cliffs are steep, but I can scale them. You know that I am a skilled climber. Once I am on the terrace, I will be safe. There are no guards on the sacred ground. I will be alone with Arianna.”

“So you think you will be safe, once you are on the sacred terrace. I tell you, your problems will only start there. The sacred ground is forbidden to men. What do you think will they do should they find you there?”

“They won’t find me. I will hide till the right moment. And Arianna won’t betray me.”

“So you do have her consent?”

Philon hesitated. “Not exactly. But I will have.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that. That girl has a demon inside her.”

Tiro only too well remembered his last encounter with young Arianna Delora. She was a lovely girl, true. Skin the colour of a new deck plank, hair the colour of a sturdy and well weathered mast, eyes the colour of seaweed. He could certainly understand why Philon had fallen for her. But there was something inside her, a certain fire, that one did not usually find in a woman. The last time Tiro had seen Arianna, she had been holding a sword in her hand. She knew how to use it, too. Tiro could attest to that. A woman fighting like a man. It was not natural.

“Have you ever seen her fight?” he asked Philon.

“Of course I have. From the moment we crossed our swords I knew that she was the only girl I would ever take for my wife. Arianna is the most beautiful woman I ever met. And one of the best fencers.”

“Women were not made for fencing practice,” Tiro said dryly.

“So I know. But if all our sons are as skilled with their swords as Arianna, then what more can I ask for?”

The boy was determined to have her. No way to talk him out of it. Nevertheless, Tiro had to try. “But must it be tonight?” he wanted to know, “Invading Sarava is dangerous. Why not wait, till you can catch her at sea?”

“I told you, tonight Arianna will undertake the ritual of womanhood. And once she has become a woman, she will have suitors aplenty. She is old Delor’s only child, after all. Whoever marries Arianna will be named his successor. And that is a position to which many will aspire. But I will be the one who wins it. Arianna is not the only prize I’m after. In addition I will get all of Sarava. I will archive what my father has tried to do for so long. I will conquer Sarava and I will need nothing but this small boat to do it. Father will be so pleased.”

Tiro sincerely doubted that.

***

“Isn’t it exciting?” Jarina said, not for the first time that night. And as far as Jarina was concerned, tonight’s events were certainly reason for excitement. Soon, her friend Arianna would step onto the sacred terrace and undergo the ritual that would make her a woman. And Jarina would serve as her attendant, to aid in the preparations and then wait outside the sacred terrace until the ritual was completed. Usually, that was the task of a priestess, but since there were no priestesses in Sarava, it had been decided that Jarina would do just as well.

It was a high honour for one who had not yet undergone the ritual of womanhood herself. It was even an higher honour considering that Jarina was supposed to be held hostage by the pirates of Sarava. She had been taken prisoner at sea, and since she was a governor’s daughter she had been held for ransom. But as the governor was not only chronically short of money but also the father of four other daughters, no ransom had yet been paid for Jarina.

Nobody had really known what to do with her then. It seemed cruel to kill her. After all, it was hardly her fault that her family had chosen to desert her. Besides, Arianna, daughter of the pirates’ leader, had taken a liking to Jarina and made the girl her attendant, confident, friend. So Jarina found herself stuck here in Sarava. To her own amazement, she enjoyed her predicament far more than she should.

These people were not the fiends her father and the other officials had painted them as. They were pirates, true. They were outlaws, they made a living of stealing and plundering. But they had always treated Jarina kindly, even when no ransom had been paid for her. They could have killed her then, but they did not. They had even granted her some freedom, more freedom in fact than she had had in the governor’s palace. And Arianna was her friend, the closest friend she ever had. No, the people of Sarava were not evil.

Jarina looked up into the sky, where Lady Jopla had risen. Lady Jopla did not think that the people of Sarava were evil. She cast her silvery light on them just as she did on every other man and woman in the world. In fact, she looked even more beautiful hanging there in the indigo sky above the Bay of Sarava than Jarina had ever seen her in the city. Lord Parla, the larger orange moon, had descended below the horizon, once the night fell. Now, the sky belonged exclusively to Lady Jopla. This was her night.

“She is so beautiful,” Jarina said, “I hope she will shine on me just as beautifully, when my time comes to undertake the ritual.”

“You are really looking forward to the ritual, aren’t you?” Arianna wanted to know.

“Of course. Doesn’t everybody?”

Arianna did not reply. She had been unusually quiet all evening long. Jarina blamed it on nerves. After all, Arianna was about to experience one of the most important events in a woman’s life. Even someone as confident as she could not remain entirely untouched by that.

Arianna scanned the night sky with the experienced eye of a sailor. She saw Lady Jopla and Lord Parla and the myriad of stars up there not just as objects of devotion. To her they were more. They were landmarks to guide a ship safely through known and unknown waters. She had tried to teach it to Jarina, how to navigate by the stars and moons. Jarina did not understand much of it, though it was surely most fascinating.

“It is time,” Arianna said after taking a long look at Lady Jopla, “She is almost at her zenith. Do your part, Jarina.”

Carefully, Jarina picked up a silver bowl. “Don’t worry, I know exactly what to do. I watched when my sister undertook the ritual.” She dipped her forefinger into the scented oil and marked Arianna’s forehead and cheeks with it. “Now go, devoted daughter of our Lady Jopla,” she declared solemnly, “May she cast her sacred light on you and grant you her blessings!”

Jarina paused. She was pleased with herself, but also a little bit worried. After all, what she had just done might be considered sacrilege. “Only a priestess is allowed to perform these rites, you know,” she said nervously, “I might get in trouble, if somebody finds out.”

“They won’t find out,” Arianna assured her, “And if they do, just say that we forced you to do it.” With that she turned away and began to mount the stairs that led up to the sacred terrace.

Jarina looked after her friend. “Just say that we forced you to do it.” That was what Arianna always said, whenever Jarina was nervous about doing something that might be against the law. “Just say that we forced you to do it.”

But Jarina wouldn’t say that. She wouldn’t. When she got home again — for there was still no doubt in her mind that she eventually would return home — then she would tell everybody that the pirates of Sarava were not the villains they believed

***

Feeling slightly uncomfortable, Arianna stepped onto the terrace high above the Bay of Sarava. She did not want to undertake this ritual. She enjoyed the life she lived now and the freedom she had. But after this night it would all be over. Never again would she sit on the railing of a ship feeling the wind in her hair. Never again would she climb up the rigging all the way to the crowsnest. Never again would she rush into battle with a sword in her hand. Tonight she would trade all that for the joys of womanhood, marriage… and motherhood. But that was not the life she wanted. Not at all.

“Well,” Arianna sighed, “Let’s get this over with!” She unbuckled the heavy belt which held her sword and her dagger. With a sharp clang it fell to the marble floor of the terrace. Then she loosened the lacing of her full skirt of dark red velvet and let the garment fall to the ground. Her white blouse, black wool stockings and leather shoes followed. Finally, she stepped out of her underclothes and stood naked in the silvery light of Jopla.

Unbeknownst to Arianna, Philon was watching her from his hiding place behind some pots of aromatic shrubs. He gasped, as she slid into the basin for the ritual bath. She was breathtakingly beautiful, her skin shimmering like a marble statue in the pale light of the female moon Jopla. The sweet smell of the petals floating in the water mingled with the stronger odour of the shrubs right in front of his nose, intoxicating him.

Arianna finished the ritual bath and rose from the water. She proceeded to put on the new clothes of womanhood that had been laid out for her. First, she slipped into the skirt, a long hip-hugging garment made of a shiny silvery fabric. The skirt was uncomfortable, Arianna noticed, and left her legs little room to move. She wondered how she should ever walk in that, let alone run or fight.

Next came the top, which was fashioned of the same silvery fabric as the skirt. It was extremely tight, so tight that it restricted her breath. On the other hand, it was also too short and left her midriff entirely exposed to the thrust of blades and the eyes of men. Finally, Arianna put on a heavy ornamental necklace and fastened a massive silver bangle around each of her upper arms.

Now, dressed in the new clothes of womanhood, Arianna stepped in front of the altar, which stood at the far end of the terrace. Twice she nearly tripped over the unfamiliar skirt. She bowed before the altar, then raised her eyes to Lady Jopla, standing high in the sky above the Bay. “Oh, Lady Jopla, mother of women. I, your devoted daughter, plead you, make me a woman. Give me children, as plentiful as…”

In order to see what was going on, Philon had to lean forward as far as he could. Unfortunately, he leant forward a bit too much, lost his balance and tumbled into the flower pots.

The noise made Arianna spin around. She both blushed and blanched at the sight that greeted her. There Philon lay, amid shards of broken flower pots and crushed plants, looking and feeling very much like an idiot and cursing himself for his clumsiness.

For an instant neither of them said or did anything. Arianna was still recovering from the shock of his sudden entrance and Philon still had to regain his composure.

Arianna was the first to recover. Cautiously, she took a few steps forward, this time mindful of her skirt, until she towered above Philon like a vision of loveliness. “How dare you interrupt this sacred ritual?” she demanded, “Speak!”

The sight of her so lovely and so close to him flooded Philon with a sudden surge of courage. Boldly, he sprang to his feet and announced, “Arianna Delora, I have come to make you my wife!”

“What?” Arianna exclaimed without understanding. She moved a few steps back, nearly stumbling once.

“I am asking you to marry me,” Philon repeated, taking a step forward.

This time Arianna did understand him. “Never,” she replied. With as swift a movement as her attire would allow, she bent down and grabbed her sword, which lay amid a pile of clothes on the floor. She unsheathed the blade and pointed it at Philon.

Philon made no movement towards his own sword. Instead, he cautiously advanced with his hands raised above his head. “Arianna,” he said, “we can fight this out if you want to. I am not afraid of you. But I don’t want to hurt you either. So why won’t you be reasonable, lower your blade and behave like an grown woman ought to.”

“I am no grown woman,” Arianna replied, still not lowering her sword.

“And what about the ritual you just undertook?” Philon asked.

“Thanks to you I was not able to complete that ritual. Hence I am no grown woman.”

“You can complete the ritual now. I promise, I won’t interfere. And afterwards we will get married, agreed?”

Arianna’s answer was as swift as it was firm. “No. Leave now or I will call for the guards!”

Philon did not leave, however. Instead he moved even closer. “I won’t go, Arianna,” he said, “I love you and I am going to make you my wife. You cannot refuse me forever.”

This was too much for Arianna. She cried, “I will never marry you, never!” Then she jumped forward, tearing her long skirt in the process, and thrust her sword straight at Philon. Only a swift jump to the side saved him from being impaled on the blade of his intended bride.

“If you want to fight, then so be it.”

Philon drew his own weapon. They fought, Arianna furiously, Philon only halfheartedly. He did not really want to fight her. Even less he wanted to hurt her. But he could not help it. Arianna was a skilled swordswoman and her attack was deadly serious. He had to defend himself or, so he was sure, she would kill him.

Desperately, Philon looked for a way to stop this fight, before either of them got hurt. He finally got his chance, when Arianna, struggling with her torn skirt, let down her guard. Her defenses were down for only a moment, but that moment was enough for Philon. He charged. His sword made contact, cutting loose Arianna’s silvery top.

In shock, Arianna looked down expecting to see blood. But all she saw was exposed skin. She cried out, more with shame than with pain, for Philon’s sword hadn’t even scratched her. Her own blade clattered to the floor, as Arianna desperately tried to cover her nakedness with her hands.

All of a sudden, heavy footsteps echoed up the stairs leading to the terrace. Apparently, the commotion had alerted the guards. The terrace was sacred ground, forbidden to all men. Therefore, the guards were theoretically not allowed to enter it. But Philon was not willing to bet his life on that. He knew that if the guards suspected even the least bit of wrong, they would come at once. And should they find him here, on the enemy’s territory, on sacred ground, with the screaming undressed daughter of his father’s mortal enemy, they would… — well, he had no idea what exactly they would do and he was not willing to find out. It would certainly not be pleasant, that much he knew.

“You have won, Arianna, for now. But I’ll be back, my sweet,” Philon said and swiftly kissed the stunned girl on the mouth. Then he climbed onto the railing and dove head first into the silvery waters of the bay so far below.

The crash of a wave later, a troop of guards, led by Arianna’s father himself, arrived on the terrace. The men were followed by Jarina. “I heard noise and I called them,” she explained.

“Arianna, child, what happened?” Captain Delor demanded.

Arianna flung herself into his arms. “It was so terrible,” she said, “He said he wanted to marry me and then he ruined my clothes and then he kissed me.”

“Arianna, what are you talking about? Who…?”

“It was Philon,” she said, “the son of Urian. He went down there.” She pointed at the waters far beneath the marble railing.

The expression on Captain Delor’s face darkened. In his eyes, a dangerous glare of white-hot anger flashed. “Guards,” he ordered, “search the coast! I want the intruder found. Bring him to me! But don’t even dare to touch him. I will deal with him myself.”

“No,” Arianna said, as she loosened herself from her father’s embrace, “I will deal with him.”

The guards departed and Arianna was left alone with her father, Jarina and her mother, who had also hurried to the terrace as soon as she heard what had happened.

Now the guardsmen were gone, the last remnant of dignity that Arianna had tried to maintain was gone as well. She began to cry. Both her parents and Jarina tried to comfort the sobbing girl.

Arianna’s mother gathered up the discarded clothes of girlhood and handed them to her daughter. “Here, darling, put these on. And never mind about the ritual. You don’t have to complete it tonight after all you have been through. Everybody will understand. You will simply wait until the next night Jopla sheds her silvery light on this sacred ground.” Having comforted her daughter, she turned to her husband. “That impudent boy has defiled the sacred ground and it must be purified. You will just have to kidnap another priestess, dear.”

“No,” Arianna said all of a sudden. Everybody stared at her in wonderment. “I won’t undertake this ritual again. Neither this night nor ever.”

“But Arianna,” her mother said, “you must. Seventeen times has the sun returned to the day of your birth. You are grown up now. You must attain womanhood.”

“I don’t want to,” Arianna insisted, “I don’t want the so-called joys of womanhood. I like my life just the way it is. I love cruising between the thousand isles of Taragon. I love feeling the wind in my hair and tasting the salty water on my lips. I don’t want to lose that. But I would. After undertaking the ritual of womanhood I could never go on another voyage again. My feet could never again walk across the planks of a ship. My hands could never again hold a sword.” She paused, as the full meaning of the night’s events sank in. “And someday,” she said, “another idiot will come and marry me and we would have children and I would be grounded for life. Some girls might be satisfied with that, but I am not.”

Everybody was staring at her in shock. Arianna’s mother was the first one to recover. “But Arianna,” she said, her eyes full of worry, “your talk is heresy.”

“Really? Who says that?”

“You should not talk like that,” Jarina said, “The high priestess of our Lady Jopla is very strict. Should she hear…”

“How should she hear? The high priestess is far away from here. She will never know. And even if she did, what could she do about it? Execute me? They will do that anyway, should they ever catch us, catch me. We are pirates, outlaws. We are under a death sentence anyway. They can kill me only once. And I don’t much care whether they hang me for piracy or bury me alive for heresy.”

“Arianna!”

