I realize it's been awhile since I've done a Geek List, and a friendly debate over on our friend Sam​'s wall gave me an idea. So, here it is- every Star Trek movie from best to worst. Disagree? Bring it on, nerd-boys.

1. The Wrath of Khan
2. The Undiscovered Country
3. First Contact
4. The Search for Spock
5. The Voyage Home
6. Generations
7. Star Trek the Motion Picture
8. Star Trek '09
9. The Final Frontier
10. Into Darkness
11. Insurrection
12. Nemesis

I like and frequently re-watch everything down to #5. #6-8 all have redeeming qualities, though they aren't great in my opinion. 9-12 are just about completely schlock and I only watch them when I'm feeling OCD completist or sadomasochistic.


Bonus Content! The Star Trek Series from best to worst:

1. The Original Series
2. Deep Space Nine
3. The Next Generation
4. The Animated Series
5. Voyager
6. Enterprise

The original always maintains it's place in my heart. The effects haven't aged well, and probably weren't great even at the time, and Lord knows it's melodramatic and absurd frequently, but the dynamic of the big three and the fact that it was an optimistic view of the future without quite as much socialist utopianism in it keep it fresh for me. Also, this version of Starfleet has "General Order 27," which, if invoked, triggers a starship to sterilize a planet of all life. Not only do they consider it a viable military option- they have goddamn General Order for it! Quite a shout from Picard's, "Starfleet is not a mil-ih-tar-y organization."


Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 really introduced the idea of extended story arcs for American Science Fiction television. DS9 explored more thoroughly the theme of a ultra-enlightened utopia having to survive against opponents who do not share their sentiments. As a result, Sisko was a deeper and more complex character than the other captains. See the season six episode, "In the Pale Moonlight," for evidence.

Next Gen comes right in the middle of the list. The crew of the Enterprise D get full marks for many things, reviving the franchise, for one, sticking the landing with, unquestionably, the best series finale of the lot for another. But Picard, brilliant as Patrick Stewart may be, is boring and predictable next to either James T. Kirk or Benjamin Sisko. And aside from Picard the cast is kinda, meh, except for Data.

The Animated Series is basically the Original Series. It surrenders two positions because the animation is 70s filmation (note the similarities to He-Man if you watch it in both visuals and sound effects) and because to fit Star Trek style philosophizing into a half-hour package, well, they're incredibly talky, dense cartoons. I like 'em, but I can't honestly recommend them to someone who isn't already pretty in love with Trek.

Voyager, so much potential squandered. By the mid point of the season the only interesting characters were a well-endowed former Borg drone and the holographic doctor. And yes, some of their episodes were entertaining, thought provoking and hilarious, but when the camera wasn't on them, I was bored out of my mind.

Enterprise. I have tried to watch Enterprise on four separate occasions and failed to get through the first season each time. I keep hearing that the last two season are better, except the finale, but the opening sucks so hard I've never gotten to them.

Books You Should Read, Epsiode 1: Gordon R. Dickson’s Dorsai!, The Silver Medal of Classic Military Science Fiction 11:11 AM

I first read Gordon R. Dickson’s novel, Dorsai! (the exclamation mark is part of the title), when I was eleven years old. The novel follows the quasi-transcendent, mercenary genius Donal Graeme from his graduation of his world’s military academy through his ascent to the commander of the largest military force in human history.

Being both military minded and a little (maybe a lot… definitely too much) in love with my own intellect, the themes of the novel greatly appealed to me as a boy. It was good enough to stay on my re-reading cycle for several years, but I realized the other day that I hadn’t read it in the last half-decade or so.

Re-reading it as a thirty-two year old veteran and aspiring author, I find it’s still a good book but its flaws are a little more apparent.

Dorsai! and its attendant sequels, prequels and related books occupy a universe in which humanity inhabits eight different solar systems. Interstellar civilization is marked by an arguably unrealistic degree of specialization by each colony world. The resultant trading of skilled personnel back and forth between the worlds is the basis for the galaxy’s economy.

Some, like Venus and Newton, focus on feats of science and engineering, but the real stars of Dorsai! and every the other novel in this universe are the Splinter Cultures, each of which is focused on some particularly extreme philosophy.

The first are the Exotics who practice a combination of Hari Seldon’s psychohistory, Bene Gesserit breeding programs, and Hindu mysticism/philosophy. They are personally non-violent, but not philosophically pacifistic, ergo they have a closer relationship with the mercenary Dorsai than most despite their philosophical differences.

Then come the ironically named Friendlies who are all fundamental monotheists of various flavors and embody, in various characters, the potential for both extreme decency and irrational zealotry inherent to religious convictions.

Finally, we have the eponymous Dorsai of the planet Dorsai. They are the galaxy’s most elite mercenary soldiers. The Dorsai maintain a libertarian confederation of extended family units upon their world whilst exporting their military talent to the other worlds to support life back on their rugged and beautiful but resource-poor planet.

The novel’s primary strength is a compelling, if clearly overpowered, protagonist in Donal Graeme. A son of the Dorsai’s most prominent family, Donal engages in a meteoric political and military career in the pattern of a soldier/statesmen of the classical Mediterranean. He’s a science fictional Julius Caesar or Alcibiades, if you will, but with a morality more palatable to our modern sensibilities. Donal Graeme is both superhuman and super-humane in his goals and methods.

The novel’s primary weakness is its bloodlessness, both in its philosophy towards war and in its treatment of its characters.

Dickson does posit a few valid notions about war. First among these is the emphasis on simplicity in equipment and disdain for over-engineering—specifically with regard to infantry weapons. Dickson’s far-future mercenaries still use projectile rifles much like our own due to the impossibility of gimmicking such weapons from a distance.

