Tony’s Comments (group member since Dec 19, 2018)

Tony’s comments from the Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy group.

I have been tossing up whether I should rewatch the theatrical release just before I watch the Snyder version.

I finished the graphic novel X-Men: Fallen Angels. It's more light-hearted than most of the X- books that Marvel was producing at the time.

I did some reorganising in my home over the weekend and came across some CDs that I have had for years. One of them has over 700 free sci-fi ebooks - all stuff that is now public domain, but including some well known authors such as Andre Norton, Edgar Rice Burroughs, 'Doc' Smith, etc. I also had one of Andre Norton audiobooks, again, public domain and produced by LibriVox. It looks to have 9 of her novels and a few short stories, as well as some short stories from other authors. During the break between meetings, I listened to All Cats Are Gray, which only took about 15 minutes.

Not a great story, not a terrible story, and reasonably well read. It can also fill my alternate form Bingo slot.

I have finished Second Foundation which completes the original Foundation trilogy. There are still two books to go to complete Asimov's Future History series - Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth.

There were echoes of the Lensman series in this book, at least to me. I don't know if Asimov had read 'Doc' Smith, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me.

The three books of the original trilogy will fill the Bingo slot for award winning, as they won a Hugo in 1966.

I finished Foundation and Empire and I have started the last book of the original trilogy - Second Foundation

I've read 21. There are a lot on that list that I have never heard of and I agree with Andrea that a lot of the more recent releases may not last as classics. There are some notable omissions from that list - as there are in all lists of this type :)

I finished Foundation and have moved on to Foundation and Empire. I have to say that the cover art in the versions of the Foundation trilogy I have, while nice, is not at all indicative of the books :)

I have started Foundation, which puts me into the home stretch on my Robots/Galactic Empire/Foundation reread. So far, I have found the books written in the 50s superior to the books Asimov wrote in the 80s to fill in the gaps.

I finished The Eye of Ra. It's a fun adventure story with some time travel. Aimed at readers in the 9 - 14 age bracket. It will go nicely to fill the Middle School Bingo slot.

Shadow in the Cloud - the trailer looked good. Cinematography and SFX were good and the acting was good, particularly Chloe Grace Moretz in the lead role. Unfortunately, the script was rubbish.

I made some progress in both Norse Myths and Rogues. I have started The Eye of Ra. As the protagonists are a brother and sister who have just finished Grade 4 and Grade 6 respectively, I expect this will fill the Middle Grade Bingo slot.

I finally finished Forward the Foundation. It took a ridiculously long time to read for a book with only 300+ pages. After having finished this and Prelude to Foundation, I would say that they really weren't necessary and don't add that much to the Foundation series.

I didn't think season of Discovery was great, but season 2 was a lot better - it actually felt like Trek, which I felt was lacking in s1. Season 3 got better as it went along. I think it's a good thing that they have moved into the future as it gets around the "Why didn't they use that tech in TNG or DS9?" type questions, which were starting to surface. It was a problem with Enterprise as well, but they kept it under control fairly well.

The problem with many current incarnations of both Trek and Star Wars is that they are being put in the hands of people who don't really get them. JJ Abrams was one of the hottest directors around at the time, but when he said that he really didn't get Star Trek, I wondered why he had been given the job for Into Darkness. That is the reason why The Mandalorian has been so good - Favreau and Filoni clearly get Star Wars and they understand the things that had been lacking in the Disney movie trilogy.

G33z3r wrote: "I kind of liked The Mandalorian season 2. ...

I gather this is the end of the series."

The Mandalorian has been renewed for at least 2 more seasons, although I don't know if Grogu will reappear. The Book of Boba Fett is a 4 part mini-series that starts in early December and leads into the launch of season 3 on Christmas Day.

Carolyn wrote: "Hi, I’m Carolyn from Australia."

Welcome here Carolyn. Nice to add another Aussie to the list :)

I really enjoyed the first Wonder Woman movie, so I was looking forward to WW84. Sigh.

It's not terrible, and the production quality and SFX are certainly good, but I think the film was let down by the script - I expected more from Patty Jenkins and Geoff Johns.

I read some more of the anthology Rogues and the non-fiction Norse Myths, and I am now continuing with my Foundation reread with Forward the Foundation.

There are a couple of free online services - Book Bub and Book Barbarian (I'm sure there are others) - that send daily emails of ebooks that are either free or 99 cents, although 99 cents in the US doesn't always mean 99 cents everywhere else. There is also at least one discussion list in this group where a list of free sci-fi ebooks for that day is listed - again, free in the US, not necessarily elsewhere. These are good ways of building your library without straining the budget.

I find a lot of these books are series starters, in the hope that you will buy the rest of the series at full price. But there are also a number of times where I have found a complete series (sometimes even as many as 9 books) for a total of 99 cents. This generally occurs when the series has been finished for a while, and the author is hoping to generate some extra sales on old product.

There are some authors who combine the two - Andrew Dobell has written a couple of series of Star Magi books - set in a very sci-fi universe, but there is magic. Superheroes is another area that is difficult - most superheroes have a sci-fi background - aliens, bitten by a radioactive spider, high-tech armour - that sort of thing. But there are characters in the same universe who are definitely magical - Doctor Strange, Zatana, Sargon the Sorcerer. Wonder Woman was sculpted out of clay and given life by a goddess, and she regularly fights gods, but she also fights Martians.

Alt-history does seem to depend on the author. Len Deighton wrote a book similar to Fatherland - SS-GB. It's set in an England which is part of the Third Reich, but is basically a spy/detective story. Because it's written by Deighton, most bookstores would have it in general fiction. However, The Man in the High Castle is also a spy/detective story set in an America occupied by the Nazis and the Japanese, but because the author is Philip K Dick, it would generally be shelved in sci-fi.

James Philip has written over 20 books based in a world where the Cuban Missile Crisis turned the Cold War into a nuclear war, and there are plenty of books written about how WWII would have gone if one of the plots to assassinate Hitler had worked. I don't think any of them would class as sci-fi.

In my Goodreads shelves, I will just put books on multiples shelves (although I do have a separate shelf for alt-history). In my physical bookshelves, I don't worry about it and I order everything alphabetically by author, regardless of genre.

Welcome Gabriela, enjoy the discussions. We're a friendly bunch. I haven't heard of any Peruvian authors writing SF/F, but I'm sure there must be some.