She had only been frank, she had said what they all knew was true. Yet they all stared at her, as if she had committed some unforgivable crime. Maybe it was unforgivable in the eyes of the law. She had done many an unforgivable thing in its eyes. But they cared not for the law. Her father had always told her that the law was not made for people like them. They were free. And that was all Arianna wanted to be. Free.

“Father,” Arianna said, almost pleading now, “you said yourself that I was a good sailor and an excellent swordswoman. And I am your only child. You have no heir. So let me be your heir then. I promise I will be a worthy successor to you.”

Arianna had expected arguments and opposition, but to her own surprise she met with none. For an instant she even thought she saw something akin to pride in her father’s eyes. Then it was gone. “Do what you think is right, child. You are old enough,” he said.

Then Captain Delor took his wife by the hand. “Come, my dear. She is determined. No use arguing with her now. Someday she will come to her senses.”

Arianna’s mother cast one last worried glance at her daughter. Then her eyes darted upwards to Lady Jopla, as if she expected her to fall from the sky in a stream of fire and boil up the sea and blacken the sun and stir up a tidal wave the likes of which no man’s eye had ever seen to wash away the heretics who had broken her sacred law, just as it was told in the legends of old. But nothing of that sort happened. The night was beautiful and clear. Lady Jopla continued to cast her silvery light on the terrace sacred to her. It almost seemed as if she was smiling upon her defiant daughter.

Finally, Arianna’s mother turned around and followed her husband. Now Arianna was left alone with Jarina. “Are you sure you did the right thing?” Jarina asked.

“Perfectly sure. Don’t tell me that deep in your heart you do not feel the way I do. Don’t tell me that you do not enjoy the freedom we have. Don’t tell me that you really want to undertake that ritual when the time comes for you.”

“I don’t know,” Jarina replied, “I really don’t. I have always been a good and obedient daughter. I always did what was expected of me. I guess I… I’m just not used to so much freedom.”

“You will get used to it in time,” Arianna said, “Best is we start right away. Tomorrow a small boat leaves to patrol the Strait of Arras and look for prey. I want to be the one to command her. Are you coming with me?”

Jarina nodded, still unsure of herself.

“Then let’s go. Although there is one more thing I have to do. An oath I have to take here on this sacred ground.”

“This is not good, Arianna”, Jarina said, worried again now, “You have just insulted Lady Jopla. You have rejected her teachings. You should not try her patience by taking a sacred oath in her name.”

Arianna ignored her. She had had enough of arguing for one night. Lady Jopla was still peacefully shining down on the bay, though she had traveled noticeably closer to the horizon.

Once more Arianna stepped in front of the altar. “I will make Philon pay for what he did to me this night. Even if he saved me from doing what I would have regretted all my life. But nevertheless, he deserves death for what he has done. And I shall be his executioner. I hate him. I shall never forgive him for this and someday I will have his head for it. This I swear, by the Lady of Jopla, on this sacred ground.”

A single cloud passed over the serene face of the moon Jopla, as she prepared to descend into the waters for a day’s rest.

The End

***

That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new free story will be posted.

A Podcast and a New Story

The next Star Trek Picard review is coming, but for now I just want to point out two other places where you can find me on the web this week.

For starters, I was a guest on the Dickheads Podcast (as in Philip K. Dick), where I discussed the 1955 science fiction novel The Big Jump by Leigh Brackett with Grant Warmack and host David Agranoff. As for why we discussed a Leigh Brackett novel on a Philip K. Dick podcast, The Big Jump was originally one half of an Ace Double, paired with Philip K. Dick’s debut novel Solar Lottery.

You can listen to the episode here. Also check out the interview I did with David Agranoff for the Fancast Spotlight project.

In other news, I also have a new flash fiction story out on the website of Wyngraf Magazine of Cozy Fantasy. It’s called “A Cry on the Battlefield” and it’s basically Conan the Dad.

And while you’re over at the Wyngraf website, also check out the other new cozy fantasy flash story, “The God’s Apology” by Ian Martínez Cassmeyer.

Finally, Issue 1 of Wyngraf Magazine of Cozy Fantasy comes out today, so check it out.

And that’s it for today. The Star Trek Picard review is coming soon as well as another post I’ve been working on for a while now.

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for April 2022

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie and small press authors newly published this month, though some March books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have urban fantasy, epic fantasy, historical fantasy, fantasy romance, sword and sorcery, fairy tale retellings, paranormal mystery, science fiction thrillers, space opera, military science fiction, dystopian fiction, Norse mythology, Greek mythology, werewolves, dragons, valkyries, beasts, giddesses, grim reapers, spirit seekers, aliens, space marines, outlaw hackers, revenge of nature, crime-busting witches, crime-busting skeletons and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

What Lies Behind by Jonathan P. Brazee and J.N. Chaney:

A new alien threat arises. A Galactic War unlike any before it.

A powerful enemy threatens not only humanity, but humankind’s former enemy, the Centaurs. A warrior race, the Naxli, consider themselves the rightful rulers of the galaxy, and all other life should be either enslaved or destroyed. Still, the Naxli are honor bound, only willing to face those who present a worthy challenge. They recognize strength and nothing else, so it is with strength that humanity must fight back.

Faced with an implacable enemy, distrust within his own government, and a deep-seated fear within the populace of augmented soldiers, Rev and his fellow hyper-augments must carefully balance a tightrope if they are going to save humanity against this enemy.

Now is not the time for second guesses, political hyperbole, or weakness. Humanity must stand and fight together or risk losing all that they’ve gained.

Charmed and Dangerous by Lindsay Buroker:

After battling witches, werewolves, and a crazy one-eyed rougarou with a vendetta, starting a business making magical charms should be easy.

At least, that’s what Morgen Keller thought.

But now she’s leased a haunted building, her cousin is dating the town’s scheming mayor, and Amar—AKA the handsome werewolf she’s been dating—is embroiled in what could be the final showdown between two rival werewolf packs.

If his pack doesn’t come out on top, she could lose her lover, her business partner, and the only guy willing to catch mice for her snooty owl familiar.

Why did Morgen ever think life in the small town of Bellrock would be simple?

Frolic on the Amaranthyn by Chase A. Folmar:

Through lands awash in dark secrets and half-forgotten truths, the duo Uralant and Emrasarie wield swordsmanship and seduction alike in the pursuit of fortune and precious coin.

But when a failed ploy for riches leads them to a city seduced beneath the thrall of ancient and malevolent sorcery, they unwillingly become entwined in the schemes of a nightmarish zealot and his own search for guarded treasures.

…and the deeper they continue to delve, the more the two come to realize they are little more than pawns against powers far greater than anything they could have ever imagined.

Head Case by M.R. Forbes:

Ben never thought owning a starship would be easy. He didn’t expect it to be quite like this.

It was one thing to take a job as a smuggler to pay for basic necessities like maintenance, fuel, and food. Another to have one of the most powerful nobles in the galaxy gunning for him at every turn. But when Keep turns up unexpectedly with a new offer that’s even wilder than the last, will it put him on the path toward his true destiny?

Or is it just another con?

Skull and Crossbones by Rachel Ford:

I’m a magic-wielding Freak. My partner Flinty Jack is a sentient skeleton. But for all that, we’re not fireproof.

When a vengeful serial killer nearly roasts us in our beds, the FBI whisks me, my fiancée, and my partner into protective custody in a remote safehouse on a quiet Maine island.

But we’re about to find that we stepped out of the frying pan into the fire. There’re more skeletons in the closets of this picturesque town than one of Flinty Jack’s family reunions.

Between hostile locals, mysterious visitors from the past, and something fishy happening on the coast, a serial killer is looking tame.

Gods of the Sands by Chris Fox:

Condemned to Die Upon the Sands

I have been sentenced to death for the crime of being born. Of winning the Hasran’s war for them. But my death has purchased the freedom of my people, and so I go to it gladly, ready for whatever final torture they might have in mind.

The Imperator has decreed that I will be sacrificed in the Great Games, a sacred ritual that will magically empower the Gateway Arena. It requires five god-souled, the reincarnations of gods, divine shards that can be fed to the Arena, and used to increase its size.

It means my life has narrowed to one purpose. Live. Each day I train, and each week I fight. Harder, and harder challenges until I die. For there is no escape, no reprieve. Once the ritual begins it can only end with my death.

Heaven and Spell by Lily Harper Hart:

Ofelia Archer isn’t a fan of change, even when it benefits her. That’s why moving in with her boyfriend Zach Sully – even though it’s temporary – has her constantly pacing. She’s convinced it’s because the space doesn’t feel like her own, but it turns out to be more than that.

When leaving for work one day, Ofelia stumbles across a body hanging from the church belfry across the road. When she and Sully start asking questions, they find the church used to operate under a different name … and a tragic fire sixty years before has left a tainted memory.

Ofelia is haunted – and not just by the ghostly nuns flitting through the church’s windows – but also by a mystery that should’ve been solved decades before. The harder she digs, the more horror she finds.

It seems New Orleans has a demon on the loose, and the creature could be hiding behind any face. Ofelia is determined to take out the demon and free the neighborhood from torment, but when Sully becomes the demon’s next target, her efforts are for naught.

Ofelia is loyal to a fault and willing to die for those she loves. She just might have to if she expects to keep Sully safe.

New Orleans is home to ghosts and goblins on every corner. This monster, however, might be more than the city’s favorite witch can overcome.

Coral Red by A.L. Hawke:

The immortal shall die by the will of Persephone.

Greek triremes approach the shores of Cassandra’s kingdom, home of the Amazon nymphs, threatening a sea battle. At a young age, Cassandra is forced to defend Azure Blue. If she cannot stave off invasion, Zeus will finally have victory over the nymphs.

Meanwhile the young Greek hero Theseus Aegeus tries to lay claim to Athens. His father, the sea god Poseidon, orders him to complete a series of tasks. While completing one, Theseus meets Cassandra in Atlantis. He is struck by the queen’s strength, beauty, and righteousness. Unlike his people, he does not wish her or her subjects harm. But can the couple do anything to avert a war that’s been building for centuries?

No matter what the outcome, Mount Olympus will have to contend with Cora, the goddess Persephone. No one can douse the fire stewing in the depths of her heart. But if Cora wars, she risks hurting the land and people she loves amidst her deluge of fury.

Coral Red is book III, the final book in The Azure Series trilogy.

Cascade by Joshua James:

OPERATION CASCADE IS UNDERWAY.

The changes on Enceladus are causing ripples throughout the solar system — and beyond. But the Artifact isn’t done yet.

The end is only the beginning…

Cascade, the second book in the Saturn’s Legacy series, is a sci-fi thriller full of mystery, intrigue, and epic action from the depths of the ocean to the edge of outer space.

The Language of Roses by Heather Rose Jones:

A Beauty. A Beast. A Curse. This is not the story you know.

Join author Heather Rose Jones on a new and magical journey into the heart of a familiar fairytale. Meet Alys, eldest daughter of a merchant, a merchant who foolishly plucks a rose from a briar as he flees from the home of a terrifying fay Beast and his seemingly icy sister. Now Alys must pay the price to save his life and allow the Beast, the once handsome Philippe, to pay court to her.

But Alys has never fallen in love with anyone; how can she love a Beast? The fairy Peronelle, waiting in the woods to see the culmination of her curse, is sure that she will fail. Yet, if she does, Philippe’s sister Grace and her beloved Eglantine, trapped in an enchanted briar in the garden, will pay a terrible price. Unless Alys can find another way…

Only the Evil by Amanda M. Lee:

The revenant war is officially here.

Armed with a list of reapers who have turned to the dark side, the Grimlocks are at a crossroads. Izzy Sage knows that they’ve barely scratched the surface on the evil that’s pervading their world but she’s unsure where to look. Then the problem comes looking for them.

When checking in at the yacht club on Belle Isle, a dead man attacks … and he doesn’t go down easily. It turns out, not only are the dead jumping back into their bodies, but several reapers have gone missing.

With the Michigan territory thrown into turmoil, the Grimlocks know they need help. The revenants aren’t capable of causing this sort of chaos, which means someone else is providing the magic. Who, though?

Help shows up in the form of Zoe Lake-Winters, and she’s not alone. The enigmatic god Cernunnos is with her, although as usual, he’s stingy with the information. As the dead accumulate in the city, they start to move on the forces of good. It’s going to take everybody working together – including a few new friends – to overcome an undead army.

It seems another figure has been pulling the strings from the beginning, and when the identity of the puppet master is outed, it will change everything.

Here it comes. The answers you’ve been waiting for are finally here.

Grease the Wheel by Amanda M. Lee:

Stormy Morgan is a witch with too much attitude, an old love fueling new fires in her soul, and a talking cat who keeps threatening to give her an ulcer. She’s got a full plate. Things get even busier in her life when a body drops outside her boyfriend Hunter Ryan’s house … and the death looks like more than a standard murder.

Even though her magic is growing at an exponential rate, Stormy is still a novice when it comes to wielding her new power. She’s determined to find answers, prove herself invaluable to Hunter in the process, but each lead brings more questions … and all of them are of the mind-blowing variety.

The victim, a man who wove a tapestry of lies across multiple towns, doesn’t stir Stormy’s sympathy. The puzzle of his life is too much for her to ignore though. On top of that, her new roommate has turned into a big problem, and she has no idea how to fix it.

Stormy moved home to make her life better, and she’s succeeding at every turn. That doesn’t mean she’s safe.

At her core, she’s a fighter … and she’s going to need all her strength for what’s to come. The victim’s vices were of the human variety, but what killed him was something so much more dangerous. It’s up to Stormy to save the day. Again.

If she can, that is.

Silver Dust by G.K. Lund:

What would make you betray your family of deadly assassins?

A lethal abomination is roaming the streets of Agartha—a forbidden werewolf and vampire hybrid.

Nadia Navarra, half-werewolf and a young member of the Queen’s Wraiths, knows this monster all too well. Lying low, she has tried to sever every connection to this beast.

When the creature reappears, crazed and tormented from his transformation into a monster, Nadia’s loyalties to the Wraiths are tested. Especially when someone closer to her than either her connection to the past or the Wraiths needs her help.

Facing an impossible choice, Nadia is desperate to do the right thing for those who need her the most. But that means embarking on a life where she must continually balance lies…

Silver Dust is a dark urban fantasy novelette of 20K words. It is also a starting point to the Queen’s Wraith series, but can be read as a standalone story.

Of Claws and Inferno by Kyoko M.

In a modern day world teeming with marauding dragons, there is only one solution: The Wild Hunt.

Dr. Rhett “Jack” Jackson and Dr. Kamala Anjali have worked for the Knight Division capturing wild dragons for years, but now the government has decided to hold a tournament called The Wild Hunt. Jack, Kamala, and their teammates Calloway, Libby, Agent Shannon, and Yousef, must capture five of the deadliest dragons alive before the opposing team or they lose their jobs at the Knight Division. Jack and Kamala are also chasing after Kazuma Okegawa, the yakuza lieutenant who has been trying to kill them. Okegawa is planning a hostile takeover of the worldwide illegal dragon trade and if he succeeds, everyone will be in grave danger. Between the Wild Hunt and Okegawa’s plot to destroy everything in his path, Jack and Kamala have to rely on each other to stay alive in the middle of an inferno.