The modern Army could take a cue from the ideas here. I’m not a military luddite, advanced weaponry has its place. Any weapon that relies upon a GPS or any external wireless signal to function at all, however, is going to be easily blunted in a fight against someone more advanced than Iraq. We are entirely too reliant upon radio and computer networks; so much so that the notion of a runner carrying orders back and forth is alien in practice, if not in theory, in the US Army.

But the primary military thesis of Dorsai! is the promotion of the indirect theory of maneuver warfare. That is, the idea that the primary aim of any commander should always be to maneuver and deceive his enemy into an entirely untenable position before engaging in battle, or better yet, accepting the enemy’s surrender when he realizes the hopelessness of his situation.

Tom Kratman examines the flaws of this theory and its relation to Decision Cycles in modern American military theory more skillfully than I could here at the Baen website.


From the standpoint of the novel, this translates into all of Donal’s victories being the result of clear, quick decisions on his part with few if any enemy actions or random factors bearing on the tactical problem. Each victory is decisive from his first outing as a platoon leader to his final triumph as commander of a multi-planetary joint space/ground force.

The issue I have with this, the issue anybody who has led in combat, or even seriously trained as a combat leader should have, is that it captures none of the chaos, confusion and ambiguity of war.

Every time a ground combat leader makes a decision, he does so with less than perfect information about the enemy and about his own forces, almost always under duress and, depending on echelon, while in personal danger. He then issues his orders not to unfeeling machines, but to troops who, no matter how well-trained, are themselves susceptible to the stresses of the environment and combat. The result is virtually never the neat, orderly action that Dorsai portrays.

Furthermore, aside from Donal and his antagonist, William (an evil super-genius commodities/stock trader), the characters are almost uniformly flat. The biggest offender is the love interest, Anea. I’m more willing than many to make allowances for generational differences in how women are perceived when judging books, but Anea is just plain boring in any era. Despite being allegedly bred for superior intellect and moral judgment by the aforementioned Exotics, she spends the majority of the book being a childish ninny until at the very end when she decides she loves Donal for no apparent reason.

No reason that is, until the head Exotic explains that she was bred to have the hots for the most powerful man in the galaxy- so much so that she couldn’t resist marrying him, whoever he was. They actually wanted her to marry the bad guy, William, to smooth his rough edges. But since Donal beat William, lucky her, she gets the hero instead. Phew!

And she isn't even pissed when they tell her this.

Compare Anea with any of Heinlein’s talented and valiant heroines from Podykane of Mars to Wyoming Knott to Hazel Stone or even Carmen Ibanez for her brief appearances in Starship Troopers (THE MOVIE NEVER HAPPENED) and she’s just a sad, sad character. To be fair to Dickson, though, he proves that he can write compelling women in later works. Specifically, Amanda Morgan the First in Spirit of the Dorsai is a multi-dimensional and sympathetic treatment of the stern-matriarch archetype.

Despite all the harsh criticism I’ve just leveled at the book, it is still a classic and well worth the read, especially since it is such a short read. Dickson uses the super-competent arch-rivals trope about as well as anyone in Donal and his archenemy, William of Ceta. The conflict is more interesting for the mismatch of professional soldier versus economic genius. The concepts behind the setting are cool and make for a good milieu—even if they’re not terribly plausible in my opinion. Furthermore, it’s foundational to the Dorsai Series, also known as the Childe Cycle.

There are many superior volumes in the Childe Cycle, including the two other Dorsai books; Spirit of the Dorsai and Lost Dorsai. Each of these is actually two novelettes combined. All four stories are exceptional. The story of Michael deSandoval in Lost Dorsai actually contains the only pacifist in all of fiction that I have ever found sympathetic. I also recommend Soldier, Ask Not and Young Bleys, which showcase protagonists from outside the Spartan culture of the Dorsai. You can read the four books I’ve just named with no background, but the experience will be richer if you start at the start with Dorsai!.

David Drake, himself a luminary in the sub-genre of military science fiction, claims that Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers and Dickson's Dorsai! are the standards against which all other military science fiction should be judged. I don’t necessarily think he’s wrong, but I think there’s a clear reason Starship Troopers is the better known and more widely read of the two. Dickson wrote an important book, but Heinlein wrote one that was just as important and much more fun.

WADD/Straw Poll 10:43 PM

Best intentions to the contrary, I've had a hell of a time getting any writing done. It's easy to blame it all on being a battery commander. The new job is, admittedly, not conducive to writing... or sleeping... or doing anything other than BEING a battery commander. (Sidebar: this is not a complaint, I freaking love being a commander, and I have an excellent collection of men, NCOs, and officers under my command, this is unquestionably the peak of my career). That's not all, or even most of it, though.

While I don't think I've ever struggled with writer's block, I have an affliction that impairs my output nonetheless. I have Writer's Attention Deficit Disorder. Seriously, I don't think there's been a time since I was fourteen years old (I'm three months away from thirty now) that I haven't had at least three ideas for novels, hell, for full on epic sagas, running around in my head. To date, I've completed precisely zero first drafts. I usually get somewhere between ten and twenty thousand words into a story and then- I go to the field, or I go to Iraq or Afghanistan, or I watch Lord of the Rings and decide I should be writing an epic fantasy instead of a alternate history, or watch Battlestar Galactica and decide that military science fiction is my first love and I should be writing about powered armor and spaceships not magic. Oh, I'm also in the Army, so, yeah, write whatcha know and all that. Then, for good measure, I'll read The Cat Who Walked Through Walls and decide I want to do some multi-verse hopping brain trip through the World-as-Myth.  I can't stay on one project to save my life and once I come back to an old one, I usually discover I hate everything I've written and need to start over from scratch.

