By George, I think he's got it!

Artist: Earl Norem.

I wonder if The Doctor saved the city?

(via browsethestacks)

Rainn Wilson is Mudd

Rainn Wilson picture from: Matt Hoyle/Phoenix New Times
Harry Mudd picture from: Memory Alpha

Here's an unexpected bit of news: Rain Wilson (Dwight Schrute from The Office) has been cast as that infamous scoundrel ("Entrepreneur!" He'd say) Harry Mudd in Star Trek: Discovery. Yay? I can't really see him playing Mudd with the same presence as Roger Carmel did. Personally, I'd have gone with someone closer to Carmel's body type and appearance, but I'm going to assume that Wilson will be putting on some serious poundage for the role (a quick check on Memory Alpha shows that Mudd weighed 240lbs). I think this is more about name recognition than anything else because at this point, the show's cast doesn't have much of it beyond Jason Isaacs, Michelle Yeoh, and James Frain. Even Anthony Rapp is probably not that well known outside of musical theater, being famous for starring in Rent.

I freely admit that I'm guilty of bias against Star Trek: Discovery, so that's probably clouding my judgement of this casting choice.

What do you guys and gals think about Rainn Wilson playing Harry Mudd?

I'm on one hell of a sci-fi kick

Remember how I lamented last year about not reading enough science fiction compared to fantasy and everything else I read? Well, looks like I won't be doing any bellyaching this year. So far, I've read five books in a row. Actually didn't intend to do that, it just sort of happened.

Hey, by the way, did you know that Dragonriders of Pern is classified as science fiction? I sure as heck didn't until I was halfway through Dragonflight. Anyways, here's the five:

A re-read that was long overdue. I thoroughly enjoyed OMW the first time I read it seven or more years ago and I've always meant to re-read it, but I could never get the show on the road until last month.

 

Another re-read and one that was better served by it. I didn't dislike The Ghost Brigades the first time I read it, but I didn't exactly fall head over heels for it either. A second run through was much better since I knew what to expect.

This was the odd bird. I've had Night Train for years and years now (I can't even remember where or when I bought it) and up until last month, it was doing nothing but collecting dust and moving from shelf to box to shelf. I can't explain why I all of a sudden decided to read Night Train, but I did and I regret not doing it sooner. It didn't exactly knock my socks off, but it wasn't a waste of my time either. It might be one of those books (like above) that gets better during a second run through.

The third in the Old Man's War series. I really enjoyed this one because it was not what I expected. I can't really explain why I liked this book without spoiling the plot, but suffice to say that if you like brinkmanship, interstellar politics, plot twists, and the kind of behind the scenes throatcutting that would make the Lannisters from Game of Thrones proud, this might be a book worth checking out.

Now, you would think that a series featuring a quasi-medieval society, dragons, and the men and women who ride them would make Dragonriders of Pern firmly of the fantasy genre...and you, good sirs and madams, would be wrong. The origins and lost technology of Pernese society, as well as old standbys such as teleportation and time travel put the series in science fiction territory.

I liked Dragonflight, but you can tell that it is a product of 1960s fantasy. The characters are always really dramatic when they talk or do anything. The romance between F'lar and Lessa was like out of a soap opera or something. And yeah, all the dragonmen (because dragonriders wasn't manly enough?) have those cliche fantasy names with an apostrophe between the first and second letters.

I'm pleased as punch with my progress. Not least of which is because I've never read five books from the same genre in a row before. Last year I read them in groups of three, but never five.

I plan on keeping this trend up with Robert Asprin's Phule's Company, maybe followed by Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon. After that, I think I might read the first Stainless Steel Rat or Riverworld. I'm in a classic sci-fi kind of mood.

The post-Battle of Wolf 359 sh*tstorm

To say Wolf 359 was a disaster is like saying the Battle of Tsushima was a misstep for the Russian Empire.
(via Memory Alpha)

I was thinking about Star Trek: TNG the other day as one does and my mind went to the famous battle/massacre that was Wolf 359 and the fallout that must have happened after the Borg cube was finally defeated. After all, there had to be a huge shitstorm in the aftermath, right? I mean, you can't lose 39 ships and nearly eleven thousand people without there being massive public outrage and such. So I started thinking about it more and more, creating in my noggin what that must have been like.

I can imagine that there would be a inquiry into how exactly the massacre happened. You'd figure that 40 ships would be more than enough to take down even an all-powerful Borg cube. Memory Alpha's article on the battle says that the Federation fleet attacked in small groups instead of one all-out mass assault and that allowed the Borg to destroy the fleet in short order. I see the inquiry having one of two outcomes:

"Jesse, we have to make more monsters!"

Credit: Lloyd Birmingham.

On the next Breaking Bad...Walter White continues his work on creating better blue skinned monsters while Jesse Pinkman just shouts "science, bitch!" for the entire hour for no reason at all.

(via scificovers)