Prequel to Terminator Salvation

The prequels are out and I am enjoying them. This novel is rather good reading.

Time Travel in Star Trek

July/August 2008 issue reveals the top 10 ways to time travel in Star Trek.

(1) The Guardian of Forever (Star Trek " The City on the Edge of Forever")

(2) The Krenim Time Ship (Voyager "Year of Hell")

(3) The Slingshot Effect (Star Trek "Tomorrow is Yesterday")

(4) Federation Timeship U.S.S. Relativity (Voyager)

(5) The Atavachron (Star Trek "All our Yesterdays")

(6) Future Guy (Enterprise)

(7) The Orb of Time (Deep Space 9 "Trials and Tribble-ations")

(8) Spatial/Temporal Rifts (Star Trek "The Alternative Factor")

(9) The Nexus (Star Trek Generations movie)

(10) Chronotons (Deep Space 9 "Past Tense")

Whatever happened to H.G. Wells' time machine?

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An Interview with Arthur C. Clarke

Sentinels: Arthur C. Clarke

The late, great science-fiction Grand Master—who gave us both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Childhood's End—looks back on a lifetime of colleagues and friends in a never-before-seen interview originally conducted in ... 2001.

read interview

my tribute, Goodbye Sir, Arthur C . Clarke

The Wanderer

The Wanderer by ~krooke on deviantART

Artist's Comments
En route to fulfill a diplomatic mission, a quite majestic imperial Nekhbeht class cruiser passes near planet Khons, homeworld of the ruling caste of the venerable Sethnakhte race.Modelled in Amapi 6, post-production in Adobe Photoshop.

The Science of Iron Man

Some interesting facts and fiction about Iron Man's armour. The trick is to differentiate what is science and what is fiction...

April 28, 2008
Lab Notes

Iron Manic, Lithium Depressive

By Wil McCarthy

Stronger than steel, more powerful than an M1 tank, able to leap tall buildings and defeat bad guys ... Who among us has never dreamed of being a superhero? Unfortunately, Superman is from another planet, Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive arachnid, and Batman combines the resources of an aerospace corporation, the intellect of a Sherlock Holmes or a Thomas Edison and the physical prowess of both an Olympic gymnast and a UFC cage-fight champion.

Hard to imagine you and I could measure up against a standard like that! But when a wounded Tony Stark first climbed inside his Iron Man armor in 1963 (possibly inspired by Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, 1959), he offered up the possibility that with the right equipment, any ordinary person (well, any billionaire genius) could grow up to be a bulletproof, cement-wall-smashing, crime-fighting rocket jock.

read more

Star Trek: The Next Generation Revisited Again

After three days and nights of struggle to save the life of a child suffering from dengue shock syndrome and dengue haemorrhagic disease has left me physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually exhausted. So I decided to treat myself today to a Star Trek: The Next Generation binge. Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered on television twenty years ago. This year, the copyright owners of Star Trek, CBS Studios (it used to be Paramount Studios who owned Star Trek) decided to release a few more novels. I have hoped the change in ownership will bring back new Star Trek television and movies but it has yet to be seen. So I sat down and read three Star Trek: The Next Generation novels in one seating. Though they are written by different authors, they were released a few months ago (2007) in the order in which I read them so there were continuity in the stories. Also it deals with my two favourite antagonists in the Star Trek universe; the Borg and Q.

[The rest of this post contains spoilers so read at your own risk if you want to read these books]


Resistance and Before Dishonor deals with the Borg. However, these Borg were in the alpha quadrant, the survivors of the Borg queen ill fated mission to follow Voyager to earth. They were disconnected from the main Borg Collective in the delta quadrant. However their programming still worked. They proceeded to build a Borg Cube and produce a Borg queen. Borg was programmed to evolve and in the alpha quadrant, they did evolve. J.M.Dillard’s Resistance introduce us to a fascinating idea that the Borg evolved with the sole purpose of destroying humanity. These Borg are not interested in assimilation but in annihilation! Captain Picard has to become Locutus again to destroy the Borg queen and the alpha quadrant’s Borg Collective.

Peter David continued the story started in Resistance. Star Fleet Command assumed that the Borg is dead. Admiral Janeway was not so sure she went herself to see the Borg Cube. However she was assimilated as she arrived on the Cube. I have always enjoyed Peter David’s stories but this one impressed me the most. While Picard has destroyed the drones, no one realise that the Cube itself is also Borg and thus ‘alive.’ After the death of the drones and the queen the Cube evolved. This time, they do not assimilate but absorbs what they need. And the assimilated Janeway became their new queen. It took the combined effort of Captain Picard, Ambassador Spock and Seven of Nine and the use of the doomsday machine (from a Star Trek original episode) to destroy this new Borg. It also resulted in Janeway’s death. I have really enjoyed this new idea of an evolving Borg.

The story of Keith R.A. DeCandido’s Q & A occurs between the above two story and is more of a narrative of why Q has been so interested in humans and Picard. In a way, it answers many of the questions about Q and draws together the many Q featured stories in the 7 years run of Star Trek: The Next Generation television stories.

Being the hard core Star Trek fan that I am, I have collected almost all the Star Trek novels, comics and magazines published in English for the last forty years. More than just collecting them, I have also read and enjoyed them. I have spent many enjoyable hours in the Star Trek universe.

Like today, I am thankful to God for this time of rest for my soul.

soli deo gloria

Robots in Hollywood

In the wake of the runaway success of The Transformers movie, here are some interesting links

80 years of Robots in Hollywood from Time.com

Battle Field Robots National Geographic

The Robot Revolution Time Cover Story, Dec 8, 1980