This is all the more frustrating since I've probably got several hundred thousand more words to go before I can start reliably producing solid prose. I'm not sure if all the false starts count or if the word count only locks in once you've got a full manuscript.

For grins I've decided to throw up synopses of all the crap running around my head and see what ya'll think. What follows is a working title and brief description of each story idea I have pounding on the inside of my skull, what I'd like from anyone caring to comment is which ones you might be persuaded to pay money to read and which ones leave you cold from get go. If anyone wants to take the time to rank order with commentary, I'd offer my sincere gratitude and throw in an autograph on the first novel I get published some day (caveat: don't hold your breath, it may be awhile). I'm not promising to order my schedule by the results of the poll, but you'll still be helping me out by assuaging my curiosity.

Here goes:

#1: The Reliquary Wars (Science Fiction): Several thousand years into the future, a colony world that has long lost contact with Earth and degenerated into a pre industrial state of existence is climbing its way back towards modernity. Perhaps the most important resource on the world is the knowledge found amongst the ruins of the original colony settlements which were founded with the full advantage of advanced technology. With nation-states now having worked their way back up to the computer age, the books, databases and artifacts found in the ancient ruins confer large advantages to the parties that can find them first. The use of these “cheats” has advanced technology far faster in relation to the social and political institutions of the various civilizations of the new world than what occurred in our own history. As a result, nations still practicing feudalism are equipped with technology roughly equivalent to our own. Monarchs, feudal lords, shamans and chieftains face the daily question of how to maintain control of their subjects while simultaneously creating effective work and military forces in an environment which requires a large number of skilled workers, researchers and soldiers rather than ignorant agrarian surfs, superstitious mobs and spear fodder. Into this world walks Nathan Day, scion of the middle class which has sprung into existence relatively overnight. Conscripted into a war over a newly discovered ruin, Nathan's service will propel him to the royal court of the world's most powerful Empire where he will be instrumental not only in winning battles and campaigns but in shepherding his society and the world through the technological and social changes that threaten to tear it apart.

#2: Lords of Contagion (SciFi, Zombie Apocalypse, Post-Post Apocalyptic): The brilliant and sociopathic Dr. George Rome uses RNA resequencing to create the rage virus long envisioned by authors of many zombie apocalypse stories. Only the brilliant efforts of nano biologist Erica Hernandez allows the survival of the human race. She creates nanite antibodies which are infectious, just as the virus itself is. Unfortunately, Rome's virus mutates at an accelerated rate, requiring the remaining human population to conduct periodic anti-virus updates to ensure they don't fall prey to newer versions of the rage virus. Fast forward three generations, those organizations capable of reproducing Hernandez's anti-viral nanites have evolved into the real powers of the world. The human population, now at less than one hundred million world wide, has stabilized and even started to rebound, but the savages afflicted by Rome's Virus are showing disturbing signs of intelligence, applying tactics where before they had been mindless ravenous beasts, and, even more disturbingly, evidently gaining the ability to reproduce sexually (don't think too hard about it in a graphic sense) rather than solely through infection. As if this were not bad enough, the factions dividing the American continent; the Washington Remnant, the Mormon Free State, the San Joaquin People's Republic and the Great Lakes Confederation have allowed their relative success at beating back the zombie hordes to foster complacency and even rivalry amongst themselves. The situations is now a powder keg, with the remaining human population eyeing each other suspiciously and ignoring the obvious warning signs from the afflicted. A few clear thinking individuals work to preserve the human race regardless of factional lines, but the polities controlling the antivirals have established the tightest control on their citizenries since the fall of the Soviet Union, and they have no intention of relinquishing that control, even in the face of possible extinction.

#3: System Patrol (Science Fiction, Young Adult): One hundred years into the future, governments and corporations have finally begun to fully exploit the resources of the solar system in the form of asteroid mining, solar relay stations and extensive zero-gee manufacturing, agriculture and research. Shortly following the creation of wealth come those who wish to take it by force rather than develop it honestly. The first space war ends in 2115 with ad hoc forces facing one another in orbit around Mars, mineral rich asteroids and Earth itself. Countries scramble to create viable space forces to protect their offworld interests. Twenty years after the end of the first war, the space powers have managed to avoid the outbreak of another general war, but corporate and covert privateering is commonplace, as is Cold War style brinksmanship between the great powers. We join the class of 2139 of the Western Coalition Space Academy as they come of age personally and come to understand the ambiguities of the solar system in which they will serve. I'll admit this one is heavily inspired by Heinlein's Space Cadet, but with less of a globalist view of the universe. I'm a nationalist who is extremely skeptical of the value of the United Nations. I can believe in strong alliances of countries with aligned interests and values but I do not consider a one-world (or one solar system) government desirable, nor achievable short of massive and multiple genocides.

#4: The Throne of Albion (Fantasy, Alternate Universe): It is the early 19^th century, by subversion or conquest, the whole of Europa has has fallen under the sway of the Marquin dynasty. Only Albion, a land in which industrial advancement and sorcerous knowledge are both at their peak, has successfully resisted the conquest of the Marquins, but the noose is tightening. In an attempt to maintain a modicum of independence while assuaging the Marquins, King Alfred II of Albion agrees to marry Alecta, a powerful sorceress in her own right and youngest daughter of the Marquins. For some years his strategy works, but eventually his bride of convenience sows insurrection and discord amongst his kingdom and finally kills him. Now the King's illegitimate daughter Miriam finds herself on the run with only an apprentice wizard and a smith's son to guard her. To find aid for the loyalist forces of Albion, she must cross the channel to Eire and treat with the querulous Gael tribes and Fae courts that have long eschewed contact with the rapidly industrializing world of man, then return to Albion to oust the assassin queen from the throne.

