John

June 16, 2019

Fuzzy Nation (Guest Review)

ell, gang, I’m here to encourage you in a light summertime underdog tale that combines a smart-aleck disbarred lawyer-space prospector protagonist with the repartee of John McClane, a pyrotechnic-trained dog, sci-fi aspects in the eponymous fuzzy ewok-like creatures, and court scenes worthy of a meld of “A Few Good Men” and “Matlock”. This goulash of a book works, it’s fun, but it ain’t great literature– get over it. The book in question is Fuzzy Nation, a ‘reboot’ by John Scalzi of H. Beam Piper’s 1962 classic Little Fuzzy. I am unfamiliar with the original work. The story, according to a […]
October 27, 2019

Starrigger (Review)

o this was one from the recovered attic book boxes, a rollicking space opera in a strange universe. On Pluto (according to backstory), giant cylinders were discovered with a road leading into them. If you went fast enough and stayed right on the center line, you’d pop through to another planet. Eventually enough gates were mapped to establish the Terrain Maze, a collection of planets that we’ve colonized. But there are other gates, pot lock portals, that lead God knows where. And every so often, on these mega freeways, strange aliens in stranger cars can be seen. Our protagonist in […]
November 17, 2019

Red Limit Freeway (Review)

o Jake (and his sentient truck Sam) is back for the second book following StarRigger. Predestined by road lore to be the trucker who makes it to the end of the universe (via the skyway, a series of jumpgates built into a highway system) and back with a working road map, Jake continues his travels. Along the way, he continues to pick up more and more people in his quest, those voluntarily coming (or otherwise). And tagging in his wake, the evil forces of a rival trucker union and a tree-planet boss (whose huge hotel Jake burned down in the […]
December 8, 2019

Paradox Alley (Review)

nd so finally we get to the third (and final) book of the Starrigger trilogy, the Han Solo-ish book about big (really big) rigs, interplanetary gates, and the mystery at the end of the universe, where the road ends. Well, from the cover of the book, you’d think it was going to end violently – the truck going off a cliff (with cars skidding around it) while the driver launches clear with his ejection seat. All very exciting, but it doesn’t happen. Not even close. What does happen is a great deal of not much. Sure, we get to the […]
January 10, 2020

OpsLog – L&N – 1/9/2020

his was my second of three sessions in two days at the always-enjoyable L&N, a two railroad layout with twin dispatchers and all sorts of dirty diesels lugging grimy coal cars. And hey, I scored my favorite seat – L&N Dispatcher, the widow maker job. Fortunately I was working with Tom Wilson on his Southern Desk – he and I really work well together (when he’s not holding Edison Jct for ransom). The interesting thing about running in a Protorails event is that you’d think everyone would be at game-top abilities for the session. Not the case, it seemed. Crews […]
February 2, 2020

OpsLog – L&N – 2/1/2020

idway through the session, the two dispatchers (Southern and Louisville & Nashville) switch. We’ve only got a couple of minutes to update our replacement on the status. I don’t know how it was exactly explained to me but it was something like “Train so-n-so is in Norton and will need to go to Blackwood” makes me think that he didn’t have a warrant. But that word “need” seemed to mean something different between Tom and myself. It turns out he actually did have a warrant and was waiting for other traffic to clear before he started down. Fresh on my […]
March 29, 2020

The Sky Lords (Review)

nother one out of my molding book files, dating back to 1988, so good luck finding it. The Sky Lords deals with a world a couple of hundred years following the ‘Gene Wars’. Much of the world is covered in fungus growth or crazy designer monsters that have gotten out of control. Humanity is pretty much down to two classes – the people rooting out a living in walled cities and the Sky Lords, the privileged riding about in their high tech airships – the later praying on the former. And our story starts just as a matriarchal Minervan town […]
January 10, 2021

Old Man’s War (Review)

t’s a pretty simple premise – when you get to a certain age and become a drag on the economy and only have maybe a decade to live, you can elect to join Colonial Defense Force. They will give you a new body, train you to be a soldier, and expect a two-year (but, as it turns out, ten-year) hitch out of you. You just won’t be coming back to Earth. You’ll go where they tell you, fight who they tell you, and die when they tell you. Simple. Well, the new body part is true; manufactured bodies with all […]
February 28, 2021

The Last Colony (Review)

his is the third book of the Old Man’s War series, a tale where John Perry and his resurrected (long story) wife Jane leave their happy colony home to establish a colony for the Colonial Union. Journeying to a planet named Roanoke (as terrible a colony name as that is), they quickly realize that (a) this is not the planet they were supposed to colonize, and (b) that the ship dropping them off is now disabled, and (c) they are under quarantine, and nobody knows where they are. It turns out that this is all Machiavellian moves to throw off […]
April 4, 2021

Dirty John (Review)

irst, I’ll say that I have no idea where this book came from. I was going through my read-stack and there it was, as if some literary hopeful planted it there (I really don’t think the Blogatorum has that sort of pull, but who knows). Maybe I got it out of one of those curb-side libraries. But if you gave it to me, thanks! I really enjoyed it. So let’s get into why I enjoyed it. Dirty John is a collection of short pieces by Journalist Christopher Goffard, interviews involving “true stories of outlaws and outsiders”. And, as he says […]