While I admire the hell out of Ben Mezrich’s non-fiction — his foray into telling the tales of nerds turned criminal badasses — his fiction leaves much to be desired. Just because Indiana Jones wore a fedora doesn’t mean that your clones have to act like fucking MRA’s. While flouting about the Modern Wonders of the World like pixelated turds cheating with a GameShark at a SNES RPG, Mezrich has his lead constantly bemoan the fact the female lead doesn’t smile more. CREEEEEEEEP.
You Can Take the Captain Out of the Enterprise But…
Star Trek Mirror Universe – Rise Like Lions by David Mack (2011, 400 pages) – This story, while exciting and easy to read, is more interesting to me because of the What If factor. What if the Mirror, Mirror alternate universe in classic Star Trek had continued to develop as Next Generation, Deepspace 9, and Voyager did in the normal Star Trek universe? We saw pieces of it in DS9 where Kira visited her evil twin. In that universe, Spock’s unification had weakened the Empire, […]
Frank Herbert – Master of Extreme Worlds
The Lazarus Effect (Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom, 1984, 393 pages) – Most of Frank Herbert’s early works are pulp science fiction sprinkled with ideas he will later use in Dune. This book, written after Dune and with poet Bill Ransom, is not pulp. It’s almost as fully realized as Dune with some important differences. First of all, this planet is completely submerged. There are no sand dunes, even at the bottom of the sea. There is no one hero holding the mystical, political, and […]
“They never realized they were puppets…made to dance and love and die and suffer…just like me…”
The Deadpool Killogy is comprised of three graphic novels. The first, Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, starts when Professor Charles Xavier has Deadpool committed to Ravenscroft Asylum. What he doesn’t know is that the famous Dr. Benjamin Brighton who heads the hospital is really Psycho-Man. The supervillain plans to brainwash Deadpool, hoping to form a super army, but it doesn’t work out like he planned. He ends up making Deadpool’s subconscious stronger. It’s true that Deadpool has always had voices in his head, but now […]