I have a couple more, but these are the ones that keep me awake at night right now. All opinions are welcome, though I understand if science fiction and fantasy are not your cup of tea, none of these may sound appealing to you.  

Justin's Fantasy Presidential Election 11:58 AM

Of course I cannot voice criticism or support of any Presidential candidate, but I will say that I've never exactly jumped for joy at the prospect of any of the presidential candidates in my lifetime. I was considering this while watching season five of Babylon 5. For those of you who don't know, or don't remember, that's the last season when John Sheridan (formerly commanding officer of B5) is president of the Interstellar Alliance. Naturally, I had the same thought any giant nerd would have: Why can't I have somebody like John Sheridan for my president?

John J. "Nuke 'em" Sheridan, hero of the Shadow War and President of the Interstellar Alliance, circa 2262

And then I thought; Wait, why not Laura Roslin?!

Laura Roslin, President of the 12 Colonies of Kobol and the woman who helped define "Hot Librarian."

Thus was born; Justin's Fantasy Presidential Election 2016!

That's right ladies and gents, It's John Sheridan, Hero of the Shadow War and the man who, by himself, has used more nukes in his ficitional career than any country has in reality, versus Laura Roslin, the Dying Leader who saved the human race from the Cylon nuclear holocaust and led them to Earth.

So let's break it down by category:

FISCAL POLICY: Granted Space Opera as a genre doesn't spend a ton of time on macro-economics, but we'll extrapolate from what we know:

John Sheridan: as the President of the Interstellar Alliance has to finance the Rangers (the Anlishak, not our Rangers) presumably from funds garnered from a dozen different alien governments (though Earth and Minbar probably front the lion's share). Also Sheridan has access to Michael Garibaldi, after 2262, the head of Edgars Industries and thus one of the Captains of Interstellar Industry. It's not much that we know, but what we know is tentatively positive.

Granted, the Occupy Wall Street crowd probably won't be too happy with his choice of contractors...

Laura Roslin: this may be Laura Roslin's weakest arena. Given the precarious and entirely space-bound nature of Colonial Society after the Fall, what we have in the Fleet is one of the most tightly controlled command economies (outside of the black market) depicted in any work of fiction (at least as "good guys"). This is not to criticize Ms. Roslin, given the situation it was probably the only rational set up available to those who survived, but let's face it, it's hardly the same as presiding over the economy of a free country NOT under the constant threat of genocide.

Okay, guys, I get it, working in the Tillium Refinery Ship sucks, but could you please wait until we're not all facing extinction before you go all Caesar Chavez on us...

Winner: Sheridan.

SOCIAL POLICY: As a min-archist, I tend to think the President really shouldn't have a social policy, per se, as most things falling under “social policy” are matters to be determined by private citizens, but for the sake of argument, let's look at how our candidates line up.

Roslin: Though Roslin is clearly the more liberal of the two candidates at heart, it's in the social arena where Laura Roslin has shown the most pragmatism; outlawing abortion in order to try and boost the population of the dwindling human race. Then again, it is also in the social arena that Laura Roslin has shown her most despotic tendencies; attempting to restrict the Cult of Baltar's right to peaceful assembly because of her fear of Baltar's growing popularity and her own personal hatred of the man.

Caprica Six? Check. Starbuck? Check. D'anna Biers? Check. Tori? Check. Hmm, guess I better start working my way through the extras.

Sheridan: This is the area where Sheridan comes across as a little Pawlenty- that is to say, there ain't much to say. True, Sheridan did support the establishment of a telepath colony on Babylon 5, marking himself as a proponent of minority civil rights, but when the going got tough, Sheridan handed their collective asses over to Psi-Corp, the Gestapo SS of telepaths. Not exactly an Abraham Lincoln moment.

Okay, I probably would have handed this pretentious hippie douche over to Bester five seconds after he showed up anyway...

Winner: Neither is an unmitigated success, but I'll give this one to Ms. Roslin. Her resolve is admirable, even if I don't always agree with her conclusions.

DEFENSE: The issue nearest and dearest to my heart for the tie breaker. This one's tough to call, as both candidates are probably at their strongest here. Let's see how they stack up.

Sheridan: Holder of the Earth Force Silver Star, the only human commander to destroy a Minbari cruiser without sacrificing himself and his ship in the process, the victorious supreme commander in war against not one, but THREE alien races billions of years more advanced than ourselves. Did I mention he's used nukes on FOUR seperate occasions, which is DOUBLE the real world historical number of two? Sheridan is unquestionably one of the finest military minds in his universe.

And I almost forgot to mention, when he defeated the Third Space Aliens, he rode a FREAKING NUKE in his space suit through the middle of the battle- and lived.

Roslin: Ms. Roslin started out a little rocky here, making some questionable early decisions, like refusing to cut losses when the civilian fleet was defenseless and under imminent threat of destruction. However, Roslin showed good judgment and an impressive ability to put aside personal feelings in empowering Commander Adama as military commander of the Fleet (though this relationship would have some serious bumps in its first year). Additionally, President Roslin showed the grit necessary to handle a clandestine enemy in her approach to the Cylon threat. My personal favorite is the occasion when she upbraids Starbuck for using, uh, “enhanced interrogation” on a Cylon skin job, then shoves the skin-job in question out an airlock when she doesn't like his answers to her own questions. Her hard nosed pragmatism allows the ragged colonials to survive when all by rights they shouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell.

