Foto do autor

David K. Scholes

Autor(a) de Essential Reading in Science Fiction

7 Works 23 Membros 2 Reviews

Obras de David K. Scholes

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Sexo
male

Membros

Resenhas

Speculative Fiction
the ultimate collection
Author: David K Scholes
Date: 2012
Pgs: 184

REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:

A collection of some 23 speculative fiction short stories including science fiction, science fantasy, and alternate history stories.

Genre:
Adventure
Alternate History
Apocalypse
Disaster
End of the World
Espionage
Fiction
Magic
Military
Multiverse
Mythology
Pulp
Quirk
Science fiction
Short stories
Space
Space opera
War

Why this book:
I love speculative fiction.
______________________________________________________________________________
Trath
The Feel:
Too short needed more.

Pacing:
Good pace.

Hmm Moments:
They’ve crashed on other planets on prison ships before? And what happens to the innocent bystanders when the Quellers show?

Of course humans would be blowing the hell out of themselves trying to kill the perceived criminals who came off the crashed ship.
______________________________________________________________________________
Trouble at Suez
Favorite Character:
Prime Minister Tittington. He’s cold, direct, and unshakeable. And possibly quiet mad with the way things play out.

Least Favorite Character:
Anthony Eden and his impotence in the face of the hawks.

The Feel:
This has a great “it could have happened” feel to it.

Favorite Scene:
Wow! And the way is laid for a Pax Britainnia...The smiling grimaces of triumph in the face of a nuclear war makes me glad that we never saw the nuclear hawks really get their hands all the way around the control levers and buttons of power in those days.

Pacing:
The pacing was excellent.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
Wish the story had told us the disposition of the Soviet armored column advancing out of Syria into Israel following the exchange.

Hmm Moments:
I love the launch point for this alternate history. The Suez Canal in the midst of a Tri-Polar War, a three sided Cold War. A world in which the British didn’t go quietly into the night after the end of WW2 and instead managed to maintain tech parity and advantage over their Allies(?).

Why isn’t there a screenplay?
This would make a helluva Twilight Zone style movie.

Casting call:
Would have loved to see Sean Connery as either Prime Minister Cecile Tittington or Harris.

And it would have been a great twist if you got Connery for one of those roles, if Eden were portrayed by Roger Moore.
______________________________________________________________________________
OdinForce
Favorite Character:
Odin and Thor

The Feel:
A history lesson told from the end of time. Storytime around the fire.

Pacing:
Well paced, but short.

Hmm Moments:
The fall of the Celestials and the battle of the abstracts made me think of Marvel Comics.
______________________________________________________________________________
A Greater Britain? - the later war years
The Feel:
Prime Minister Cecile Tittington and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Harris reappear in this story. Takes place earlier in the timeline than the previously presented story Trouble at Suez.

Favorite Scene:
When the new tank appears on the scene at the Fall of Berlin.

And the conversations between Tittington and Patton.
______________________________________________________________________________
Dangerous Journey
Favorite Character:
The narrator, we are him. We are walking...travellating his way home after a hard day’s work.

Character I Most Identified With:
The narrator. He’s me, further along life’s journey...a lot further, but me. Not as young as I used to be, but still trying, still grasping.

The Feel:
The paranoia, the feeling of slowing down...that is caught here excellently.

Hmm Moments:
Living longer and the problems inherent. And what the medical establishment will have done to keep us going further and further.
______________________________________________________________________________
A Greater Britain? - the early post war years
The Feel:
Now I see that we’re going to jump in and out of the lives of this alternate Great Britain and the world that she dominates.

Pacing:
This one is more a vignette covering the end of the war through the Suez crisis. Lots happens, but this is more history lesson than story, akin to the earlier Odinforce story.
______________________________________________________________________________
Hired Guns
The Feel:
This seemed like the idea for a story that wasn’t fully fleshed out. The climax / denouement is a great twist. Guess the alien soldiers who came in to solve Earth’s problems had watched the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings movies.