Of Claws and Inferno is the fifth book in the Of Cinder and Bone science fiction/contemporary fantasy series. It follows Of Cinder and Bone, Of Blood and Ashes, Of Dawn and Embers, and Of Fury and Fangs.

Before Times by Kim McDougall:

Before Times, 3 Valkyrie Bestiary Prequels:

The Last Door to Underhill: In the last hours of the Flood Wars, a fae princess makes the ultimate sacrifice to save the human world.

The Girl Who Cried Banshee: Kyra Greene is a pest controller, not an exterminator. She has to be clear about that when the pests can be anything from pixies to dragons. But when her fledgling business teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, Kyra takes on a job that blurs those lines.

Three Half Goats Gruff: Kyra Greene, pest controller of fantastic beasts, takes on a rock troll and meets the man who will haunt her dreams for the next three-hundred and twenty-one nights. Come sing around the campfire with satyrs and discover how Kyra found one little lost cephalopod.

Before Times tells the tales of Kyra Green, pest-controller of extraordinary beasts and Leighna Icewolf, Queen of the Fae—two warriors learning to navigate new roads in a world where magic is the only rule of law. Each story takes place 1 to 50 years before the events of Dragons Don’t Eat Meat, Book 1 of the Valkyrie Bestiary Series.

Burnout by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant:

Cutter Dunn was born a ghost. Unchipped and unregistered, he exists as a nonperson, living off-the-grid, unrecognized by the facial recognition software built into every smart glass device that provides everyone with everything they want and need. According to the official system, he doesn’t even exist.

He has the skills and out-of-the-box perspective to design the nuts-and-bolts mechanism for the next generation of driverless shipping vehicles. He’s also the kind of person that a massively wealthy and corrupt corporation can exploit and make disappear without a trace. For good measure, they also erased his home settlement of Amenity, bulldozing the dwellings, scattering the residents. And that was their big mistake.

Because Cutter knows they can’t track what they can’t trace. And they won’t know what he’s planning until it hits them.

Natural Selection by Janna Ruth:

Nature has declared war on us, and we’re here to answer that call.

Wulf might be the greatest spirit seeker the agency that leads the war against nature has to offer. A new mission calls him and other elite spirit seekers to Italy where they face off against an active volcano. Two thousand years ago, Vesuvius obliterated the city of Pompeii. Now the fire spirit has set his eyes on Naples.

Leading the spirit seekers into the volcano, Wulf begins to realise that his biggest challenge might not be the spirits but keeping this group of big egos in check. Tensions rise as the heat is turned up and one false move could spell out their death.

Join the Spirit Seekers in this prequel to meet the greatest of them all in action!

Outlaw Rising by Kate Sheeran Swed:

Secretly, Sloane Tarnish has always admired her outlaw of an uncle, and his tales of not-so-legal adventures across the galaxy–but she never thought she’d be asked to help with one of his heists.

When Uncle Vin shows up on her med school campus with a plan to steal a chip full of Fleet intelligence–and the baffling idea to have her play a key role in the scheme–Sloane’s got her doubts. Uncle Vin doesn’t seem to realize that her top skills involve the kind of shots you drink, not the ones you fire.

But Vin’s convinced the Fleet’s got plans to install empirical rule across the free galaxy, and that this data could stop them before they can begin. When a bunch of rogue delivery drones start taking shots at her–and not the liquid kind–she has to figure he’s onto something.

To prove it, all she needs to do is steal the data key from the middle of a Fleet ball… and right out from under the Commander’s nose.

Too bad she’s got absolutely no idea what she’s doing…

Outlaw Rising is the prequel novella to the Parse Galaxy space opera adventure series.

Star Breaker by James David Victor:

Humanity’s only chance of survival might be to embrace those that have been long considered outcasts.

Holly Cropper and her team have been separated. When her mission to unite humanity is interrupted by a full-scale invasion, she must do the unthinkable. She must embrace her roots and work with the people she has spent a lifetime trying to avoid. Can Holly and the Breaker group she so desperately tried to leave in her past help defeat the Thaal invasion?

Star Breaker is the seventh book in the Star Breaker series. If you like fast-paced space adventures with interesting characters who battle aliens, evil corporations, and space pirates, Holly Cropper and her team of Marines are ready to share their epic adventure with you.

Download Star Breaker and continue this epic space adventure today!

Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for April 2022

Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of crime fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some March books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, hardboiled mysteries, humorous mysteries, historical mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, Regency mysteries, paranormal mysteries, crime thrillers, psychological thrillers, action thrillers, adventure thrillers, pulp thrillers, spy thrillers, police procedurals, police officers, private investigators, amateur sleuths, FBI agents, spies, assassins, terrorists, missing families, missing jade masks, organised crime, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting realtors, death by wind turbine, murder and mayhem in London, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, Colorado, Upstate New York, the Cayman Islands, Rome, Saudi Arabia, Tadjikistan and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Murder Beside the Swift Waters by Blythe Baker:

When Lillian Crawford is persuaded to investigate a mysterious death for a family friend, she thinks the case will be solved quickly. But as one surprise after another is unraveled, Lillian finds herself without the help of Felix just when she needs her brother most.

Can Lillian discover the victim’s secrets before it’s too late…and can she do it alone?

 

 

An Inescapable Conclusion by Blythe Baker:

Despite all the dark happenings she has experienced at Pemberton Heights, Jane cannot refuse a summons to rush back to the bedside of her dying uncle. As it becomes clear there is a shadow hovering over the manor, Jane is drawn one final time into a web of lies and danger…

 

 

 

All the Devils Are Here by Beth Byers:

Smith has been asked to help with a case that no one wants to work. A girl’s gone missing and the most likely suspect is one of the Scotland Yard men.

He’s not a man to give a pass to police officers, but this will open himself, his wife, and his friends up to potential danger depending on who’s involved. Now the question is, what will it take for him to find the girl. How far will he go to catch the killer before Scotland Yard finds proof of the many, many laws he has broken? Or maybe Scotland Yard will turn on Smith and the tenuous peace between them will be broken. It’s a race of skill and trust as Smith tries to keep his family safe and Beatrice tries to keep Smith alive.

The Cartographers Guild and the Search for the Jade Mask by Aaron Cummins:

A roller coaster ride of action and adventure in the grand pulp tradition

Kidnapped friends. A raging revolution. Dangerous mountains. And, at the end of the trail, a lost city that holds a secret worth killing for.

Ace Barrett is a daredevil pilot with iron fists and a wooden head. There’s no danger he won’t face for his friends.
Verity Hester is a research assistant with unusual skills and a secret past. She can pick locks and pockets with equal dexterity. Just don’t ask her where she picked those skills up.

Explorers have called the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan “the roof of the world” for centuries. Snow-capped peaks tower over deep, dark valleys. Visitors to the Pamirs face extreme weather, dangerous slopes, and deadly creatures.

The year is 1922. When two members of a mapping expedition are kidnapped by raiders, the members of the Cartographers Guild will stop at nothing to get them back. The explorers follow the trail into the uncharted mountains and face doom at every turn, while their missing companions are forced to brave ancient dangers to locate a legendary treasure. If bandits or traps don’t kill them, the mountains will. Their crusade leads to an impossible lost city—one no archaeologist would believe—and the home of the fabled jade mask.

Will the explorers save their friends, or will they die while searching for the jade mask?

Flame and Fortune by Jana DeLeon:

No smoke without a fire.

It’s New Year’s in Sinful, and the competition for the New Year’s Queen is heating up as the warring churches go head-to-head. Fortune Redding is not the sequined dress kind of woman, but reluctantly agrees to partake in the debacle so that Ida Belle and Gertie can best their nemesis, Celia, who’s put up former Sinful mean girl RJ Rogers.

RJ and her friend Brock Benoit left plenty of devastation in their wake when they fled Sinful after high school. So when they return and Brock is found dead, there’s no shortage of suspects. Fortune, Ida Belle, and Gertie know all too well what it’s like to live under suspicion of a crime with no resolution. When good people become the targets of gossip, they know they have to rush to unravel the tangled lives of RJ and Brock and expose a killer before the wrong person’s reputation is ruined. Or worse—they’re arrested for a crime they didn’t commit.

Surprise, Surprise! by Mike Faricy:

Surprise, Surprise!

Private Investigator Dev Haskell watches a gorgeous woman strut across the street and head into his building. A moment later she knocks on his office door. Beautiful, sexy, Phoenix Starr hires Dev to investigate her husband, Sterling Kozlow. She thinks he might be having an affair. After following Kozlow for days Dev waits for him to meet a woman in a bar. Unfortunately, he never shows, at least until Dev finds him… Meanwhile Crime Lord Tubby Gustafson has an unwanted visitor…his sister. Tubby makes it clear Dev Haskell will be dealing with this problem. Dev deals with the problem, just not the way Tubby may have considered. Another delightfully entertaining Dev Haskell tale.

Skull and Crossbones by Rachel Ford:

I’m a magic-wielding Freak. My partner Flinty Jack is a sentient skeleton. But for all that, we’re not fireproof.

When a vengeful serial killer nearly roasts us in our beds, the FBI whisks me, my fiancée, and my partner into protective custody in a remote safehouse on a quiet Maine island.

But we’re about to find that we stepped out of the frying pan into the fire. There’re more skeletons in the closets of this picturesque town than one of Flinty Jack’s family reunions.

Between hostile locals, mysterious visitors from the past, and something fishy happening on the coast, a serial killer is looking tame.

The House on the Hill by Elle Gray:

When a family of 4 goes missing seemingly in the dead of night, Blake Wilder and her team are called to find the young family and determine the reason for their sudden disappearance.

Change is the only constant in life. It’s a lesson FBI Agent Blake Wilder is having to learn all over again. Summoned to DC by a Bureau legend, Blake is excited, imagining big things on the horizon for her team. That excitement though, is quickly dashed as her entire world is instead, turned upside down and she’s left to pick up all the pieces.

A reorganization within the Bureau has stripped Blake of her command and the unit she’d given her blood, sweat, and tears to build, turned over to somebody else. In this new role though, she is given a case that takes her team to Colorado to investigate a missing persons case.
There she finds that nothing is as it seems. Blake is having to adjust to this new world and her new team members as she finds herself caught up in a web of international intrigue, espionage, and cold-blooded murder.

New enemies rise, and old adversaries come to the forefront as Blake and her team race to find a man and his family being hunted by a ruthless organization. The sands of the world are shifting beneath her feet. Nobody and nothing is what she believes and Blake doesn’t know who to trust.

With the lives of the young family on the line, Blake juggles the danger that surrounds her, the changes that she faces, and the perplexing mysteries regarding what happened that night at The House on the Hill.

Heaven and Spell by Lily Harper Hart:

Ofelia Archer isn’t a fan of change, even when it benefits her. That’s why moving in with her boyfriend Zach Sully – even though it’s temporary – has her constantly pacing. She’s convinced it’s because the space doesn’t feel like her own, but it turns out to be more than that.

When leaving for work one day, Ofelia stumbles across a body hanging from the church belfry across the road. When she and Sully start asking questions, they find the church used to operate under a different name … and a tragic fire sixty years before has left a tainted memory.

Ofelia is haunted – and not just by the ghostly nuns flitting through the church’s windows – but also by a mystery that should’ve been solved decades before. The harder she digs, the more horror she finds.

It seems New Orleans has a demon on the loose, and the creature could be hiding behind any face. Ofelia is determined to take out the demon and free the neighborhood from torment, but when Sully becomes the demon’s next target, her efforts are for naught.

Ofelia is loyal to a fault and willing to die for those she loves. She just might have to if she expects to keep Sully safe.

New Orleans is home to ghosts and goblins on every corner. This monster, however, might be more than the city’s favorite witch can overcome.

Stolen Summer by Nicholas Harvey:

A new crime. An old secret. A familiar demon.

When the Cayman Islands police investigate a burglary, Constable Nora Sommer recognises the victim from a past she’s desperate to forget.

As thefts continue, consuming the department’s focus and resources, Nora can’t shake her new found knowledge – a guilty man living a happy life… behind a lie.

A missing girl adds further strain, and with little evidence in either case, Nora develops an improbable theory she’s determined to prove.

How far will Nora go to right the wrong one man will do anything to hide?

Final Walk Through by CeeCee James:

Stella O’Neil tried to get along with her rival, she really did. But when her rival is found murdered, she wasn’t as shocked as she might have been. Angela had been making enemies all her life; people either loved or hated her.

Everyone knew that Angela had been trying to ruin Stella’s business ever since she helped a client, so Stella is shocked to find she’s the prime suspect.

She has motive, access to the property where Angela was killed and no alibi… if she doesn’t find the murderer, she might pay for a crime she didn’t commit.

Perfect Extraction by Ethan Jones:

How do you say goodbye?

After an agonizing, unsuccessful search for his missing family, Jack Storm finally makes a breakthrough. But how much can he trust the one offering him this supposed sliver of hope? His source has already betrayed him before; could she be doing it again?

Before getting the intel, Jack is tasked with executing the most daring extraction of his entire career, right under his agency’s nose. A former Saudi spy chief is seeking political asylum in Canada, but the Saudi royal family has branded him a traitor and wants him dead.

With more questions than answers, will Jack risk it all on this daredevil operation and be able to pull off … the Perfect Extraction?

Lose yourself in Jack’s most personal and brilliant mission ever with a spectacularly satisfying twist.

Vatican Conspiracy by Ethan Jones:

What if your closest friend was going to kill you?

CIS elite operative Carrie O’Connor dives headfirst into the underground to uncover Italian mafia ties to a recent Islamic terrorist bombing of a passenger airplane from Rome. But when her asset within the mob is exposed, she realizes that nothing is as it seems and things are far worse than she could have ever imagined.

As she digs deeper, Carrie discovers a potential connection between the mafia and one of the highest religious figures in Italy. Working around dangerous loyalties, she must unmask the real conspirator to avoid a devastating clash between two worldwide religions.

How will Carrie discover the most sinister conspiracy to ever threaten The Vatican?

Grease the Wheel by Amanda M. Lee:

Stormy Morgan is a witch with too much attitude, an old love fueling new fires in her soul, and a talking cat who keeps threatening to give her an ulcer. She’s got a full plate. Things get even busier in her life when a body drops outside her boyfriend Hunter Ryan’s house … and the death looks like more than a standard murder.

Even though her magic is growing at an exponential rate, Stormy is still a novice when it comes to wielding her new power. She’s determined to find answers, prove herself invaluable to Hunter in the process, but each lead brings more questions … and all of them are of the mind-blowing variety.

The victim, a man who wove a tapestry of lies across multiple towns, doesn’t stir Stormy’s sympathy. The puzzle of his life is too much for her to ignore though. On top of that, her new roommate has turned into a big problem, and she has no idea how to fix it.

Stormy moved home to make her life better, and she’s succeeding at every turn. That doesn’t mean she’s safe.

At her core, she’s a fighter … and she’s going to need all her strength for what’s to come. The victim’s vices were of the human variety, but what killed him was something so much more dangerous. It’s up to Stormy to save the day. Again.