And Starbuck is the good cop in this one...

Winner: This is a tough one, but I'm going to say Roslin. Let's face it, in today's environment, we don't need Julius Caesar or Patton in the White House. We need a President who can straddle a very fine line between maintaining the core principles of the Republic, while playing rough enough to thwart an enemy with no moral boundaries of their own. If we were still staring at the Soviet Hordes over the Fulda Gap, I'd probably give the nod to Sheridan, but the fact is he's too idealistic to deal with monsters like Osama bin Laden.

Frak waterboarding, eat vacumn terrorist scum!!

So what do you think? The war hero turned messianic leader of a vast interstellar alliance? Or the school teacher who rose to shepherd the broken remnants of the human race to the promised land?

Wherein Justin Forgoes an Emotional Monologue on Returning from the War and Instead Dorks Out on Something Really Random 1:48 PM

For coverage of the wonderfulness of being home from Iraq and associated topics, see our affiliate blog at thetomatobear.blogspot.com. It isn't that I am the slightest bit less overjoyed at being home than my wife, it's just that she's already said all the fuzzy emotional stuff I feel; leaving me free to dork the hell out on my blog :)

Speaking of dorking the hell out I would like to discuss a topic which is of great concern to the nerd population of America. That topic is Star Wars. Now, those of you less familiar with Nerddom and its various sub-fiefs may ask, "you like Star Wars, what's the problem?" Those of you with a passing knowledge might say; "Justin, Revenge of the Sith came out four years ago, quit whining about how much the prequels sucked and move on with your life you pathetic refugee from a Star Trek Convention." While the prequels did suck ,"JAR-JAR MUST DIE!!! AND HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN IS THE ANTI-CHRIST OF SCIENCE FICTION CINEMA!!!!" That's not actually what I'm here to talk about today. I'm here to talk about the Expanded Universe of Star Wars, and its bearing on what Michele and I have dubbed the, "going back to the well" problem.

Even most Star Wars fans stay within the Holy Writ Canon of the movies, either sticking with the dated but wonderful original trilogy or, in fact, embracing the new, shiny, poorly written, soul-less on-screen abortions of the prequels which all REAL fans see as a George Lucas giving anyone with multiple digits in their IQ the finger... oh wait, I'm not bitching about the prequels, sorry, forgot for a second. (but the Gungans ARE racist. They're like amphibious Jim Crowe's)

The point is that a wide and deep well of Star Wars fictions exists outside the six movies, and no I'm not talking about the Ewok movies that aired on the Disney Channel. The three mediums most common to Expanded Universe Star Wars Material are novels, comic books and video games. Now, one would naturally jump to the entirely logical conclusion that these products would be varying degrees of mind numbingly awful, being an OBVIOUS attempt by LucasFilm to cash in on the success of the film franchise. In many cases they are... BUT.

But then there are novels that have tightly woven plots, three dimensional characters, even explanations for some of Lucas's inexcusably sloppy plotting from the DREADFUL prequels. I was confused upon reading some of the novels because I realized that, from a purely artistic perspective, some of the stories were actually better than my beloved original trilogy because the same unbelivably neat concepts, the Force, Lightsabers, High Space Opera, were in the hands of a writer with some freaking talent. Now, don't get me wrong, there's a LOT of crap in the field, just as you would expect, but the best of the novels and comics are quality enough that I would rate them as solid Second Tier fiction; not terribly meaningful ala BSG, Heinlein, LOTR, CS Lewis, etc etc, but DEFINITELY entertaining.

Ironically, the best example of Expanded Universe Star Wars fiction I have seen, the one that almost moved from second to first tier, was not in novel, or even comic book format, but in a video game. The game Knights of the Old Republic has an outstanding story, and some real choices; what romantic relationships to pursue, what characters and sub-plots to explore and, ultimately whether to be a bright shiny Jedi Knight or to fall from grace and become a Dark Lord of the Sith.

Being a Nerd of the First Order, I have spent much time considering what made Knights of the Old Republic so fascinating to me. Believe it or not it actually takes a lot for a video game to catch my interest at all, as my wife will attest, and Knights is the only video game in the last ten years of my life that I have spent an entire day, from dawn until nightfall, playing. Even the joy of massacring terrorists in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare only held my interest for three to four hours at a time :)

Some of the success is in the format; video game RPG's really do give you a choose your own adventure feel and the particapatory nature pluses up some pretty decent writing. But the one thing that finally floated to the top from a purely fictional stand point is that Knights of the Old Republic is its own story, set within the Star Wars Universe. As good as some of the SW novelists are, they are essentially writing prequels and sequels to another man's story. Say the equivalent of a really talented writer writing Harry Potter 8. Sure, they might do as good a job as possible, but, really, they're isn't any need for a Harry Potter 8.

Which brings me back to the "Going Back to the Well" paradox. Michele and I read a lot of the same stuff (including the magnificently wonderful Harry Potter novels) and I'm prone to want more whereas she is prone to say, "enough is enough." I have lightly suggested that in order to wash out the taste of those GODAWFUL prequels (DEATH TO JAR JAR, MIDI-CHLORIANS DO NOT EXIST) she might read some of the Expanded Universe novels that, while not high literature, are FAR superior to ANY Star Wars property produced on the screen past 1984. She has politely declined due to the aforementioned sentiment encapsulated in the Harry Potter 8 analogy. There are three good Star Wars movies, why muck with it any more?

