Experiments in Woolgathering

Third review today, as part of my plan to get caught up on my book reviews, since I’ve been slacking off on my blogging in general pretty severely. After Excession I was in the mood for some more far-future scifi, and, after some searching around, I stumbled upon a rarity, a scifi trilogy: ::John C. Wright::’s, The Golden Age, which shares its name with its first book. (more…)

Charles Stross is an author I discovered falling trails of ‘if you liked this novel…’ on Amazon.com – which is how I’ve discovered a number of new authors recently. His novel Singularity Sky was highly rated and recommended, so the next time I was at a book store I picked it up. (more…)

It’s been a while since I’ve finished a book, I spent some time skimming some roleplaying game books and some reference stuff for a PBEM game character that I ended up not playing because the game turned out to be defunct, but I had the books out from the library, so I read a bit of them anyhow.

I’d actually started Excession by Iain M. Banks before this, set it aside reluctantly for this little project – which was not an easy thing as the book hooks you fairly early and well. (more…)

We had a friend over for dinner Saturday. Well, to be more accurate, a friend was coming over around dinner time and I took the opportunity to cook something more elaborate than usual.

The menu was:

Blackened cherry smoked lamb chops
Mushroom risotto
Grilled asparagus (more…)

Over the last week or so, we’ve watched the 4 disks of Firefly, a show which w were pretty down on after seeing the pilot (which was actually episode 2 as it turns out). Additional dislike came when I discovered Dark Angel had been cancelled to make room for it on FOX’s schedule.

The reason we decided to give it a 2nd chance was because the previews for the movie Serenity (Serenity being the name of the of the Firefly class ship in the series) looked really good.

The episodes on the DVD were arranged in the intended order, which was not the order in which they aired. Also included were 3 episodes which never aired in the US or Canada.

So, when we watched the first episode on the first DVD we were confused, since we didn’t remember it at all. Not only that we liked it quite a bit, and when we watched the 2nd episode, that episode made a hell of a lot more sense. Finally, it also seemed like FOX had marketed the show as a comedy and not a drama – and it was certainly much more the latter than the former.

As we watched the rest of the series, we found we really liked it. Our initial distaste for it seemed to spring mainly from FOX’s boneheaded mishandling and micromanaging of the show.

So, anyhow, now I’m bummed it was cancelled after only 14 episodes. By the end of the run the cast had really gelled, and it was, in the final summation, a good show. Not that that has ever been the primary factor in keeping a show on the air or not.

Technorati: movies, television, Firefly, Serenity, FOX