If she can, that is.

Burnout by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant:

Cutter Dunn was born a ghost. Unchipped and unregistered, he exists as a nonperson, living off-the-grid, unrecognized by the facial recognition software built into every smart glass device that provides everyone with everything they want and need. According to the official system, he doesn’t even exist.

He has the skills and out-of-the-box perspective to design the nuts-and-bolts mechanism for the next generation of driverless shipping vehicles. He’s also the kind of person that a massively wealthy and corrupt corporation can exploit and make disappear without a trace. For good measure, they also erased his home settlement of Amenity, bulldozing the dwellings, scattering the residents. And that was their big mistake.

Because Cutter knows they can’t track what they can’t trace. And they won’t know what he’s planning until it hits them.

Killer Smile by Mary Stone:

If looks can kill, a smile can be deadly.

Special Agent Stella Knox became an FBI agent to find the dirty cops responsible for her father’s murder and make them pay. But fresh out of Quantico, her first case has her seeking justice for a different victim—three of them, in fact.

The bodies of three teenage boys have turned up in a sleepy town outside of Nashville, TN. There’re no fingerprints, no DNA, and very little to connect the murders, except for a smiley face drawn in blood near two of the bodies. But why only two? The case makes zero sense, and the questions outnumber the answers.

Are the crimes related? Could it be the work of one calculating serial killer, or are they looking for three separate assailants?

One thing Stella knows for sure: someone is threatening the teenagers of small-town Cherry Farms, and they aren’t finished. As she and the team race against the clock to stop the nightmare that has descended upon this rural community, Stella has one more question…who will be next?

Dead Wind by Tessa Wegert:

Senior Investigator Shana Merchant must dredge up dark secrets and old grudges if she’s to solve the murder of a prominent local citizen in the Thousand Islands community she now calls home.

The body is discovered on Wolfe Island, under the shadow of an enormous wind turbine. Senior Investigator Shana Merchant, arriving on the scene with fellow investigator Tim Wellington, can’t shake the feeling that she knows the victim – and the subsequent identification sends shockwaves through their community in the Thousand Islands of Upstate New York.

Politics, power, passion . . . there are dark undercurrents in Shana’s new home, and finding the killer means dredging up her new friends and neighbors’ old grudges and long-kept secrets.

That is, if the killer is from the community at all. For Shana’s keeping a terrible secret of her own: eighteen months ago she escaped from serial killer Blake Bram’s clutches. But has he followed her . . . to kill again?

The Shana Merchant novels are a brilliant blend of chilling psychological thriller and gripping police procedural, set in an atmospheric island community with a small-town vibe.

Star Trek Picard begs for “Mercy” and takes a detour into X-Files territory

Here is my take on the latest episode of Star Trek Picard. For my take on previous episodes and seasons of Star Trek Picard, go here.

Warning: Spoilers below the cut!

When we last met Jean-Luc Picard and his Merry Men and Women, Agnes had been taken over by the Borg Queen, Raffi and Seven were chasing her down, Rios decided to come clean to Doctor Teresa and give her and her son a tour of La Sirena and Picard and Guinan had just been arrested by the FBI.

In my review of the previous episode, I wrote:

Why would the FBI follow up on security camera footage of old men randomly materialising in alleys? This is not The X-Files, where the FBI absolutely would investigate such things and everything would be a huge conspiracy besides. It’s the Star Trek universe, where the FBI is probably more interested in hunting terrorists and serial killers than in investigating paranormal occurrences.

However, it turns out that The X-Files is exactly what we’re watching here – or rather we’re watching the Star Trek Picard version of The X-Files. Because Agent Wells, the FBI agent who arrests Picard and Guinan, is basically a less attractive version of Fox Mulder, a man who has been haunted by childhood experience all his life and joined the FBI to exorcise that childhood trauma (certain parallels to Picard’s deep dark trauma there). Because as a kid, young Wells was looking for his missing dog in the woods by night and stumbled upon two Vulcans doing survey work (it was established in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode “Carbon Creek” that the Vulcans had been visiting and observing Earth prior to first contact). Young Wells runs away, but trips and falls. The Vulcans catch up with him and one mind-melds with him to erase his memories. However, this doesn’t work – presumably because the Vulcans are unfamiliar with humans – leaving behind a traumatised kid. And thus an obsessions is born.

Young Wells (the character doesn’t get a first name, as far as I know) also witnesses the Vulcans beaming back to their vessel, so when adult Wells sees the security cam footage of Picard materialising in the alley behind Guinan’s bar, he recognises the transporter effect and assumes he’s caught an alien. Of course, Picard is no alien and also very clearly tells Wells that he’s not, while Guinan – who actually is an alien – laughs.

The X-Files parallels don’t end there, because Wells takes Picard and Guinan to a dodgy basement office full of filing boxes and with a broken surveillance camera, much like Mulder’s basement office in The X-Files. Though Wells doesn’t have an “I Want To Believe” poster – nor does he have a Scully equivalent. Guinan even points out that Agent Wells isn’t the FBI’s finest, but that he’s very much the dregs of the FBI, the weird guy with the alien obsession who’s only tolerated because he occasionally catches some genuine criminals while hunting for aliens.

Star Trek and The X-Files spring from different branches of the great science fiction tree. Nonetheless, Star Trek has occasionally ventured into The X-Files territory of alien contact and conspiracy, most notably in the (hilarious) Deep Space Nine episode “Little Green Men”. The Next Generation episode “First Contact” predates The X-Files by two years, but it has a similar vibe, only that this time the human Riker is the “alien” who is captured.

That said, I certainly did not expect to see a Star Trek show doing an X-Files riff in 2022. For starters, the original X-Files ended twenty years ago, not counting the 2008 second movie and the 2018 revival. And secondly, while still of immense pop cultural importance, The X-Files has somewhat fallen out of favour, because its “All the conspiracy theories are true” approach looks a tad sinister in the age of Pizzagate, Q-Anon, the Great Reset and other real world conspiracy theories, which are popular particularly among the far right and  which do real harm. Some people even blame The X-Files for the rise of conspiracy theories, which is nonsense, because The X-Files did not invent conspiracy theories, it just tapped into the zeitgeist.

However, The X-Files ran concurrently with much the second Star Trek boom from 1987 to 2005 or Next Generation through Enterprise and is very much part of the pop culture of that era and in fact a part that was a lot more influential than Star Trek. And considering that Star Trek Picard draws a lot on nostalgia for 1990s Star Trek, an X-Files riff makes sense. Furthermore, Jeri Ryan played a bad arse Russian assassin on Dark Skies, one of the many X-Files copycats of the 1990s well before she was Seven of Nine. In fact, Jeri Ryan was about the only thing that was good about Dark Skies, so good that she displaced the original female lead Megan Ward for the last few episodes of that one season wonder. Here’s a clip of Jeri Ryan being awesome in Dark Skies.

Like Mulder and Scully, Agent Wells sure is persistent and has gathered a lot of evidence, even if he draws the wrong conclusions from it. Which, come to think of it, is very X-Files as well, since Mulder is perpetually drawing the wrong conclusions. Basically, Agents Wells has traced Picard to the Europa mission pre-launch party and identified his co-conspirators as unidentified gatecrashers at the party. He then crossreferenced databases and finds Rios’ arrest record in the ICE database. This leads Wells to the statement Rios gave to one of the ICE guards (and likely also to a report about the deportation bus being attacked and the detainees freed under mysterious circumstances), namely that he’s on mission to save the future with a cybernetic queen who wants to wipe out humanity and a crochety old admiral who’s a flesh and blood android. Wells glosses over the latter, even though it makes Picard visibly squirm, but is very interested in the former, since Wells very much wants to save humanity from the alien menace. Which – considering that all Wells’ supposed aliens (though only one of them actually is an alien) were at the Europa pre-launch party – Wells assumes is sabotaging the Europa mission. The bruise on Picard’s hand from the IV as well as Rios’ arrest record also leads Wells to the Mariposa clinic, where he finds Rios’ com badge (and why did neither Rios nor anybody else take that along?), which he is convinced is alien technology. Well, it’s not exactly that, but it’s definitely vastly advanced beyond what 21st century humans are capable of.

The thing about Wells is that he’s actually very good at putting the pieces together, yet still comes to the wrong conclusion. I now also wonder whether Wells has files on all the other times Star Trek characters time traveled to the past going back to 1967 and “Tomorrow is Yesterday” or maybe even back to “Carbon Creek” in the 1950s or Roswell in the 1940s (come on, you know that an alien hunter will have files on Roswell) or New York City in 1930 or San Francisco in the 1890s. In fact, I’d love a spin-off where Agent Wells investigates all of the many time travel into the past episodes Star Trek has had over time and draws entirely the wrong conclusion from the evidence.

However, we’re still watching Star Trek and not The X-Files and so Agent Wells gets what Agents Mulder and Scully never get, namely an explanation. Because Guinan, who has been taken to another interrogation room, sends Picard a telepathic message that humans are stuck in the past (which is the overarching theme of season 2 insofar it has one), so Picard deduces that Agent Wells has some deep dark trauma (TM) in his past as well.

So Picard basically tells Agent Wells, “I know this is personal for you. So if you tell me what happened to you, I’ll tell you something about myself.” And because being persuasive and delivering inspirational speeches is Picard’s superpower, it actually works. So Wells talks about meeting aliens in the woods as a boy and how they grabbed him and tried to pull his brains out, which is how young Wells interpreted the mind meld attempt.

Picard then tells Wells, “Oh, those were just Vulcans and they’re actually quite harmless and they were not trying to hurt you, they were only trying to erase your memories to give you peace, only that it didn’t work. Also, I am human, but I’m also from five hundred years in the future on a secret mission to save the future of the entire galaxy. Oh yes, and I need your help.”

And because we are watching Star Trek and not X-Files, Agent Wells is actually willing to help to Picard. Though come to think of it, if Mulder and Scully had found themselves in the same situation, faced with Picard and not evil alien oil intent on enslaving humanity, they probably would have reacted the same.

Alas, Agent Wells has a problem of his own. Because it turns out that in a universe that is not the X-Files universe, the FBI isn’t too keen on agents going on wild alien hunts on the taxpayer’s dollar and so Wells is fired. Of course, Mulder and Scully were fired a couple of times as well, but because they got too close to the truth and not because they had wasted taxpayer money on hunting aliens.

While Picard is having a heart to heart with Agents Wells, Guinan is taken to another interrogation room (a.k.a. another random store room in the basement of an FBI facility), where she has a heart to heart of another kind. For who shows up, disguised as an FBI agent, but Q himself. Turns out Guinan’s attempt to summon Q worked, though because of his powers not working properly, Q had to hitch a ride to locate Guinan.

Q is not at all happy to see Guinan and also snaps at her that the summoning ritual is not just for having a chat. However, thanks to her empathic abilities, Guinan gets to the truth of what is bugging Q. For it turns out that everybody favourite annoying godlike alien being has a serious problem. He’s dying. And while Q initially thought that dying might be an exciting new experience in the endless boredom of quasi-immortality, it’s really just fading away and Q very much does not want to fade away. Hence he’s back to bugging Picard to feel something, anything. Though as Keith R.A. DeCandido points out in his review at Tor.com, we still have no idea what exactly the point of the mess Q created is beyond tormenting Picard.

But dying or not, Q still has a few tricks up his sleeve. And so he hacks into the computer system of mad scientist Dr. Adam Soong to contact his artificially created clone daughter Kore and sends her a gift, a vial of blue liquid that will cure her genetic defects and allow her to escape the prison that is her “father’s” house. But before she takes the liquid, Kore confronts Soong and point blank asks him how many others there were (at least two dozen, all named after the daughter of Zeus, though Kore is the only one who lived to adulthood) and whether he actually cares about her as a person or just about her as his life’s work. Soong assures Kore that he cares about her, but Kore isn’t buying it. She takes the liquid and walks away, while Soong calls after her that she can’t go anywhere, because she doesn’t exist.

Those scenes are well-acted by Brent Spiner and Isa Briones, though I wish the show would find some other stories for Isa Briones than finding out over and over again that she’s not a real girl, but the creation of a mad scientist.

As for Adam Soong, he crosses even further from “yet another morally questionable member of the Soong clan” into full-blown supervillain territory, as Paul Levinson points out in his review. And he’s about to get even worth, courtesy of the other major plot strand of this episode, namely the Borg Queen, who still stalks about Los Angeles in the body of Agnes Jurati.

Seven and Raffi are hot on the trail of the Borg Queen, while arguing amongst themselves. Seven accuses Raffi of being manipulative, which Raffi admits after a flashback to how she talked Elnor (this week’s contractually guaranteed Evan Evagora cameo) out of going on a mission for the Qowat Milat and into staying at Starfleet Academy and thus sets him on the path to get killed.

However, there is no time for yet more emotional angst about the fate of poor Elnor, because Raffi and Seven still have a Borg Queen to catch. Seven persuades the owner of the bar the Borg Queen wrecked to tell them that she left with a man. Raffi and Seven find that man or rather what is left of him a little later. Cause it turns out when the Borg Queen couldn’t assimilate the guy and the sex was unsatisfying, she just killed him and stole his phone, removed the battery and ate it, because – so Seven tells Raffi – the Borg Queen needs lithium to make nano-probes to hasten the assimilation process.

And because a single phone battery isn’t enough, the Borg Queen takes to munching car batteries to get to the tasty lithium within. io9 reviewer James Whitbrook points out that none of this makes sense and it doesn’t, least of all because not all car batteries contain lithium and the crappy old cars the Borg Queen trashes are very unlikely to have lithium batteries. The Borg Queen should just eat a Tesla factory, if she wants lithium. Though it does give us some nice visuals of Agnes with battery fluid (miraculously non-acidic) running down the corner of her mouth looking like a vampire during feeding.

Seven and Raffi track down Agnes and there is a fight, during which Agnes uses her Borg superstrength to thoroughly beat up Raffi and Seven, but does not kill them, which suggests that Agnes is still in there somewhere. Then she takes off for destinations unknown. From the smartphone of the guy the Borg Queen killed, Seven and Raffi deduce where she will go next, namely to pay a visit to Dr. Adam Soong, the would-be supervillain who will be the instrument of every real supervillain that happens to pass by.

The Borg Queen uses her knowledge of the dark alternative future to tell Dr. Soong that he is a hero in that future, because he helped to develop the technology that saves the environmentally ravaged Earth. If he helps her, the Borg Queen will make sure that Dr. Soong becomes the hero of the dark future. If not, he’ll die alone and forgotten.

Now Adam Soong has never seen a devil’s bargain he was not eager to enter and so he of course agrees. He tells the Borg Queen that he can get her into mission control for the Europa mission to make sure that it fails. However, the Borg Queen has set her sights on something else. She wants La Sirena to… return to a glorious Borgified future? Honestly, it’s not clear what she wants, since the dark future they escaped from is one where the Borg have been wiped out and the Queen herself was seconds from execution. Still, I guess the plan makes sense, at least if you’re a Borg Queen.

