Here's a video of new Doctor Jodie Whittaker reacting to 13th Doctor cosplayers

Because we haven't even seen what the new Doc is going to be wearing and she was just announced less than a month ago, but of course there are already people cosplaying her. Gotta love the fandom.

(via Tor.com)

Women dominate the Hugo Awards

You can see all of the nominees and winners here, but suffice to say, goddamn.

Best Novel: The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin.
Best Novella: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire.
Best Novelette: The Tomato Thief by Ursula Vernon.
Best Short Story: Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar.
Best Series: The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold.
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Ada Palmer.

Overall, women won 15 out of the 17 categories and counting Palmer netting the Campbell (which is award at the Hugos but isn't a Hugo), they won 16 altogether. Not a bad performance and well deserved. Oh, I'm sure there will be grumblings and teeth gnashing from a certain segment of the fandom over this, but I'll say here what I said on my Tumblr:

Write better. The success of women and writers of color at the Hugos and other SFF lit awards has nothing to do with their ethnicity or identity and everything to do with them just being better writers, editors, etc.

Being white, straight, and/or identifying with your assigned gender (because let's not overlook the fact that these groups include women) does not automatically mean you win awards.

Unless you create your own or manipulate a poorly planned one. *coughcoughDragonAwardscoughcough*

In any case, congrats to all of the winners and nominees.

The Most Interesting Captain in Starfleet

"I don't always drink tea. But when I do, it's Earl Grey, hot."


(It's a parody of those Dos Equis commercials)

I'll just be over here, gathering up my quarters

Retroist's FB.

You better believe that if I ever won the lottery I'd hunt down and buy one of these babies. The game could be hot shit, but it's Star Trek, so I'd still want it.

I wouldn't reserve your tickets for the Han Solo movie just yet...

(via io9)

I have a post up on my other blog, Nerd Trash, about how the Han Solo film is like a train chug-chugging its way to disaster. In brief, Lucasfilm fired the original two directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller because of the direction they were steering the movie in. Basically, Lord and Miller are known almost exclusively for doing comedies, some of their best known work being The Lego Movie and 21 Jump Street, and somehow, Lucasfilm was surprised when the duo tried to turn the Solo movie into a comedy. When they refused to, you know, not do that, Lucasfilm fired them and hired Ron Howard the finish the production.

But my friends, this train has only just left the station and we're not even halfway to the wreck. There's also reports that Lucasfilm isn't happy with the performance that their lead actor, Alden Ehrenreich is turning in. So much so that they hired an acting coach for him.

And yet, somehow, Lucasfilm and Disney expect the Han Solo movie to make its scheduled release date of May 2018. Yeeeah, that probably isn't going to happen. I figure that what the studio already has will be scrapped and they'll start over from square one. If that happens, then it'll be up in the air whether they retain Ron Howard or go with another director. I would be surprised if they didn't take the chance and recast Han with someone who can act. Needless to say, if that happens, then the release date gets pushed back.

Update on my reading progress

Because it's been nearly three months since I last posted a tally and two months since I did any kind of update, and I know you folks have just been dying to know what I've been reading. :P

So in the last update, I mentioned reading Phule's Company, followed by the first two books in Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War series - Trading in Danger and Marque and Reprisal - with Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor sandwiched in between, Since then, I've put three more Vorkosigan tales under my belt: Barrayar, Warrior's Apprentice, and the novella The Mountains of Mourning. That brings me up to twelve science fiction books (I'm counting MoM since novellas have been published on their own as books before) this year so far, which is more than last year's total.

I hoped to add The Vor Game to that list, but I'm taking a much needed break from the Vorkosigan Saga. I plan on reading at least half the series this year, if I can. Great series, highly recommend it. Right now I'm reading Clive Cussler's The Mediterranean Caper to give my thinkbox a break before coming back around to the genre. His books aren't terrible, but they're definitely more of a palate cleanser than anything else.

Just a good ol' country doctor

Better than a hologram and was never racist against androids.

 

 

Pictures from Memory Alpha.

I can't believe I have to wait a year for John Scalzi's next book, Head On

Entertainment Weekly did an exclusive cover reveal and an excerpt for the sequel to Lock In, but they watermarked it for some reason, so here's Tor.com's.

On the plus side, the book comes out a day before my birthday, so there's a present covered.

The William Thomas Riker School of Chair Sitting

This is why he was a commander for almost twenty years - Starfleet doesn't promote weirdos who sit in chairs like that.

So that happened

Yesterday, I decided to do some book shelf reorganization, moving all of my mysteries, thrillers, and crime novels to the bookcase formerly occupied by my fantasy fiction. Today, I tackled the bookcase with all of my science fiction and things happened. Like with the fantasy, I decided to go through and box up any books that I don't plan on reading for the foreseeable future. I'll get around to them sooner or later, but until then there's no point in their taking up valuable shelf space. So then while putting the remaining books back up, I had a thought: I read military science fiction a lot more than I do anything else, so why not put all of them together, then have the rest of the sci-fi follow after? I mean, certainly the mil-sf couldn't take up all that much space, right?

All but four of them are Honor Harrington.

Ha ha ha, yeah...the David Webers took up an entire shelf on their own. I uh...I didn't realize that I had that many. Yikes. The worst part is I'm only on the fifth book, Flag in Exile. 😬 Terrible, I know.

The mil-sf ended up taking two shelves, but it's worth it. Like I said, I read more of that than any other type of SF, so having them all together makes more sense than having them mixed with the regular stuff. I definitely need to buy more cases this year.