But the one day I was playing Knights of the Old Republic and found that Michele was watching the game like a movie. The reason? It was Star Wars, but not really, because it wasn't Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia, it wasn't even their descendants or ancestors, the game was set several thousand years before the movies, so it was, well and truly, a completely different story.

Therein, I think, lies the secret behind the dangerous practice of going back to the well. Sure, some fictional universes are so damn cool that they demand more material, but we don't need books about Harry Potter's career as an Auror, or even books about Albus Severus, James and Lilly Potter, and Rose and Hugo Weasely (yes, I'm THAT big of a nerd that I DIDN'T have to look up the names). What might be cool though, is reading about the struggle between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Why that and not Hogwarts: The Next Generation? Because it's unrelated, you'd have ONE character for tie-in and that's it. Voldermort and all of his Death Eaters haven't even been born yet, you could use the universe to tell an ORIGINAL story that wasn't just new wrapping paper on an old plot. Not that I'm dying for another Harry Potter book, and NO ONE but JK Rowling should be allowed within a thousand miles of that franchise, but if there were to be more material, I think it's vital to break away in time and casting from the original material in order to find another story in a big universe.

More on this later.

Futue History 10:23 AM

While I will not publish anything I'm trying to sell on here, for obvious reasons, I will occasionally use this format to narcisiticly ramble about my ingenious ideas for my latest story.

The last thing I submitted to Baen's Universe was a story about hunting werewolves in the Canadian Rockies. I got some decent feedback, a few people liked it pretty well. But after two revisions it's still getting as much criticism as praise and definitely no sign of getting picked up by the magazine. I am not disheartened by this, becoming a professional writer is a lifetime project, especially when you've got a real job and life to worry about in addition to your literary aspirations.

I'm not abandoning the story, but I'm tabling it to get back to science fiction for awhile. Though I am not a hard science major I want to write science fiction with PLAUSIBLE science. This is not to say I want to innundate readers with a bunch of technobabble; but one of the things that most appeals to me about science fiction is that it is the literature of the possible. The new gee-whiz gadgets are inconsequential next to the time honored elements of any good story, but the future offers magnificent backdrops that are all the more tantalizing because they just may be within our reach.

Several of the best science fiction authors have constructed what devotees have titled "Future Histories." More than just a series of books, Future Histories are webs of short stories and novels that may or not may be closely intertwined yet all fall within a singular coherent fictional universe running parallel to our own. Most of these Future Histories have identical or similar timelines to our own up to a few decades (or centuries for those authors who do not want to be around when their ideas are proven impossible) into the future. Michael Resnick has several dozen novels and short stories that all fall within the Birthright of Man universe. Isaac Asimov wrote the Foundation series as a Future History. Gordon R. Dickson wrote a series of novels and shorts known as the Childe Cycle (or more popularly as the Dorsai series) which included elements from as far back as the 13th Century in history and as far forward as the 26th century.

Justin, you haven't mentioned you-know-who yet!

Oh, of course the richest and perhaps best-loved Future History was written by... you guessed it, Robert Heinlein. His future history stretched from the 1970's (thirty years in his future at the time) to the 41st Century. Incidentally, the first future history story, Life-Line, was the first story he ever wrote and he sold it on the first submission- as he did everything else he ever submitted for the rest of his life- lucky bastard. Heinlein wove hundreds of characters and plots into a world that some times feels as real as our own, though always with a touch of Mark Twain-esque humor. And when it turned out that Mars and Venus were NOT inhabited by sentient life, the old rascal introduced the concept of time travel and parallel universes into his Future History. So, no wonder Mars isn't inhabited, we're just in the wrong universe.

Very nice, Justin, are we approaching a point?

Simply this; I'm infected with the same virus. I want to write not only good individual stories or series, but craft entire universes out of the ether. Everything I write either falls into an enormous history I'm constucting or spawns a new one, I'm incapable of writing something and then walking away from it. I have to wonder what happened a thousand years later or a hundred years before.

In the universe I've created the next century is dark. That's because that's how I see it unfurling. Fundamentalist Islam isn't going anywhere. And in the mean time Russia, China and others are increasing their military readiness. The era of peace and brotherhood is not at hand.

In this world the fundamentalists of the muslim world continue to gain support as conditions worsen and the Western powers make either half-hearted or ill-directed efforts to snuff them out. About half way through the twenty-first century a quarter the population of Europe is muslim (ridiculous? go check the birth and immigration statistics in Wester Europe for the last few years). A coalition of Arab nations assembles enough conventional military power to make a power grab, supported by local insurgents, in the Balkans. This goes unchallenged by Western Europe and the United States and the Russian expeditionary force sent to stop them is defeated in detail.

Inevitably the whole of Europe falls to the Caliphate. Russia stands on the sidelines this time, remembering the abandoment of the previous war. Israel and the United Kingdom stand besieged. Christians and Jews are placed under the dhimma, atheists, hindus, buddhists, and so on, are jailed or executed. From Portugal to the Ukraine only Switzerland stands sovereign thanks to bloody resistance in the Alps. The Pope-in-Exile proclaims the renewal of the Crusade from Geneva.

The Caliphate, whose willing members stretch from Mauritania to Indonesia, bites off more than it can chew when it goes to war with India and China simultaneously. The US military finally gears up enough to be a serious force in the conflict. Europe is liberated and the siege of Israel is lifted and the Caliphate's situation becomes desperate. As allied forces conquer first North Africa then Central Asia, the madmen in charge orders his affiliate terrorists to release the Green Plague, a biological weapon which kills twenty-five percent of the world's population before nano-scientists are able to design a nanite antibody to kill the virus.