Favorite Scene:
The end as the aliens’ starship pulls away from Earth.
______________________________________________________________________________
A Greater Britain - 1955 - 2007
Favorite Character:
Prime Minister Cecile Tittington

The Feel:
This is more of a worldbuilding story than an actual story. This was also meta referring to our reality and our history as juxtaposition to the history of Tittington’s Greater Britain reality.

Favorite Scene:
The Falklands War that didn’t happen because of how much more active and strong Britain was in this reality as compared to our own.

Pacing:
Well paced considering that there aren’t scenes in the classic sense, Presented more as a history of this alternate reality and worldbuilding instead of a story set in the milieu.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
Are we dealing with multiple alternate realities where Tittington became PM? One of these stories had a large scale nuclear exchange as a result of the Suez Crisis, but that isn’t referenced in any of the other stories which take place further down the timeline. Therefore, it stands to reason that we are dealing with multiple alternate realities instead of just one overall reality. Though, all the stories involving Tittington, excluding the first Suez one, seem to be the same reality.
______________________________________________________________________________
Easy Meat
Favorite Character:
The First Officer of the Fleet who realizes that something isn’t right.

Least Favorite Character:
The Admiral with the fire in his belly ready to conquer this planet and get on to his glory

The Feel:
You can feel the military mindset and arrogance of the humans here.

Favorite Scene:
When the ore carriers dump their detritus in derision on the fleet.

Pacing:
Great pace. Probably wouldn’t work as well as a longer story, but it is excellent in this form.

Hmm Moments:
Going to war over a midden heap planet and getting patted on the head and sent home. That is awesome.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Intervention
Favorite Character:
The Tolden elder telling the history of the great war

Favorite Scene:
That moment when you realize what the hammer is.

When you realize that the planet that Urrle and the Tolden elder are visiting is all a battlefield, the leftover remnants of a battlefield that happened long ago; down starfighters and starships.

Hmm Moments:
When the three descend and reclaim the hammer and pay their respects to the fallen Brell soldier.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Asgard Anomaly
Favorite Character:
Thor...just because he’s Thor. Magni’s alright, but Thor is my favorite.

Least Favorite Character:
The Emperor Apparent Zdahlin Tihler. He triggered this vignette in the ongoing war. He brought it on himself in his lust for more power in a world where he already bore incredible power. And he finally placed himself in the hands of his adjudicators to face trial for the sins he had committed against the universe.

Favorite Scene:
Magic and science mixed on a fleet of starships crossing the void near the Asgard Anomaly. When the soon-to-be Emperor senses something that could augment his power and ability to command and countermands the controls of the ship to drop them back into regular space and seek out the power source.

And when they draw the attention of the son of Thor, Magni.

Hmm Moments:
Machine computers and biological computers comparing notes on the answers they provide to the crew.

The godwave and anti-godwave energies seem to play a part in a number of these stories.

The Prime Mystic seeing through the previous Asgard’s Ragnarok and realizing as his sentence is carried out. Asgard is eternal.
______________________________________________________________________________
Surprise Attack
Favorite Character:
Love, love, love the Grey Police

Hmm Moments:
When you realize that all is not what it seems.
______________________________________________________________________________
Unwelcome Visitor
Favorite Character:
So...all the Brell aren’t gone from the Universe. Or Tragathh is just lost in time on his way to the final conflagration.

Least Favorite Character:
The mean looking copper who commandeers Amelia’s home and farm to ward off an “invasion”.

The Feel:
This one ties back to Hired Guns.

Hmm Moments:
Wonder if that black energy is the anti-godwave that Magni and Thor have dealt with a few times through the novel?

