David Lee Summers's Blog, page 39
February 22, 2022
Hybrid: Forced Vengeance
Around the end of 2015, my editor at Lachesis Publishing urged me to read the novel Hybrid: Forced Vengeance by Greg Ballan. I really enjoyed this fun thrill-ride of a novel. A little over three years later, Lachesis announced it would not be publishing new novels and Greg mentioned he had two new Hybrid novels. I knew I wanted them for Hadrosaur Productions. More recently, the rights for Greg’s two novels with Lachesis reverted to him and he asked if I would be interested. There was no question...
February 19, 2022
Caliber Oz
Last year, while reading L. Frank Baum’s Oz novels, I occasionally searched the internet for more information about the novels, Baum, and other adaptations. I came across an interesting looking comic book series and made a mental note to come back to it. The Oz series was published by Caliber Publishing starting in 1994. Written by Stuart Kerr and Ralph Griffith, with art by Bill Bryan it ran for 21 issues. In addition to the 21-issue ongoing series, there was a one-shot book called “Freedom Fig...
February 15, 2022
Space Pirates’ Legacy Complete
In May 2017, the rights to my “Old Star Saga” novels reverted to me. Upon getting the rights back, I decided to add a new first novel, revise and update the existing novels, and rebrand the series as “The Space Pirates’ Legacy.” After almost five years, this project is finally complete. Today, I’m proud to announce the release of book four, Heirs of the New Earth.
Heirs of the New EarthThe Earth has gone silent. John Mark Ellis and the crew of the Sanson are sent to investigate. When they...
February 12, 2022
New Captain Scarlet
As a science fiction fan, 2005 stands out for me because it marked the return of Doctor Who. I was a fan of the classic series and watched as many episodes as I could in college and had been grateful when the Albuquerque PBS station began getting new episodes within a year of release. At the 2005 Bubonicon in Albuquerque, they had a special screening and I attended with my daughter and a friend. We were delighted to see our favorite Time Lord back on the screen and portrayed well by Christopher ...
February 8, 2022
Battle for the Sol
Back in November, I mentioned that my wife had purchased all six issues of Cross-Cult Comics’ Perry Rhodan series for me in digital format. I read and discussed the first three issues almost right away, but then between the holidays and editorial deadlines, I had to delay reading the final three issues. Here’s the link to my first post: Perry Rhodan Comics
I finally had a chance to read the second three-issue arc, entitled “Battle for the Sol.” I suspect the pun is deliberate, since Germans w...
February 5, 2022
Hadrosaur’s New Payment Buttons
About a year ago, I received an email announcing that PayPal had deployed new payment buttons. I set it aside, knowing I needed to look into it as soon as I could clear some time. An upgrade like this typically means that older code, like that I used for my original PayPal buttons, will be deprecated and not maintained. Still, a quick look at PayPal’s development site told me I’d need to do some coding and testing, plus the old buttons still worked, so it was easy to convince myself to put it of...
February 1, 2022
Revisiting a Classic
It! The Terror from Beyond Space is a 1958 science fiction film with a screenplay written by one of my favorite authors, Jerome Bixby. I’ve heard that the film inspired Dan O’Bannon when he wrote the screenplay for Alien. The overall premise is much the same. Aboard a spaceship, the crew is locked in a life-or-death struggle with a formidable alien creature. Bixby himself is probably best known as the creator of Star Trek’s mirror universe and also the author of the short story “It’s a Good Life...
January 29, 2022
Five Years of the Clockwork Legion on Audio
It feels like the world shifted back in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading through the United States and many businesses closed down. I would spend most of the next seven months working from home. Starting in October 2020, I resumed my commutes back to Kitt Peak National Observatory. As I’ve mentioned before, these are long commutes. Music, podcasts, and audio books often keep me company during my long drive.
Over the year and a half since I returned to work, I’ve noticed m...
January 25, 2022
The Ring of the Nibelung
I enjoy retelling myths and folktales and love seeing the ways other people interpret those myths and folktales from their perspective. I’m a fan of movies and their soundtracks. In fact, I often put on soundtrack music as a background when I write to help set a mood for the story I’m telling. I also love fantasy tales involving quests, dragons and magic. For all these reasons, I feel drawn to Richard Wagner’s famous opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen. The whole story is a retelling of Germani...
January 22, 2022
Confronting Change
In earlier posts, I’ve discussed working with the Hydra spectrograph on the WIYN Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. It’s a piece of instrumentation that allows astronomers to observe up to 90 objects simultaneously during one telescope pointing. The WIYN telescope can see one square degree of the sky at a time. Hydra has a set of optical “buttons” which can be placed on a metal plate at the position where an object will be in the field of view. These buttons send data to the spectrogra...