The retribution is awful. The allied powers, save for Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States strike every Muslim medical center they can find with tactical nukes. The Muslim population suffers the worst for the plague. Islamdom shrinks from 2 billion in 2085 to 250 million in 2090 at the end of the Last Jihad.

In the ensuing chaos states are redefined. Devestated Mexico and Central America become protectorates of the United States. Israel stretches from the Nile to the Euphrates. Europe is gripped with a fundamentalist backlash against the brutal ten-year occupation of the Caliphate. The former European Union is reformed as the European Alliance under the acknowledged leadership of the Vatican. China and India are gripped by trans-national genetic socialist revolution and unite as the new Xiaoist Collective, named after the originator of eugenic-socialism. (Summary- Lennin, Mao and Marx mistakenly waited for the "new man," Xiao and his followers intend to engineer him). In Russia a brilliant general and his corps of disciplined troops emerge as the only thing saving the motherland from utter anarchy and he finds himself the new Tsar.

There are no Muslims left in Europe, the lucky ones were simply deported. In the United States, though legally protected, they are subject to racial violence in frequency and intesnity unheard of since the 1960's. Israel and the UK likewise. In China and India the eugenic socialists have used the same nano-tech cure to enslave the entire muslim populations of their countries.

This is the state of the world on January 1st, 2101.



Justin, do you really hate Muslims so much?

As a matter of fact no, I don't. Mohamed Al Muslim is no better or worse per capita than John Q. Christian or Herchel P. Jew. But right now there is a dangerous trend to underestimate the fundamentalist and violent elements within Islamic society. The vast majority of Muslims are not evil. The vast majority of Germans were not evil in 1939 too. It won't matter if they and we allow the cancer to grow to the point where we, either out of necessity or out of righteous anger, are forced to use extreme measures to defeat them.

I hope this future does not come to pass, yet I will write it in the hopes that westerners and moderate muslims alike will realize the need to oppose the fanatics before a greater conflagration becomes inevitable. All my stories will take place after the Green Plague and the Last Jihad. I've fought fundamentalist Islam for years now, I have no desire to write fiction about it except as background.

Okay... I should probably edit this, but it's freaking 2300. Time for me to call Michele and go to bed!

The Sentient Machine as Character 10:48 AM

Skynet. HAL 2000. The Cylons. A multitude of science fiction authors have engaged the idea of machines becoming self-aware and they have, almost without exception, portrayed this as varying degrees of catastrophic for the human race. Skynet and the Cylons committ near genocide on the human race. HAL 2000 tries to kill Dave. Etc, etc, al infintium. This is not a criticism; I enjoy Battlestar Galactica, 2001 and Terminator (especially BSG) a great deal. Nor do I have an issue with the assumption that the advent of artificial awareness will result in violence. Given our history, it's not a bad guess at who we'll react to just about any sudden dramatic change.

Robert Heinlein, aforementioned in the TANSTAFL post, offered up a different view. In several of his stories computers are portrayed as achieving sentience, but are sympathetic characters. The two books which most strongly embrace this feature are The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Time Enough For Love. In the first a government computer named Mike becomes self-aware and befriends Lunar revolutionaries out to establish a free and sovereign state on the Moon. In Time Enough For Love there are actually several, arguably, sentient computers, but the one that matters the most is the computer Minerva, who falls in love with her primary user and eventually transfers her consciousness to a biological body in order to marry him.

One can argue that this seems entirely too optimistic, but I find it even more fascinating than a doomsday scenario. Put it this way (for all you BSG nuts out there) the Cylons are an effective and terrifying bad guy when they nuke humanity and use their human appearance to deceive, seduce and betray mankind. They are fascinating, however, once you realize that Athena really, no bullshit, loves Helo, and that Caprica Six really, no bullshit, feels guilt for her part in the war. And so on, and so on. As each cylon becomes more and more human, the story gets more interesting and rises far above, no offense to Arnold, the simplicity of the Terminator.

The question that interests me is this; how would a society function in which artifical constructs with self awareness were legal citizens with similar or identical rights and priveleges to biological beings? How would division of labor work? What shape would relationships between the biologicals and the artificials take? This is assuming, of course, they've reached a stage of not trying to kill each other. No, Matrix scenarioes don't interest me either, nor any lesser extrapolaiton where humans have willingly or unwillingly given up their dignity to the machines. Us as pasty meat sacks playing endless virtual video games is not something I wish to write about.

It's an interesting thought, I think... wow. I'm going to leave that pun there. And there's nothing you can do about it.

TANSTAFL 3:35 AM

Who is my favorite author?

Michele will get this right in one. Some of you might remember. I admit it's not an easy question because I'm rarely to be found without one book or another in my hand and no one, not even me, can recall the name of every author whose material I've read. This one, though, is special. I converted to Christianity four years ago at the age of twenty-one and have, since then, tried to live my life according to the tennets of my religion with varying degrees of success. This author I have been reading since I was eight years old and loved both his stories and his philosophy since before I hit puberty.

Robert Anson Heinlein was born in Missouri in the early part of last century. His accomplishments are too numerous to note but he was most well known for his social-science fiction. His novels were noted for having (for the time) good hard science underpinnings and challenging social commentary on a variety of issues but perhaps most of all- a strong libertarian bent.

I'm reading one of his best-loved novels right now, a book called The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. The novel's plot revolves around the revolt of a former penal colony on Luna and the establishment of a state on our moon. One of the primary characters is a spritely old revolutionary named Professor Bernardo de LaPaz. GREAT character; devlish old man professors are Heinlein's great archetype even beyond the cornucopia of intelligent, desirable and heroic women he writes (he had a thing for redheads, something I definitely share!).