But first the Borg Queen has Adam Soong summon some help in the form of armoured up special forces soldiers in order to take La Sirena. And since she has eaten enough batteries, she can even assimilate them, just in case those soldiers might decide to think for themselves and wonder just why they are taking orders from a mad scientist and a woman in a red evening gown.

Once again, this makes for an exciting development, though it makes very little sense. Because Dr. Adam Soong is a disgraced scientist who has just lost his funding and an alcoholic besides. So how can he donate shitloads of money to NASA, get into a party with extremely tight security, get into Europa mission control, which likely has even tighter security, and also summon special forces soldiers on command? Cause I suspect Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump might be able to do that, but not the likes of Dr. Adam Soong. I suspect not even Elon Musk would be able to do all that.

However, it’s best not to ask questions, for the stage is set for an exciting finale. Cause while La Sirena is still in France, the ship is not empty. Rios is on board, trying to purge all traces of Borg interference from the control interface. And he’s not alone, but has brought along Doctor Teresa and her son Ricardo. As he promised last time, Ricardo wants to touch absolutely everything and since La Sirena is in maintenance mode, he can. Plus, Rios introduces Ricardo to the replicator and tells him to order any fo0d he wants, whereupon Ricardo promptly orders four slices of cake and gets them. The replicator is even nice enough to make it four different slices of cake.

Sparks continue to fly between Rios and Teresa, enough sparks to power up the whole ship, culminating in a kiss. However, neither Rios nor Teresa and Ricardo know that there’s a Borg Queen with a squad of assimilated special forces soldiers on her way to them.

The relationship between Rios, Teresa and Ricardo is one of my favourite things about season 2 of Picard and I hope that there is some kind of happy ending for them and not a replay of the Edith Keeler tragedy with added Borg.

I may sound critical here, but this episode is actually a whole lot of fun. The action zips along nicely, the actors are clearly enjoying themselves and while you’re watching it, you’re not noticing that there is a whole lot about this episode that makes no sense whatsoever.

That said, I honestly wonder about the showrunner and writers of this season. Do they have any kind of overarching season plot or plan in mind at all or are they just tossing coins to decide what happens next. Cause honestly, it feels like the latter to me. Things just happen, because someone thought they were cool, not because they make sense. It almost feels as if there was no script at all and the actors are just making up something as they go along.

Two episodes to go and I honestly wonder how the writers will pull all the many different threads together into a cohesive whole in that time.

Star Trek Picard Takes a Trip into Jean-Luc’s Mind and Meets “Monsters”

Here is my take on the latest episode of Star Trek Picard, this time a lot faster. For my take on previous episodes and seasons of Star Trek Picard, go here.

Warning: Spoilers below the cut!

When we last met Jean-Luc Picard and his Merry Men and Women, Picard was in a coma, having gotten run over with a car by Doctor Soong and Agnes had merged with the Borg Queen and was on the loose in Los Angeles.

This episode opens with Picard, still clad in the tuxedo he wore at the astronaut party, in his ready room aboard what I presume is the Stargazer, since it does not look like the Enterprise ready room, dealing with an annoying routine psychological evaluation conducted by a annoying therapist played by an actor who looks disconcertingly familiar, though I couldn’t place him until the credits rolled.

To spare you the suspense, it turns out that the therapist is played by , who played Baltar in the new Battlestar Galactica and who has also been in a ton of other things. Of course, the original Baltar, John Colicos, also appeared in several Star Trek series over the years as the Klingon Commander Kor, beginning with the Original Series episode “Errand of Mercy” and running through several episodes of Deep Space Nine.

As I explained in one of my Star Trek Discovery reviews, I really don’t like therapy scenes and so I audibly groaned to find myself faced with yet another one of those. To quote Paul Levinson’s review of this episode, “if I wanted to see therapy scenes, I’d watch In Treatment“ (and I hate In Treatment, because it’s literally a show that focusses on the worst and most boring stuff found in other shows) In general, this episode spends way too much time in Jean Luc Picard’s head – quite literally, since Tallinn enters his mind to bring Picard out of his coma.

Since Picard is not being very cooperative, the therapist asks him to tell a joke or maybe a story or fairy tale. So Picard launches into a story about a red-haired queen and we get a flashback within a flashback (or whatever this is) about a young Picard and his mother cosplaying as queen and prince, while Picard’s mother paints the glass panes of the conservatory we saw in the first episode with scenes of fairies, stars and a shadowy monster with glowing eyes stalking through the woods.

The paintings suddenly come alive and the conservatory begins to shake. Picard’s Mom tells Picard to run and manages to close the doors to the conservatory just before the glass panes explode. Young Jean-Luc and his mother, still in their fairy tale cosplay outfits, escape into dungeons of Chateau Picard, an unseen monster in hot pursuit.

Now Americans tend to believe that any vaguely castle-like structure of course has a dungeon, though in truth many castles don’t actually have dungeons. And in spite of the name Chateau Picard is more of a villa or manor house than an actual castle, so it is extremely unlikely to have a dungeon. Chateau Picard is portrayed by the Sunstone Winery in Santa Ynez, California, i.e. it’s not even in France. And the Sunstone Villa was built in 2004, albeit modeled on villas in Tuscany, and very likely does not have a dungeon, unless the owners wanted one for the coolness factor.

In this episode, however, Chateau Picard morphs from a Tuscan inspired villa into Castle Grayskull and of course has creepy dungeons with all the expected funishings such as shackles, chains and grated doors and even monsters, though not quite as cool as those that inhabit Castle Grayskull’s dungeon. Maybe Chateau Picard was built on the ruins of Castle Joiry and has inherited that castle’s basement with its infamous portal to a hellish dimension of demonic black gods and green moons (which very likely inspired Castle Grayskull’s monster-infested dungeon). Hey, it makes as much sense as anything else.

It is implied that the “dungeons” of Chateau Picard are really the maze of underground tunnels that the Picard family used to escape the Nazis during WWII, which reminds me of the 1944 Robert Bloch story  “Iron Mask”, which was certainly one of the more bonkers vintage pulp SFF stories I reviewed for the Retro Reviews project. However, there is no explanation why random underground tunnels look like a cliché medieval dungeon.

The unseen monster eventually grabs Picard’s Mom, leaving little Jean-Luc all alone in a creepy dungeon. It is at this moment that Tallinn enters Picard’s mind and promptly ends up in the dungeon as well.  She meets young Jean-Luc, still in his prince outfit, chained to a pillar and frees him. Young Jean-Luc babbles something about monsters and his missing Mom, who’s behind a white door. So Tallinn decides to take young Jean-Luc by the hand and look for the missing mother.

By now, the dungeon has also acquired guards in chainmail and a couple of monsters straight out of a cheesy 1980s horror movie. The whole thing should probably be scary, but it’s really just silly. One of the monsters strangles Tallinn with a chain, while another grabs young Jean-Luc.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Seven and Raffi have finally remembered that Agnes Jurati exists, that they abandoned her at the party and that they should maybe look for her. Rios also points out that Agnes has been acting strangely and that he kissed him. So Seven and Raffi beam back aboard La Sirena, assuming that Agnes would have returned to the ship. However, they find no sign of Agnes and the ship’s consoles encrypted with a Borg code. Seven uses her Borg knowledge to crack the code and accesses video footage of Agnes entering the Borg encryption. Now Seven and Raffi finally realise that the Borg Queen is in the process of assimilating Agnes. Worse, the Borg Queen is loose in Los Angeles.

Rios is left behind at the clinic to watch over Picard and Tallinn, while Seven and Raffi set off to find the Borg Queen and stop her before she can assimilate Los Angeles and presumably all of Earth and make Q’s manipulation of the timeline look benevolent by comparison. They track Agnes to a bar she visited that night, still clad in the red evening gown. On yet more convenient security cam footage they see Agnes breaking a window. Seven points out that breaking the window caused Agnes to experiences an endorphine rush, which will make it easier for the Borg Queen to fully assimilate her.

I actually feel sorry for Agnes, since for most of season 2, the rest of the cast have treated her like a piece of furniture or a computer. No one pays attention to her, unless they need her to fix or hack or repair something. Considering how badly her supposed friends have treated Agnes, is it any wonder that she’s looking for friendship with the Borg Queen of all people? At least, the Borg Queen pays attention to Agnes. Plus, Borg-possessed Agnes appears to have a lot more fun than regular Agnes. She gets to wear a gorgeous dress, sing “Shadows of the Night” and gets noticed. When Agnes enters the bar where she will break the window, all eyes in the place are on her.

Back at the clinic, the various monitors attached to Picard begin to beep and his heartrate and brainwaves go haywire, as young Jean-Luc and Tallinn are being attacked by monsters inside Picard’s head.

Rios is the only one on site, but he has his hands full, because the increasingly suspicious Teresa and her space-obsessed kid Ricardo have returned. Teresa refuses to be kept out of the room where Picard and Tallinn are and Rios is running out of explanations for what is going on, what exactly is wrong with Picard and Tallinn (whose eyes have turned white and who is wearing a very telling pointy-shaped ear piece) and why he is talking to his badge (which for all Teresa knows is just a weird piece of jewellery with a voice chip).

However, for now there is a crisis and both Picard and Tallinn are in danger, so Rios calls Raffi and Seven and asks them to beam over a neural stimulator to settle down Picard’s brainwaves. Of course, Rios is not a doctor, so he hands the neural stimulator to Teresa, even though expecting Teresa to know what to do with a 25th century neural stimulator is like expecting a 17th century physician to know what to do with an X-Ray or MRT machine. However, it’s Star Trek and so everything works out. Picard’s brainwaves calm down and the monsters in his mind vanish, though young Jane-Luc finds himself chained to the same pillar again, prompting Tallinn to assume that something traumatic happened to him in connection with that pillar.

Back in the real world, Teresa is completely freaked out by talking jewellery and a weird medical miracle instrument that materialises out of thin air. “Are you from outer space?” she asks Rios in a riff on the classic scene from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. “No, I’m from Chile. I only work in outer space”, Rios replies.

The scenes with Rios, Teresa and Ricardo are the best thing about an otherwise weak episode. Santiago Cabrera and Sol Rodriguez have marvelous chemistry and you can literally see the sparks flying between those two. There are so many great moments between Rios and Teresa, such as when she tells her son to cover his ears, because she’s going to use some rude words. But Ricardo, being a kid, listens anyway and then says, “But you didn’t even use the good ones.” The young actor playing Ricardo is great anyway and behaves very much like you’d expect a kid to behave in such a situation. There’s also a nice scene where Rios and Ricardo are drawing spaceships with chalk on the walls of the clinic (another totally kid thing to do) and Ricardo draws a space shuttle variant like the spacecraft used for the Europa mission, while Rios draws La Sirena.

In the end, Rios decides to prove to Teresa that everything he just told her is the truth and beams Teresa and Ricardo aboard La Sirena. Ricardo – once again very much a typical kid – responds with, “I’m going to touch everything.” In his review at Tor.com, Keith R.A. De Candido points out that Rios taking Teresa and Ricardo for a tour of La Sirena is a spectacularly bad idea, because it has the potential to seriously alter the timeline, it’s not even Rios’ La Sirena, but a Confederation ship, and besides, the ship is full of Borg tech and touching everything is a seriously bad idea, unless you want to join the Borg collective.

He’s right, too, but I still loved Rios’ joy at showing off his ship (well, sort of his ship), Teresa’s stunned expression and Ricardo’s pure kid-like “I’m gonna touch everything” reaction and I wish we would have seen more of these characters. I also really hope that the story of Rios and Teresa and Ricardo ends more like Doc Brown’s story in the Back To The Future trilogy than Kirk and Edith Keeler’s in the Original Series episode “The City on the Edge of Forever”.

Meanwhile inside Picard’s brain, Tallinn frees little Jean-Luc again from the same shackles (which she breaks with her hands, Picard’s brain apparently bestowing the same super-strength on her as the Borg Queen does on Agnes), when suddenly who walks onto the scene but the therapist from the first scene. Only that the therapist is not in Starfleet uniform now, but in vaguely mid twentieth century civilian clothes. “You got to grow older than me”, the “therapist” says to Jean-Luc, “But I kept my hair.”

Yup, the therapist is Jean-Luc’s Dad, Maurice Picard, and he now shows up in his son’s brain decades after his own death to set the record straight. Now, Maurice Picard was not an abusive husband. His wife, however, was mentally ill and endangered little Jean-Luc, when she ran off into the underground tunnels during a breakdown. Jean-Luc’s foot got stuck in a rotting floorboard at the pillar with the chains, though there is still no explanation why the basement of Chateau Picard has a pillar with chains at all. Maybe the Nazis used it to restrain and torture prisoners, which honestly makes as much sense as anything else. Young Jean-Luc was down there for hours before his father found and rescued him.

As for Jean-Luc’s mother, Maurice loved her, but he couldn’t help her, so he locked her up in her room like a nineteenth century mad woman in the attic. Which sort of made sense in the nineteenth century, when psychiatry did not exist and mental illnesses were not understood and so-called insane asylums were usually even worse than being locked up in the attic.

However, all this happens in the twenty-fourth century and mental illness would be not only much better understood by that time, but would also likely be much better treatable (and conditions like schizophrenia can be controlled with medication even today). I mean, the flashbacks to Jean-Luc’s childhood probably happen around the same time as the Original Series episode “Dagger of the Mind”, where psychiatric treatment is a lot more advanced than locking women in attics. Yes, the Next Generation episode “Family” establishes that Maurice and his older son Robert are both luddites of sorts, which explains why they live in a nineteenth century looking vineyard and why they cosplay as if they lived in the 1930s to 1950s. However, unless there is some kind of religious cult involved, even the most fervent luddite would seek modern medical treatment for his mentally ill wife. Never mind that Maurice doesn’t strike me as someone who would leave his son along with his wife he knows is mentally ill and might endanger the kid. Honestly, none of this makes sense.

I also have no idea why we need to learn about Picard’s unhappy childhood now. I mean, the man is over eighty and considering everything that has happened to him (almost dying more than once, getting assimilated into a Borg, being tortured by Cardassians, living someone else’s life for forty years, etc…), a childhood trauma is probably not the biggest issue he has. Besides, “Family” made it more than clear that Picard is at odds with the rest of his family. As io9 reviewer James Whitbrook notes, the solution to the mystery of Picard’s deep dark trauma is not only underwhelming, it also doesn’t tell us anything about the character that we didn’t know already.

Finally, “Picard has attachment issues because of some deeo, dark trauma in his childhood” is also lazy writing. First of all, plenty of people with traumatic childhoods go on to live happy lives and have happy and fulfilling relationships. Secondly, not everybody who is not interested in a committed romantic relationship has some deep dark trauma in his past. Asexual people exist. Aromantic people exist. People who think that committed relationships are more trouble than they’re worth or who simply have no time or no interest for such things exist. People who are not opposed to committed relationships per se, but simply haven’t found the right partner exist. There are a myriad of reasons why people may not pursue committed romantic relationships and deep dark childhood trauma is only one of them.

