Oh, pretty ship

Credit: Peter Elson.

Stolen shamelessly from the blog of BARKING ALIEN. I am without shame, people! In any case, I swiped it because it's an awfully cool looking starship for the most part. The knock against I have against it is that antenna/mast. It's just odd and is that a gun mounted at the top? You just know some asshole gunner on an enemy ship is going to aim for that thing just to be a jerk. All the other gunners are aiming for the main body of that ship and there's Johnny Jackass trying to shot the antennas off. What a jerk, am I right?

My thoughts on the new Star Trek series

Meh.

Shit, I wrote thoughts, didn't I? Fuck, now I have to write more.

Anyways, "meh" sums it up pretty well. For those who haven't heard, CBS recently announced a new Trek series and any other day of the week I would be one happy boy, but unfortunately, I'm not. You see, the new show isn't going to be on TV (aside from the first ep) but on their website behind a paywall. Yeah, CBS is trying to get a piece of that web streaming pie by creating a subscription based service and apparently they think sticking a new Trek in there is just going to bring all the boys to the yard (ask your kids or Google). Now, a subscription only costs six bucks but that's six dollars more than I'm willing to pay just for one show and to be honest, that's really all you're going to get out of the deal. You do get access to entire runs of all their other TV shows, but the thing is, you can just as easily watch their most popular ones for free. I mean NCIS (both original and LA), Mike and Molly, The Big Bang Theory, Criminal Minds, like three of the CSIs, and other shows are all in syndication and air daily on other networks, so there's no incentive to drop any money for their service.

I will admit that I'm curious about the new Trek series. Which continuity, the characters, premise, the ship, etc., but my curiosity isn't enough to pay to see it even if I could and fortunately I can't, because I have no way of buying shit on the interwebs. :P

An interesting mashup of Star Trek: Enterprise's intro with Quantum Leap's audio

I just love how it syncs up perfectly.

I feel like reading a Star Wars novel

Which to read? Heir to the Empire isn't there because I'm saving that for another time.

Jennifer Lien (Kes from Star Trek: Voyager) arrested for allegedly exposing herself to minors

2015 is a weird, weird year. Via Variety:

“Star Trek: Voyager” actress Jennifer Lien was arrested and has been in custody for two weeks after allegedly exposing herself in front of several children, Roane County police confirm.

Lien has been charged with two misdemeanor counts of indecent exposure in an incident that happened on Aug. 31 in Harriman, Tenn.

A neighbor of Lien’s made a complaint to police after Lien began a tirade due to a crying child, and during her tirade, exposed her breasts and buttocks. The neighbor stated that she had three children in the yard while this was happening.

I checked her Wikipedia article and this isn't her first run in with the police, with arrests in 2012 and this past April. I'm glad that this wasn't one of those gross sex crimes that celebrities have been getting caught up in the past few years. Don't get me wrong, anyone exposing themselves to children is gross as frak, but at least it wasn't anything exceedingly gross. It's pretty clear that Jennifer Lien is in bad need of help and hopefully whatever sentencing gets or plea deal she takes (I doubt any prosecutor is going to push for a trial) includes some mental health treatment.

So guess who scored all twelve James Blish Trek AND The New Voyages paperbacks?

 So I went to the local Goodwill yesterday to see if they had any good pants for sale (I have an aversion towards spending ten dollars on a single pair, lol) and after finding two, went over to the books.

And I was coming up dry until I saw these babies sitting there. At a dollar a piece, they were a steal!

It wasn't until after I got home and looked them up on Wikipedia that I discovered that I had gotten my grubby hands on the entire series.

It gets better though, because I also snagged copies of both Star Trek: The New Voyages anthologies!

The New Voyages is interesting because not only were all the stories written by fanfic writers, but all but one story is preceded by an introduction from a TOS castmember! Imagine submitting a story for this anthology, then finding out that Leonard Nimoy or Nichelle Nichols is penning an intro it.

All in all, not a bad haul for $14.

The Blish Trek covers are from Memory Alpha. The New Voyages covers are from here and here.

Star Trek: Vanguard: Summon the Thunder so far (spoilers)

I can't even remember when I put that picture in the "Currently Reading" tab on the sidebar and in that time I've probably read several other books. I have a habit of doing this: I'll start reading a book, get a ways into it before dropping it and reading something else. I'll come back around to it sooner rather than later and this was the case with Summon the Thunder, the second book in the Star Trek: Vanguard. I can't stress enough that I didn't stop reading the book because it was bad or uninteresting or anything. Summon the Thunder really is a very good Trek novel that I'd recommend easily.

Currently, I'm on page 274 out of 420 pages total, although the last few pages are an "About the Authors" section and the usual ads that appear at the back of Trek novels. So what have I experienced so far? Hit the jump to find out and heed the spoiler warning in the post's title.

John Scalzi signs $3.4 million deal with Tor for thirteen books over the next decade

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn. According to the article, we're getting a Lock In sequel (YES) and we're bound to get some more entries in the Old Man's War series (DOUBLE YES).

Childhood's End and (finally) The Expanse get airdates

And in the case of The Expanse, it's about time! The bad news is that we've got quite a while longer to wait before either series graces the small screen - December. It's more than a bit odd that The Expanse is being set so late in the year, especially given that they released the trailer back in January. On the plus side, they're already writing the second season.

h/t The Wertzone.

The Ares from Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars

Artist: Don Dixon (via MangalaWiki)

So I'm reading Red Mars because I'm grooving for some hard-scifi at the moment and I thought the Ares, the U.S. and Russian built spacecraft that carries the first colonists to Mars was worth a post. I'm fascinated by the construction of the ship:

The ship was constructed in Earth orbit by assembling empty external fuel tanks from American and Russian space shuttles, which would also serve as landing ships, thus cutting costs compared to constructing a ship entirely out of dedicated parts. This and the repetitive nature of this construction method allowed the Ares to be completed in less than two years.
An immense ship for early 21st century standards, its primary living space was composed of eight hexagons, and each hexagon composed of six connected hollow cylinders, which previously were the fuel tanks. These eight toruses, ranging from Torus A to H, were speared down the middle by a central hub shaft. At the aft end of the shaft were the fuel tanks and main propulsion system. The front end led to a section with a bubble window, which permitted views of the stars and a partial view of the ship behind.
As a whole, the ship slowly rotated around the axis of the central shaft, providing about .38 of Earth's gravity (or Martian gravity) to the toruses.
The entire ship's living space equated to about the living area of a large city hotel. Each torus was filled with different systems: dining halls, living quarters, a farm, and even a strolling garden.

Using the external fuel tanks from space shuttles to build a ship? In real life, the tanks were disposable, jettisoned by the shuttle and left the burn up as it fell back to Earth, so the idea of repurposing them to build a ship is interesting, clever, and brilliant. Unfortunately, this option is no longer available to us since the Russians have no shuttles (except never used Buron) and NASA retired all of theirs. Still, maybe the design of the Ares could still be used if the United States and/or the rest of the world ever got off its asses and decided to go to Mars and colonize it.