Yes, Michele, you are a freaking redhead, quit arguing with me.

Anyway, Bernardo de LaPaz is, like Professor DuBois, Jubal Harshaw and other characters in that vein, an outlet for many philosophies that Heinlein either held or felt were worthy of serious consideration. De LaPaz throughout the book professes the philosophy of rational anarchy. That is that he recognizes the disease of government is unavoidable and necessary to create a livable environment but should be kept starved and inefficient in order to avoid oppressive government.

I have held this general principle dear for many years now. I do believe that with regard to domestic affairs the government should interfere as little as possible. Ford and the other American auto-makers are going bankrupt. It's a fact, I'm sorry for the workers who are employed by them but the fact is that they make inferior products in nearly every respect and do not charge any less for them. This effort to bail them out is purely propaganda- doomed to fail with littel to no real economic benefit. Thus it is with just about all government economic intervention.

That being said, de LaPaz tries to illegalize involuntary taxation in the founding of the nation on the moon. He makes several very good arguments against the precedent of taxes, but doesn't answer one question. Who pays for defense?

I think Robert was a little in love with the concept of Citizen Soldiers (he is postively SCATHING in his criticism of conscription) and rallying around the flag when it comes time for war. Of course everyone will rally to their naiton's call in time of war, right? Right? Guys.... guys? Hey, where is everybody? Oh, that's right, they're mostly in college, smoking weed and playing Xbox, because our society is degenerate.

Yeah. I wish this principle were workable, oh God how I wish it were. But it's not. A society, even one as weak and decadent as modern day America, can usually produce the bare minimum number of warm bodies even in a volunteer military to provide for the national defense, but asking the populace to willingly part with their money to address threats that aren't blatantly staring them in the face? HA.

And the concept of Citizen Soldiers, in terms of calling up reservists and other-than-professional soldiers is nearly worthless in modern terms. Yep. Worthless. Oh, we use Guard and Reserve on deployment and I truly honor their service as much as anyone else's, but we have to put them through months of training before they are useful and even then it's understood they're almost never of comparable quality to an average regular Army formation. This is not an insult to the valor, patriotism or even martial skill of any individual within the Guard or Reserve but a true statement as to the inherent nature of part-time units.

There is nothing more expensive than the second best Army in the world. I don't remember who said it, but I'll take it as an axiom. Heinlein's assumptions would work in a society where everyone was like him, intelligent, courageous and patriotic. Willing to put aside whatever personal desires they might have and join the military any time their nation went to war, AND bright and determined enough to learn to be good, even elite, at whatever the military asked of them in a very short amount of time.

Since most of my countrymen do NOT fit that description, and no one truly wants a conscript army back, that means long-service volunteers, solely focused (professionally speaking) on waging war in all its myriad forms, and I do pray that this war has shown the institution for once and for all just how wildly varied war can be, though I doubt it in the long run. This means money for pay, training, equipment and maintenance (in that order I might add), even and perhaps for my purposes ESPECIALLY in times of peace.

Heinlein, through de LaPaz, says that people should not be forced to pay for things they don't want. This makes the rational-actor assumption. That if people want to be defended from the barbarian hordes, they'll pay for it. I think the current economic crisis more than highlights the fact that people do NOT act rationally when it comes to money. Anybody dumb enough to sign a variable-rate loan cannot be trusted with any mature adult decision, ergo, not someone to decide on the defense of the nation.

Well, then isn't that what they deserve? I mean if they're not willing to pay the price, shouldn't they get overrun by the barbarians?

Sure, except for that America is the best place on the planet and will be the last bastion of civilization to fall. Europe is already doomed (demography is destiny). So if we make taxes optional and let people "get what they deserve," that equation ends two or three generations from now with anyone who hasn't converted paying the dhimma and our great grand-daughters as "temporary wives" (for those of you unfamiliar with Islam's more charming tennets that last may be translated as whore or rape victim, depending on circumstance) for whatever shiek notices them first. Since space travel is disgustingly underdevoloped and if America falls Israel will be a smoking wasteland the day after, that leave nowhere to run except maybe Red China or (possibly) Japan and I don't think that a) I would want to live in either of those places and b) they will be taking too many refugees.

Don't believe in the threat? Come over here and say it to my face, jackass. You can find me on the eastern bank of the Southern Euphrates. No, not all Mulsims are evil, the MAJORITY are NOT evil. Doesn't matter. Most Germans weren't evil in 1939, most Southerners weren't evil in 1860, etc. etc. It was still necessary to go to war and not to fiddle around about WHO the enemy was when we knew damn well who they were.

The threat is real. Those fundamentalists who would see our very cutlure destroyed will not be placated by foreign aid and appeals to mutual-understanding. They do not believe in cultural relativisim, even though their allies in our own media and political system do. (Note: no violation of Article 88: I didn't mention a specific official, make your own assumptions). And if the populace of the Islamic world is unwilling to turn on those fundamentlists they will be shields, and then cannon fodder for those selfsame terrorists. I've seen it in micro here, you'll see it in macro if they are allowed to survive and grow unchecked.

So, painful as it is for me to disagree with a man I've admired since childhood; that money needs to be collected whether the people feel like it or not. I would support a tax-exemption for service. That seems just, people who have paid, or at least risked paying, in blood for the defense of their nation need not pay in cash anymore. Oh, that idea pisses people off, damn veterans getting off an a free ride just because they...oh, yeah, allow the continued existence of your entire way of life. Yeah.

Okay, I'm about out of steam. I think this concludes today's rant. I hope you've enjoyed.