Once Picard has resolved that part of his trauma (though Tallinn points out that there is more), he simply wakes up again and goes about his business once more. Tallinn reveals that she has pointed ears and actually is Romulan – as if the name and the pointy-eared brain interface thing weren’t giveaway enough. “I knew it”, Picard exclaims, “You must be an ancestor of Laris.” Honestly, with everybody playing their own ancestors – often multiple generations thereof, as the Soongs – I want to give everybody on the various Star Trek writing staff a genetics textbook, because that’s not how genetics work.

And talking of Dr. Adam Soong and his clone daughter Kore, in case you’re wondering what happened to them now Dr. Soong tried to murder someone at Q’s behest and Kore has learned that she’s a defective clone (and can someone please give Isa Briones storylines other than finding out that she’s not a “real girl”(TM) please?), well, keep wondering, because neither of them appears in this episode.

As for Renee Picard, the jobar point on whose fate the future of the entire galaxy hinges, her fate is dealt with in a single throwaway line by Tallinn. “Oh, she’s safe and in quarantine.” And so Renee exits the story like the MacGuffin that she was. Honestly, the character would have deserved better.

Meanwhile, Picard decides that it’s time to confront Q and ask him point blank what he wants. So he goes to see Guinan, giving us the welcome return of Ito Aghayere. The Next Generation established that there is a connection between El-Aurians and the Q Continuum, so Picard assumes that Guinan should be able to summon Q. Of course, Guinan is reluctant to do so, because honestly, who in their right mind would summon Q? The man is a bloody nuissance and nasty prankster.

However, Guinan eventually relents and agrees to summon Q by opening a bottle of a drink that was served during a peace summit between the El-Aurians and the Q Continuum. The entire bar shakes, glasses and bottles break and light bulbs explodes, but Q fails to appear – and neither does Barbara Eden. Come on, we were all thinking it.

Someone does appear however. A man in a badly fitting grey suit who says he had a hard day and just wants a drink. Guinan initially throws him out, but the man won’t go, so she pours him a drink. The new customer seems to be the chatty sort and tries to strike up a conversation with Picard, who of course has zero interest in talking to twenty-first centuries randos.

However, the randomy guy does not let up and his probings and questions become more insistent and ever so slightly sinister to the point that I wondered whether Guinan had not succeeded in summoning a Q after all, just a different one than expected.

Then the guy in the grey suit pulls out his phone and shows Guinan and Picard security cam footage of Picard materialising in the alley behind Guinan’s bar and I thought, “Oh, I bet he’s a reporter from some National Enquirer type publication.”

However, then the guy pulls out an FBI badge and no, he’s not buying Guinan’s claims that her security camera is broken adn keeps glitching. Instead, the FBI raid the bar and arrest both Guinan and Picard. Cue credits.

The last development not only comes completely out of nowhere, unlike Rios’ arrest a few episodes ago, it also makes no sense whatsoever. Because why would the FBI follow up on security camera footage of old men randomly materialising in alleys? This is not The X-Files, where the FBI absolutely would investigate such things and everything would be a huge conspiracy besides. It’s the Star Trek universe, where the FBI is probably more interested in hunting terrorists and serial killers than in investigating paranormal occurrences. Never mind that the Borg Queen is loose in Los Angeles and that Dr. Soong is conducting illegal genetic experiments and just tried to kill someone, so even in the framework of this episode, the FBI has better things to do than investigate weird videos.

Of course in the Star Trek universe, California has been experiencing strange visitors popping in and out of existence since 1968, so maybe there really is an FBI task force. But then it might have been nice to establish that beforehand. Or maybe Q or Dr. Soong are behind siccing the FBI on Picard and Guinan? But again, it would have been nice to at least hint at that beforehand.

This was the weakest episode of the season by far, largely because it spends way too much time on what was the least interesting part of the story, namely Picard’s deep dark childhood trauma(TM). In many ways, it reminds me of the endless flashbacks in the first half of The Book of Boba Fett, which told a story no one was particularly interested in, while short-changing the story we had come to watch.

What I really would have liked to see is more of “Agnes and the Borg Queen do L.A.” Or more of “The crosstemporal romance of Cristobal Rios and Doctor Teresa.” Never mind that I’d like to know what the hell is wrong with Q, what happened to Dr. Soong and Kore and what’s going on with Renee Picard. But what did the show give us instead? Endless flashbacks to the deep dark childhood trauma(TM) of an eighty-plus-year-old man who has accumulated plenty of more recent trauma since then.

I hope the show gets back on track next episode, because this episode was just irritating, a fine guest performance by James Callis aside.

 

 

 

 

 

Star Trek Picard Gets “Two For One”

Here is my take on the latest episode of Star Trek Picard. And yes, I know this is late, but I got nominated for a Hugo and then wrote a monster commentary post about the entire ballot. For my take on previous episodes and seasons of Star Trek Picard, go here.

But before we return to our regularly scheduled Star Trek Picard reviews, I want to point out this nice article by Alexandra Penth in the Weser Kurier about my Hugo nomination.

Warning: Spoilers below the cut!

When we last saw Jean Luc Picard and his Merry Men and Women, they were about to infiltrate an exclusive pre-launch party for the astronauts of the Europa mission, including Jean Luc’s ancestors Renee, whose presence on the mission is the Jonbar point on which the entire future of the Federation hinges. Picard and his team are trying to make sure that Renee joins the mission, while Q or rather his agents are trying to persuade her to resign.

Picard’s plan hinges on Agnes sneaking into the party, letting herself get captured and taken to the security center, where she will then hack into the security database to put Picard, Tallinn, Seven, Rios and Raffi on the guest list. However, unbeknowst to everybody else on the team, Agnes has a problem. She quite literally has the Borg Queen in her head. Though initially, the Borg Queen is actually helpful and allows Agnes to snap her handcuffs. How having the Borg Queen in her bestows superstrength on Agnes is not explained nor does it make any sense. Though the scenes of Agnes chatting with her inner Borg Queen are a lot of fun and Alison Pill and Annie Werschinger are clearly having a ball – quite literally.

This episode uses that really annoying flash forward device of starting off with some kind of dramatic scene – here Picard about to die on what appears to be an operating table – only to flash back to X amount of time (here 36 minutes) earlier to show the events that lead up to the dramatic moment. Tor.com reviewer Keith R.A. De Candido attributes this device to Aaron Sorkin, who apparently used it a lot in The West Wing, but I recall seeing similar flash forwards in 1990s TV shows like The X-Files, which predate The West Wing. But whoever originated the flash forward device, it still is a lazy way to generate tension by borrowing tension from a later point in the story, because the actual beginning of the story is deemed to be not exciting enough.

The flash forwards in “Two For One” are even more annoying, because there is not just the one at the beginning, but the flash forwards are peppered throughout the episode, where we see Picard lying on the table, seemingly dead or dying, while the rest of the cast shouts his name and Picard has flashbacks of his traumatic childhood and his mother. It’s irritating and entirely unnecessary and does not even do what it’s supposed to do, namely generate tension, because we know that Picard won’t die. Never mind that the show did the exact same thing, kill off Picard, at the end of season 1, only for him to come back in an android body.

Honestly, by now Picard can give reigning world record holder in deaths and resurrections Jean Grey a run for her money, which is ironic because Patrick Stewart played Professor Charles Xavier (who has died and come back a couple of times himself) in X-Men: The Last Stand, a failed adaptation of the Dark Phoenix Saga. And honestly, how come that Fox has screwed up one of the most famous superhero comic storylines of all time twice, when there are plenty of good films and TV shows inspired by the Dark Phoenix Saga out there?

Once Agnes has hacked the security database and everybody has snuck into the party, we get some nice character moments. Tallinn tries to get Picard to tell her more about Laris, since he keeps calling her by that name. Picard insists that it’s not important, which is of course Picard lying not just to Tallinn but to himself. Raffi is womanfully resisting the urge to drink alcohol and has flashbacks of Elnor again (I suspect the reason for the Elnor flashbacks is because Evan Evagora is still in the credits, even though his character is currently dead). Seven is enjoying a life without Borg implants and the prejudices that come with them. The Borg Queen is egging Agnes on to live a little and enjoy herself, which leads to the Borg Queen briefly control of Agnes’ body to kiss Rios. As for Rios, he has taken a liking to the 21st century, enjoying the intensity of real cigars, the feel of real matches and the taste of non-replicated food.

Santiago Cabrera is once more excellent portraying Rios adorably geeking out about a box of matches. Most Star Trek characters pretend that there is no difference between replicated food, etc… and the real deal, something I have never bought, so it’s nice to see Star Trek acknowledge that yes, there is a difference. Though Rios doesn’t just like the tastes and smells of the 21st century, he’s also taken a liking to Doctor Teresa. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rios elects to stay in the 21st century at the end of the season, though his particular skill-set – ace space pilot – isn’t one that is useful in the 21st century due to a relative lack of space travel.

Meanwhile, Renee Picard is having a much less good time. Her smile looks forced, she drinks too much and keeps texting her therapist (who, as we saw last week, is Q) that she wants to resign from the mission after the party. So Picard overrules Tallinn’s code that the watchers must never interact with the object of their observations and decides to talk to Renee.

However, before Picard can go after Renee to deliver one of his patented inspirational speeches, he runs into an obstacle in the form of Dr. Adam Soong. Picard looks as if he has seen a ghost – which he has, sort of, since all the Soongs look the same.

Soong is there as an agent of Q, working to keep Renee away from the Europa mission in exchange for the cure for the deadly genetic disease from which his daughter Kore is suffering. Why Q can’t attend the party himself, especially since he works for NASA as a therapist, is a mystery? As for how Soong got in – he supposedly made a generous donation to the Europe mission project.  Where did Soong get the money, considering that he just lost the funding for his research over ethics violations (which turn out be a lot bigger than previously assumed) last episode?

Picard and Soong exchange menacing looks and words, then Soong goes to his new friends from the Europa mission project (The donation was very generous indeed) and asks them to remove Picard from the premises. Soon Picard and Tallinn are surrounded by security guards, about to be kicked out or worse.

A distraction is needed, so the Borg Queen of all people comes to everybody’s rescue. She persuades Agnes to hack the electrical system and make the lights go out, throwing the security guards off track. Then a much more confident Agnes re-enters the party and begins to sing “Shadows of the Night”.  It’s a beautifully absurd moment, but also very Star Trek. After all, The Next Generation found an excuse to have Beverly Crusher teach Data how to tapdance to allow Gates McFadden and Brent Spiner to show off their dancing skills. The Borg Queen persuading Agnes to create a distraction by singing “Shadows of the Night”, allowing Alison Pill to show off her quite impressive singing voice, is nothing against that.

In my last post, I noticed that season 2 of Picard has a lot more recognisable pop music than is usual for Star Trek, but also noted that the music all hails from the same era, namely the late 1950s and early 1960s. “Shadows of the Night” breaks this trend, because the song (which I suspect was chosen for its lyrics) dates from the early 1980s. Helen Schneider was the first to perform it in 1981, but the best known version was recorded by Pat Benatar a year later. And yes, that’s a young Judge Reinhold and Bill Paxton in that video, which is one of those amazing 1980s music videos that were basically three minute mini movies. We still get this sort of music video on occasion – a few examples have been nominated for the Best Dramatic Presentation Short Hugo in the past few years – but not as frequently as in the 1980s. Here’s another example: “Love Is a Battlefield”, also be Pat Benatar, in which Pat plays a small town girl who gets kicked out of her home and runs away to New York City to become a dime-a-dance taxi girl in one of the taxi dance halls that used to cluster around Times Square, but were definitely on their way out if not already gone by the early 1980s. This video is amazing, not just because “Love is a Battlefield” is a great song, but also for the glimpse into a lost world.

Once everybody is staring at Agnes, Picard goes after Renee, who has withdrawn to some kind of exhibition gallery to be alone. Renee doesn’t quite buy that Picard is a security guard – he’s way too for that – and she does think he seems a little familiar. However, Picard does succeed in giving Renee one of his patented stirring speeches and Renee decides to go on the mission after all.

However, just as Picard escorts Renee back to the party, decided to cross the parking lot for reasons unknown, disaster strikes in the form of Dr. Adam Soong, who – furious that his plan did not work – decides to just run over Renee with his car to make sure she’d not on the Europa mission. This is clearly a spur of the moment idea, because it will only lead to Dr. Soong getting arrested and his daughter Kore dying anyway.

Picard, heroic as ever, pushes Renee out of the way and promptly gets run over by Dr. Soong, which is why he is apparently dying in the flash forwards. I honestly did not expect this – but then who does expect that Jean-Luc Picard would get run over by a deranged ancestor of Data? io9 reviewer James Whitbrook clearly agrees that the way Picard gets injured is unexpected, even if we know that he will be injured from the first few seconds of the episode on.

Once Dr. Soong has run over Picard, Rios, Raffi, Seven and Tallinn all come running, while Renee sort of vanishes from the storyline at this point, having fulfilled her function as a plot MacGuffin. Picard clearly needs medical attention – however, they can’t take him to a regular hospital, because questions would be asked and none of them have regular IDs. Luckily, Rios just happens to know one clinic where no one asks questions and so we get the triumphant return of Doctor Teresa.

Teresa is not at all happy to be roused from a well deserved night’s sleep, but helping people in need is her job and besides, the obvious attraction Rios feels for her is mutual. Teresa does manage to bring Picard’s heart back online with a defibrilator, but unfortunately Picard – or rather his android body – causes a feedback. Of course, this does not make a whole lot of sense, as Camestros Felapton points out in his review, because Picard should be in the body he has in the dystopian future they escaped from – just like Seven is in a fully human body without Borg implants. And since it’s rather unlikely that Picard just happens to have an android body in both timelines, he should have his regular human body, which is also why he almost dies from getting hit by Dr. Soong, something an android body should be able to shrug off.

By now, Teresa realises that there is something very odd about Rios and his friends, though when she asks Rios point blank about that, he fobs her off. Though I suspect he will eventually come clean.

Now Teresa has patched up Picard, he should theoretically wake up. However, Picard stubbornly remains unconscious. Tallinn uses some convenient (and never before seen) super-duper brain scanning technology and determined that Picard’s brain is active, but he seems to be trapped inside his own brain, lost in memories. Teresa has gone home to check on her son at this point or otherwise, Rios would have to answer some very hard questions.

Tallinn also announces that she will venture into Picard’s brain to bring him back, since her super duper technology also allows her to do that. Raffi is not at all happy about the idea – “What could go wrong?” – but since they need Picard and his knowledge about Q, she finally relents. So I guess we’ll spend the next episode rummaging through Picard’s traumatic memories of his childhood which have left him permanently unable to form longterm romantic relationships.

However, first we still have to tie up the loose ends from this episode. For starters, there’s Dr. Soong who manages not to get arrested, but makes it home in one piece, though rather distraught. Kore notices that something is very wrong here and begins to rummage through her father’s computer. She finds a lot of not very flattering newspaper headlines about her father – and don’t tell me that Kore, a young woman living in 2024, has never googled her father or own name before – and also private files and photos of herself as a kid, only that she does not remember any of the events depicted.