Love the idea that humanity would use a Interdimensional Extraterrestrial WMD without knowing what it was just because some aliens left it for us. We absolutely would...probably without a second thought.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Visit
The Feel:
Fragment. Hidden history lesson kind of thing. The god fragment observes and then influences events during WW2.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Infinity Platform
Favorite Character:
Like the Cosmic Enforcer

The Feel:
Feels like a Silver Surfer story from Marvel Comics
______________________________________________________________________________
Prisoner of Empire
Favorite Scene:
Love the beach as a metaphor for both prison and infinity/eternity
______________________________________________________________________________
The Passenger in Aisle Seat 18b
The Feel:
That’s a neat concept. Shades of Stephen King’s The Langoliers with some alternate reality and protector beings thrown in.
______________________________________________________________________________
Shall Asgard Survive?
Favorite Character:
Thor...always Thor.

The Feel:
Grim...apocalyptic.

Favorite Scene:
When Surtur is taken into and becomes part of that other plane, The Fires of Evil. No doubt those other powers on that plane aren’t going to take kindly to his trying to rebuild Muspelheim. If they don’t have their own power bases in Asgard or the prime material plane, why should he?

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
The Destroyer appears here, but he isn’t part of the Norse mythos. He’s part of the Marvel Comics Norse mythos, which seems to flavor some of these stories in a few places.

Hmm Moments:
The OdinAxe and its powers.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Return
Favorite Character:
Thor...always Thor

The Feel:
A hope springing from the depth of despair. A hope arising from no hope.

Favorite Scene:
The idea of Mjolnir laying in the Australian desert abandoned...or in storage waiting for the time that it would be needed anew.

Pacing:
The story like many in the collection is very short. The story flows very well...making it seem shorter still.
______________________________________________________________________________
Rescue Mission
Favorite Character:
Urrle the rescuer, the dimension walker

Least Favorite Character:
Janelle is an idiot. Through the story, she trusts Urrle and the Ring of Odin. And then, she wants confirmation instead of going along and triggers the brouhaha.

Favorite Scene:
Love the lost dimensional wanderers trying to find their way home theme.

Hmm Moments:
Urrle can sense, detect, and find fixed gateways and opportunity windows that allow people to travel between different realities. That’s cool.

Nice that we are getting a walk through many of the alternate realities that we visited in the other stories in this collection. The interconnectedness is welcome, but I wonder at closure with the way this is playing out.

The Concourse nexus of realities is awesome. Creepy with them being the only living beings moving through there, especially when it is designed for large numbers of creatures.
______________________________________________________________________________

Last Page Sound:
But who or what was Tittington?

Author Assessment:
I wish the interconnectedness of the stories was more spelled out. I went into it thinking that I was getting a bunch of spec fic shorts and instead it’s all chapters in a large overarching story. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I would have been more on-point looking at the themes, elements, and characters that carried forward through the story.

Editorial Assessment:
The novel/shorts are very well edited.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
glad I read it

Disposition of Book:
e-Book

Would recommend to:
genre fans
______________________________________________________________________________

Errata:
… (mais)
 
Marcado
texascheeseman | May 31, 2015 |
Essential Reading in Science Fiction by David Scholes seems to be neither of these.

I purchased this e-book and I read these all straight through to the very end. I wouldn't call it science fiction as much as fantasy though it does contain a lot science fiction'y descriptions.

This appears to be a collection of 24 stories that could very well stand alone. Yet there is this convoluted thread that runs through them all to make it look like a disjointed effort to make a novel.

I say this because the first story has a character named Urrle who at one place gets miss-named as Earle. Earle seems to be a recurring character through out. And there are threads of Asgard myth's with Odin and Thor in prominence. And there is some almost faceless benevolent but non interfering alien race called the Brell. So, it becomes difficult at best to divorce these from one another. There are some other names recurring but often with disturbing conflicted time lines - such as Chris and Jenny.

This is what creates the rather disjointed whole at best.
It's not that these might not be good stories its just that my limited intelligence kept having me say "Huh" straight through to the end. I tried in my mind to break them up into their separate selves but that was just worse.

Here's a challenge for other readers- read this and tell me what it is really all about.
… (mais)
 
Marcado
JLDobias | Nov 10, 2013 |

Estatísticas

Obras
7
Membros
23
Popularidade
#537,598
Avaliação
½ 2.4
Resenhas
2
ISBNs
7