Turns out that Kore is not Dr. Soong’s biological daughter, but a clone, the latest in a long series of clones who keep dying young of the very same disease Kore has. Soong is determined to keep this clone alive, because she is – as he actually says to Kore – his life’s work. Now I have to admit that I did not see this particular development coming. It also makes me like this Dr. Soong even less – and my opinion of him was already low after he tried to run over Reneee and Picard. After all, this guy has created dozens of clones, all of whom died painfully at very young ages. This goes beyond the lovably eccentric mad scientist into villainous mad scientist territory. But then, all Soongs not named Data are at the very least dodgy. And yes, a whole multigenerational clan of mad scientists with a fervent desire to create artificial life does stretch the suspense of disbelief.

The other loose end of this episode is Agnes, who is left behind at the party, when Raffi, Seven and Rios rush Picard to the Mariposa Clinic. They don’t even seem to notice that Agnes is missing. Honestly, it’s not wonder that Agnes befriends the Borg Queen of all people, because no one pays any attention to her unless they need her to do something. Agnes is treated like a human sonic screwdriver much of the time. However, the applause and cheers of the audience at the end of her performance of “Shadows of the Night” flood her system with endorphines, which gives the Borg Queen a chance to take control of Agnes’ mind. Oops.

The Borg Queen, wearing Agnes’ body, is last seen walking along a busy Los Angeles street, barefoot and still dressed in her red evening gown and clearly ready to party Borg Queen style. She is walking towards the US Bank Tower, a building we know tends to attract alien attention. What will the Borg Queen do to 21st century Los Angeles? As Paul Levinson points out in his review, it can’t be good.

This episode is once again a whole lot of fun, but also something of a mess. Plot twists happens out of nowhere, earlier plot points are forgotten and both the Borg Queen and Tallinn come up with handy deus-ex-machina solutions more than once. It’s a testament to how much fun this show is that you don’t really notice that it makes no sense until you think about it.

I think what keeps me watching at this point are the actors and their performance, since you can see and feel how much fun they are having. That fun is infectious. Though I still hope that the plot will eventually make sense again for the remaining episodes.

The next Star Trek Picard review will go up sometime in the next few days. Not sure if I’ll do Moon Knight or not, though I like what I’ve seen so far.

Some Thoughts on the 2022 Hugo Finalists

So at last, here is my Hugo finalist reaction post. I know it took a bit, but since I’m a Hugo finalist myself this year, I took some time off to celebrate, congratulate fellow finalists and update everything that needed updating.

So let’s take a look at the finalists for the 2022 Hugo Award. You can also read the reactions of Camestros Felapton and listen to a lengthy video of a panel of Booktubers discussing the finalists. Also read this lovely piece by Chris M. Barkley detailing his reactions upon learning he was a Hugo finalist for Best Fan Writer.

And now, let’s delve right into the categories under the cut:

Best Novel

The 2022 Hugo finalists for Best Novel are a mix of new writers and returning favourites.

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine and The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers are both sequels to previous winners (Arkady Martine won Best Novel in 2020 and Becky Chambers won Best Series in 2019). They are also very good books and I am not at all surprised to see them here.

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark is a sequel to the 2020 Best Novella finalist The Haunting of Tram Car 015 and also a very enjoyable SFF murder mystery that was also on my ballot.

I have read neither She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan nor Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki, though both got a lot of positive buzz, when they came out, so I’m not surprised to see them on the ballot. And I’m definitely looking forward to reading both of them.

The sixth finalist in this category is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which surprised me a little, for though popular, Andy Weir is more of a Dragon Award than a Hugo or Nebula type author. And indeed, Project Hail Mary did win the 2021 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.

Now I have to admit that I did not care for The Martian and was baffled by its popularity even among people who don’t usually read SF, because to me it read like something that might have appeared in Analog in the 1960s or 1970s. Hence, I did not read Andy Weir’s next two books. However, now Project Hail Mary is a Hugo finalist, I will be reading it and maybe it will work better for me than The Martian.

Besides, the fact that there are two male authors nominated for Best Novel, including a white cis man writing hard science fiction, should pacify those folks who worry that men are being shut out of the Hugos.

Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 3 writers of colour, 1 international author*.

Best Novella

Here we have a a category full of familiar and popular names.

Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series is a perennial favourite in this category (and also nominated for Best Series), so it’s no surprise to see Across the Green Grass Fields here.

Becky Chambers is another favourite of the Hugo voters and is represented in this category with A Psalm for the Wild-Built, the first of a new novella series. I haven’t read it yet, though I suspect I will like it, since I usually like Becky Chambers’ work.

Aliette de Bodard is another author whom we frequently see on the Hugo and Nebula ballot. Fireheart Tiger is also a very good story and was on my ballot as well.

Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky is something of a surprise for me, though a very pleasant one, because I enjoyed the novella and its “science in a fantasy world” approach a whole lot. But while Adrian Tchaikovsky is a very good and very popular author and has won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and frequently appears on the BSFA and Clarke ballot, Hugo voters ususally tend to overlook him, so I’m glad that he finally got a long overdue Hugo nomination.

The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente completely passed me by, I’m afraid. It’s a post-apocalyptic novel set in a place called Garbagetown, which does sound interesting.

I haven’t read A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow and as regular readers will know, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of fairy tale retellings. However, I’ve usually liked everything I’ve read by Alix E. Harrow, so I suspect I will enjoy this one, too.

Notable by its absence is Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells, but then I suspect that she may have withdrawn, just like she did for the Nebulas.

There’s some wailing and gnashing of teeth that all six finalists in this category were published by Tor.com. Unlike the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth from certain quarters, there is some merit to this, because if a single publisher completely dominates one category it is a problem.

That said, Tor is the biggest SFF publisher in the English speaking world and the Tor.com imprint did a lot to revitalise the novella form, which was limited to small presses, magazines and self-publishers before that. However, while small presses like Subterranean, Prime Books, Meerkat Press, Telos, Crystal Lake or Neon Hemlock do good work and publish some very fine novellas, they can’t compete with Tor.com’s marketing clout. Ditto for indies and magazines.

So rather than complain about Tor.com’s dominance, maybe we should support and talk up the smaller publishers of novellas more. For example, there were three novellas not published by Tor.com on my ballot, The Return of the Sorceress by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, published by Subterranean, “A Manslaughter of Crows” by Chris Willrich, which appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and “The Unlikely Heroines of Callisto Station” by Marie Vibbert, which appeared in Analog.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 1 writer of colour, 2 international writers

Best Novelette

“Bots of the Lost Ark” by Suzanne Palmer is a great story and was also on my ballot.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I haven’t read any of the other finalists in this category, though I’m looking forwatd to checking them out, because discovering great stories you missed the first time around is one of the best things about being a Hugo voter.

Besides, Caroline M. Yoachim, Catherynne M. Valente, John Wiswell, Fran Wilde and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki are all excellent writers, so I’m sure I’m in for a treat.

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is the only first time finalist in this category. He is also the first black African born Hugo finalist of all time. For while there have been several Hugo finalists from the African diaspora in recent years, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is the first black finalist who was actually born in Africa and still lives there.

In case you’re wondering who the first Hugo African born Hugo finalist was (and no, I did not know this until a few days ago either), that was Manly Wade Wellman who was born in what is now Angola in 1903, when his father worked as a doctor there. He was a Hugo finalist in 1959 and a Retro Hugo winner in 2020. Furthermore, Dave Freer, who was a Hugo finalist in 2015, was born in South Africa, though he lived in Australia, when nominated. Also, both Wellman and Freer are white.

We have another almost first here, for “O2 Arena” by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki was published in Galaxy’s Edge magazine, which – probably due to being a print magazine – does not get a whole lot of awards love.  I actually thought this was the first nomination for Galaxy’s Edge, but they also published the 2015 Short Story finalist “Totaled” by Kary English. The other finalists in this category were published in Uncanny, Clarkesworld and Tor.com.

Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 2 writers of colour, 1 international writer

Best Short Story

“Mr. Death” by Alix E. Harrow is a wonderful story that will make you misty-eyed and was also on my ballot.

“Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” by Sarah Pinsker is a fascinating story in the form of a Wikipedia article plus the discussion page about a (fictional) folk ballad.

I have read neither “Proof by Induction” by José Pablo Iriarte nor “The Sins of America” by Catherynne M. Valente, though I look forward to reading them. I also note that this is a very good year for Caterynne M. Valente with one nomination each in Novella, Novelette and Short Story. And while José Pablo Iriarte has been a Nebula finalist before, this is their first Hugo nomination.

“Tangles” by Seanan McGuire is another story I haven’t read. What’s notable about it is that it was published not in one of the print or online magazines, but on the Magic the Gathering website. Tie-in fiction rarely gets Hugo nominations, which is why the Scribe Awards exist and the Dragon Awards have a tie-in category. Though tie-ins are absolutely eligible for the Hugos. Nor is this is the first media tie-in story nominated for a Hugo, that would be “The Butcher of Khardov” by Dan Wells, a Best Novella finalist in 2014.

Finally, we have “Unknown Number” by Blue Neustifter, which is another first, because it’s a story that was originally published on Twitter. You can read it here (and you should because it’s a really good story). There have been some grumblings that a Twitter thread was nominated for a Hugo. But first of all, “Unknown Number” is not a Twitter thread per se, but a story that happened to be published on Twitter. And yes, it is a story which plays with form, but then there have been several other stories that play with form on the Hugo ballot, including one (“Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather”), which is nominated in this very category this year. “Unknown Number” could have been published just as well in Uncanny or Apex or Clarkesworld and no one would have batted eyelash.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 non-binary, 1 writer of colour

Best Series

Now comes my annual gripe that the Best Series Hugo does not quite do what it was initially designed for, namely rewarding popular long-running series, which rarely get Hugo love, because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. For example, it is striking that Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, a hugely popular SFF series which not only begot a whole subgenre (time travel romance) but also spawned a successful TV series, does not show up on the Hugo ballot, even though it would have been eligible for the publication of Tell the Bees I’m Gone in 2021.

That said, the Best Series Hugo is getting better at what it was supposed to do, because this year, we have only two series on the ballot where individual works were nominated in the respective fiction categories. Two of the finalists in this category are even first time finalists, i.e. they have never been nominated in any category before. Plus, the series are mostly actual series rather than “If you squint really hard, these books are all set in the same universe and make up a series”. Finally, this is also a really good selection of finalists, so let’s dive in:

I was very impressed with the Terra Ignota quartet by Ada Palmer and am very happy to see it recognised here. It was also on my ballot.

The World of the White Rat books by T. Kingfisher a.k.a. Ursula Vernon are a delight and once again, I’m thrilled to see them here. And while Ursula Vernon is a favourite of Hugo voters, none of the White Rat books have ever been nominated before. This series was also on my ballot BTW.

The World of the White Rat books are also unabashedly fantasy romance, a subgenre that normally does not do well at the Hugos. Now if we could only persuade Hugo voters to nominate other romancey SFF series like J.D. Robb’s In Death series or Patricia Briggs’ or Ilona Andrews’ various series or yes, Outlander.

Seanan McGuire has been present on the Best Series ballot with different series since its inception in 2017, but then she is both prolific and popular. This year, she is nominated for her Wayward Children series. I have to admit that I prefer her October Daye and Incryptid books to the Wayward Children series, but that series is clearly popular, considering several of the individual installments have been nominated in Best Novella over the years.

I have read never the Green Bone Saga by Fonda Lee nor the Kingston Cycle by C.L. Polk, but I have heard good things about both series and look forward to reading them. This is the first Hugo nomination for both Fonda Lee and C.L. Polk BTW.

Charles Stross is an author whose books just don’t work for me, I’m afraid. I bounced hard off Singularity Sky and its sequel some eighteen years ago (how time flies). And whenever I tried reading one of his books afterwards, usually because it was on the Hugo ballot, I had the same reaction. However, not everything has to be for me and that’s okay. Besides, maybe Merchant Princes, the series he is nominated for this year, will be the exception.

Diversity count: 4 women, 1 man, 1 non-binary, 2 writers of colour, 3 international writers

Best Graphic Story

We have a nice mix of returning favourite and new finalists here.

Monstress, Once & Future and DIE are all series we have been in this category before. They’re also very good comics.

Far Sector by N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell is part of the Green Lantern subuniverse of the Greater DC Universe. I haven’t read it, but I have heard good things.

DC, which so far has lagged behind Image, Boom and Marvel in Hugo nominations, is also represented by Strange Adventures by Tom King, Mitch Gerards and Even “Doc” Shaner. This series represents a new take on the classic Silver Age DC character Adam Strange. Once again, I haven’t read it (not a big DC reader), but Tom King is one of the best comic writers working right now. It’s also notable that both superhero comics on the Hugo ballot are also space opera comics.

Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe, finally, is a retelling of the Greek legend of Persephone, which started life as a webcomic and was later collected and nominated for an Eisner Award. I’m not familiar with this one at all, but it certainly sounds like something I should enjoy.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make comics.

Best Related

Best Related Work is a category I usually gripe about, because the edge case finalists like virtual cons, fanfiction archives, angry rants, documentaries, etc… tend to crowd out that non-fiction books that the category was originally designed for.

However this year, I not only have nothing to gripe about, but the finalists for the Best Related Work Hugo actually make me very happy. Because we have five non-fiction books nominated as well as one article, which is meatier than several of the other single articles we have seen in this category over the years.

And yes, there are some people who are annoyed that Best Related contains mainly non-fiction books this year, rather than the weird grab bag that it has become and are talking about a backlash. But taking the category back to what it was designed for is a course correction, not a backlash. And personally, I would be in favour of splitting Best Related into Best Non-Fiction and Best Miscellany to catch all the weird stuff people apparently want to nominate and still have a dedicated non-fiction category.

As you may remember, I started the non-fiction spotlight project in order to highlight SFF-related non-fiction books eligible for the Hugo Awards and interviewed the authors and editors of several excellent Hugo-eligible non-fiction. Therefore, I’m thrilled that three non-fiction books I featured, The Complete Debarkle: Saga of a Culture War by Camestros Felapton, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985, edited by Andrew Nette and Iain McIntyre and True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee by Abraham Riesman, made the ballot. So the non-fiction spotlight project did make an impact (and I will be very interested to see, if any of the other books I featured made the longlist). I will also continue with the non-fiction spotlights and already have some excellent 2022 non-fiction books and authors lined up.

The remaining finalists in this category include two more non-fiction books. Never Say You Can’t Survive by Charlie Jane Anders is a (very good) writing craft book that was originally serialised at Tor.com before appearing in book form. As for why I didn’t feature it as a non-fiction spotlight, I erroneously assumed that Never Say You Can’t Survive was a 2020 book, based on the original Tor.com series (and indeed, it was on my ballot last year), and missed the fact that the book version came out in 2021 and is therefore eligible for the 2022 Hugos. Luckily, plenty of other people noticed and so we have another excellent finalist in this category.

Being Seen: One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism is a memoir by Elsa Sjunneson, last year’s Hugo winner for Best Fan Writer. This is another genre-related non-fiction book I did not feature, because until a few days ago I had no idea that it existed – sorry, Elsa. However, I always find Elsa’s thoughts about ableism in SFF and society very insightful and look forward to reading the book.

The final nominee in this category is the Vox article “How Twitter Can Ruin a Life” by Emily St. James, i.e. the article about the Isabel Fall “Helicopter Story” affair. I have some issues with this article, since it was used as grounds for further harassment of writers deemed responsible for the speculations about and attacks on Isabel Fall – which is neither Emily St. James’ nor Isabel Fall’s fault, but a case of harassers will harass. That said, the article itself is well researched and a lot meatier than some of the shorter essays and articles we have seen nominated in this category, so it’s certainly a worthy finalist.

Diversity count: 4 men, 3 women, 3 international writers (all of whom are Australian)

Best Dramatic Presentation Long

I expected/feared a full Marvel/Pixar/Disney sweep in this category with Dune and maybe a Zack Snyder film thrown in. Luckily, the actual ballot is more interesting and diverse, even if only one of my own nominees made it.

Denis Villeneuve’s take on Dune is of course a finalist (and IMO the favourite to win), as was to be expected. Coincidentally, Dune has now been nominated for a Hugo in five different versions, the serialisation of Dune World in 1965, the novel Dune as we know it today (which combines the serials Dune World and Dune Messiah) in 1966, the David Lynch adaptation in 1985, the Sci-Fi Channel mini-series in 2001 and now the Denis Villeneuve adaptations.

Superhero movies/TV shows in general and Marvel in particular are represented by WandaVision and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings this year. I can’t disagree with either nomination and WandaVision was also on my ballot, since it’s a case where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts, so into Best Dramatic Long it went. I do find it interesting that of the four Marvel movies that came out in 2021 Shang-Chi is the one which got the Hugo nod over the massively popular Spider-Man: No Way Home, which Marvel was heavily pushing for the Oscar. But while Spider-Man: No Way Home is a lot of fun and full of fan service, Shang-Chi actually is the better movie and tells a story that is comprehensible without having watched twenty years worth of Spider-Man as well as all other Marvel movies.

The nomination for Encanto was probably inevitable, though I have to admit that the magic of the Disney/Pixar CGI animated movies escapes me, but then I’m not the target audience for those either. Encanto at least has some catchy music courtesy of Lin Manuel Miranda. And this excellent review by Arturo Serrano giving the cultural background has made me more interested in watching it.

Now we come to the two Best Dramatic Presentation Long finalists which make me really, really happy, namely The Green Knight and Space Sweepers. Both are the sort of smaller indie films that I often nominate in this category (though ironically, I nominated three other smallish indie SFF films this year, namely Ich bin dein Mensch/I’m Your Man, The Spine of Night and Last Night in Soho), but which rarely make the ballot, getting crowded out by the Marvel/Star Wars/Disney/Pixar machine on the one hand and the “big budget serious business science fiction film of the year” on the other.

The Green Knight is a visually stunning and utterly beautiful take on the Arthurian legend, which did not get nearly the attention it deserved, when it came out last year, and was completely overlooked by the Oscars as well. Some reviewers also seemed to confused that the story was quieter and somewhat meandering and there were less swordfights than expected, which made me wonder if they were familiar with the original legend at all. So I’m really glad to see The Green Knight on the Hugo ballot.

Space Sweepers is a delightful science fiction movie from South Korea about a rag-tag spaceship crew. In recent years, South Korea has established itself as a powerhouse of SFF film and TV, though so far the Hugo ballot does not really reflect it. Furthermore, films and TV shows in languages other than English still have a very hard time getting nominated for Hugos and there have only been a handful of non-English language films nominated for a Hugo, namely Last Year at Marienbad in 1963 (lost to No Award), Spirited Away in 2003 (lost to Lord of the Rings) and Pan’s Labyrinth in 2007 (won).

Of course, I hoped that the fourth non-English language film to make the Hugo ballot would be the German film Ich bin dein Mensch/I’m Your Man and I’m disappointed that one did not make it, but I’m still very happy for Space Sweepers.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies.

Best Dramatic Presentation Short

There are several surprises in this category. It’s also one of the most diverse Best Dramatic Presentation Short ballots we’ve seen in a long time, with episodes from six different TV series nominated and only one of them a repeat nominee. Finally, this is the first Best Dramatic Presentation Short ballot in sixteen years without a single Doctor Who episode, even though there were several eligible.

The Expanse is the only returning finalist in this category (and this will be its last year, since the series ended), represented by the episode “Nemesis Games”. I’m woefully behind with The Expanse, so I haven’t watched it yet, though I usually enjoy the show.

Along with WandaVision, Loki was the most interesting and innovative of the Marvel Disney+ series and I’m happy to see it recognised here for the episode “The Nexus Event”. This is also the only one of my nominations which sort of made it, since I did nominate Loki, albeit a different episode.

For All Mankind is a show I just cannot connect with. A lot of people I respect like the show, but I simply have zero interest in it. US space program alternate histories seem to be popular at the moment, but one thing that annoys me about them is that a lot of them try to downplay or erase the contributions of the German rocket scientists to the US space porgram. Not sure if this show does it, but I recall seeing an early review along those lines, which set me against it. Also, if one Apple+ streaming show should have made the ballot, I think Foundation would have been a much better choice and it’s absence is baffling. Or even that post-apocalyptic show with Jason Momoa.

The Wheel of Time is a show I am a little surprised to see here, because the fanbase of the books did not seem to like the TV series all that much, plus it came out during the glut of SFF series that were released by the streaming services around Thanksgiving last year. That’s also why I haven’t watched the series yet, because it came out around a time when there were a whole lot of other SFF series that I wanted to watch more. Besides, I don’t care for the Wheel of Time books, so the series is low on the list of things I’m interesting in watching.

Finally, we have two animated series on the ballot. Now we have seen animated series on the Hugo ballot in this category before, e.g. a She-Ra episode was nominated last year and a My Little Pony episode a few years ago, and several animated films have been nominated in longform over the years, but we have never seen two animated series on the ballot in the same year. Though the animated series I was really rooting for, Masters of the Universe: Revelation, sadly did not make it.

Star Trek: Lower Decks is the one Star Trek series I don’t watch, because there simply is more Star Trek out there than I have time to watch. Plus, with animated series the animation style is very important to me and if the style puts me off – as happened with the new She-Ra – I’ll have a hard time with a series, even if I like the actual stories. And I’m not a fan of Lower Decks‘ animation style. Coincidentally, this is also the first time any Star Trek episode has been on the ballot since 2018, in spite of the fact that there is a lot of Star Trek right now.

Arcane came out during the end of the year content glut and largely passed me by. It does look interesting, though, and stylistically more up my alley than Lower Decks and I look forward to trying it.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make TV shows.

Best Editor Short

This category is a nice mix of the established and new names, all of whom do good work.

Neil Clarke, Jonathan Strahan and Sheila Williams are all names we have seen in this category several times before.

Mur Lafferty and S.B. Divya are on their second nomination in this category. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Sheree Renée Thomas are first time finalists in this category and coincidentally also the first black finalists in Best Editor Short ever.

Diversity count: 4 women, 3 men, 3 editors of colour, 2 international editors

Best Editor Long

Ruoxi Chen is the only new editor nominated in this category. Sarah Guan and Nivia Evans are on their second nomination, Brit Hvide on her third. Navah Wolfe (six nominations) and Patrick Nielsen Hayden (I lost count, sorry) are the relative veterans in this category.

Interestingly, this is the first time since 2013 that Patrick Nielsen has been on the Hugo ballot for Best Editor Long and the first time since 2018 that a male editor is a finalist in this category, since longform editing is heavily female nominated.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 3 editors of colour.

Best Pro Artist

This used to be a category with few changes and the same few people nominated over and over again, but that has changed in recent years and so we have a nice mix of new and returning finalists in this category.

Will Staehle and Ashley McKenzie are the two new names in this category. Maurizio Manzieri, Rovina Cai, Tommy Arnold and Alyssa Winans have been nominated before in the past few years. They all do excellent work and I’m happy to see them on the ballot, particularly Alyssa Winans who is not only a great SFF artist, but also a friend.

Diversity count: 3 women, 3 men, at least 2 artists of colour, 3 international artists.

Best Semiprozine

Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Escape Pod, FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, PodCastle, Strange Horizons and Uncanny are all very good magazines, all of whom we’ve seen nominated in this category before.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to publish magazines.

Best Fanzine

I’m really, really happy to see Galactic Journey back on the ballot after a years of absence and not just because I write for them, but also because they do really great work.

Journey Planet is the veteran in this category, but they continue to do good work. Plus, I even had an article in issue 59 of Journey Planet.

Quick Sip Reviews has been nominated several times in this category and Charles Payseur has been steadily doing good work reviewing short fiction. Quick Sip wound down at the end of 2021, so maybe this will be their year.

The Full Lid and An Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog are both back on the ballot and I’m very happy to see them here, since they both do great work.

The one new finalist in this category and also the only one I was unfamiliar with is Small Gods. There have been some grumblings about this nomination, because while the other fanzine finalists publish reviews, essays, news pieces and discussion, Small Gods is a combination of art and microfiction.

Of course, there have been fiction fanzines nominated in Best Fanzine before, though not in the last twenty years or so, since fanfiction has moved largely onto the internet into places like AO3. And the definition of Best Fanzine does not exclude fiction.

There have also been some grumblings that Seanan McGuire is a professional writer, but then we have seen several professional writers nominated in the fan categories before. Honestly, I thought that we settled that particular issue back when John Scalzi won in 2008.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make fanzines

Best Fancast

This category tends to get a little stale with the same podcasts nominated over and over again, which is part of why I started the Fancast Spotlights. However, we have two first time finalists this year – both of whom I featured – which is nice.

Last year’s winner The Coode Street Podcast (whom I still haven’t featured) is back, as is Be the Serpent and – after a year of absence – Our Opinions Are Correct.

Worldbuilding for Masochists (featured here) was one of my favourite ballot discoveries last year and so I’m glad to see them on the ballot again.

Which brings me to the two first-time finalists in this category, Hugo, Girl! (featured here) and Octothorpe (featured here). They’re both very different podcasts – Hugo, Girl! discusses past Hugo finalists from a female POV, while Octothorpe is a traditional fanzine in podcast form and discusses primarily fandom issues – but they both do excellent work and I’m happy to see them on the ballot.

There have been some grumblings that there are no Booktube channels on the ballot this year. However, the nice thing about audio podcasts is that you can listen to them while doing something else. Also, I really haven’t been enamoured with most of the Booktube channels I’ve tried.

No diversity count, too many people are needed to make podcasts.

Best Fan Writer

Yeah, at last I’ve reached the category I’m nominated in and in most excellent company, too.

Paul Weimer and Jason Sanford were also nominated in this category last year (and Paul in 2020 as well). They both continue to do excellent work and I’m thrilled to be nominated alongside them again.

Chris M. Barkley has been active in fandom for forty-five years or so. This is his first nomination and I’m really glad to finally see him recognised.

Alex Brown has been reviewing primarily YA SFF for Tor.com, Locus and NPR for several years now and they also wrote this really nice article about Our Flag Means Death. This is their first nomination.

Chris M. Barkley and Alex Brown are also both black and – unless I’m mistaken – the first black finalists in what has traditionally been a very white category

Bitter Karella is a name that was unfamiliar to me. A bit of googling revealed that they are the person behind The Midnight Society Twitter account which many of us have been enjoying. Together with the short story nomination for “Unknown Caller” by Blue Neustifter, this is certainly a good year for Twitter fiction.

Diversity count: 1 woman, 2 men, 2 non-binary, 2 writers of colour, 1 international writer

Best Fan Artist

We have a nice mix of returning and new finalists in this category as well as a mix of different art styles and media, ranging from illustration via comics and jewellery to calligraphy.

Sara Felix, Ariela Housman and Iain J. Clark are all returning finalists in this category and continue to do excellent work.

Lee Moyer is the artist half of the duo behind the fanzine finalist Small Gods and does some striking work. Nilah Magruder mainly seems to be a comics artist and animator, though she also does covers for Uncanny.

Lorelei Esther finally does illustrations, caricatures and comics. She’s also the daughter of Gideon and Janice Marcus of Galactic Journey and also writes for the site and I’m really happy to see her work recognised.

At age 18, Lorelei is also the youngest Hugo finalist of all time, beating Robert Silverberg and 1950s fan writer Ron Smith (both aged 20 at the time of their first nomination) and fellow fan artist Sarah Webb (nominated a few weeks before her twentieth birthday).

Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, at least 1 artist of colour, 1 international artist

Lodestar

I’m not a YA reader, so Chaos on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer is the only book in this category that I’ve read and enjoyed. It’s also the sequel to the 2020 Lodestar winner Catfishing on CatNet.

Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko and The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik are both sequels to books which were nominated in this category last year. I liked Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko quite a bit and look forward to the sequel. I did not care as much about A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, because I’m very much over school or university stories, but then I’m also really not the target audience for any of these books. There is apparently some question whether A Deadly Education and The Last Graduate are really YA, but the university setting feels YA-ish, which is probably why they are up for a Lodestar.

I haven’t read A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger, but I enjoyed her 2021 Lodestar finalist Elatsoe a whole lot and am looking forward to reading it.

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders got a lot of buzz last year and I’m not at all surprised to see it nominated. Ditto for Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao, which got a lot of buzz, though I have to admit that I did not know it was YA until it made the Lodestar ballot.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 non-binary, 3 authors of colour, 1 international author

Astounding

Micaiah Johnson and A.K. Larkwood were both also nominated in this category last year and I’m happy to see them on the ballot again, because I enjoyed their work very much.

I initially assumed Tracey Deonn was a repeat finalist as well, but while her novel Legendborn was a Lodestar finalist last year, she was not an Astounding finalist, so this is her first nomination in this category.

Everina Maxwell, Shelley Parker-Chan and Xiran Jay Zhao are all first time Astounding finalists in their first year of eligibility. I enjoyed Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit a whole lot and nominated her. As mentioned above, I haven’t read Shelley Parker-Chan or Xiran Jay Zhao, but look forward to trying their work.

Diversity count: 5 women, 1 non-binary, 4 authors of colour, 3 international authors

***

And that’s it for the 2022 Hugo finalists. Personally, I think it’s a very good and diverse ballot with a mix of new names and returning favourites (though you inevitably become “the same people who are always nominated” upon your second nomination).

It’s also a ballot with several firsts. First African born black finalist, first black finalists in Editor Short and Fan Writer, youngest finalist ever. And it’s a ballot which includes finalists from five continents: Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. I don’t think there is a finalist from South America, though I haven’t googled everybody in the semiprozine, fanzine and fancast categories. I strongly suspect that there is no finalist from Antarctica on the ballot, but otherwise this is as global as the Hugos have ever been.

Once again, I don’t see a lot of strong themes on this ballot. We do have a couple of retellings on the ballot, but they’re not as prominent as they were a few years ago.

Who’ll win? We’ll see in early September.

I’ll keep the comments open for now, but if things get rude or people start fighting each other, I reserve the right to close them.

*I define “international” as a writer/creator living outside the US. If we include writers who are first or second generation immigrants, there would be several more. I’ve also stopped counting LGBTQ+ finalists for the diversity count, because it’s very difficult to tell, since not everybody is out.

Finally, apologies if I have accidentally misgendered or otherwise misidentified someone.