We – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

May 22, 2022

We Lead (Review)

losing out the Vanguard trilogy in Christopher Nuttall’s third series in the Ark Royal universe is We Lead, or (as it could be known as “A woman and her Battleship”). Yes, we had the Yamato-like story of the armored carrier that won the first war, and then the heavy cruiser that thumped the Indians, and now we’ve seen weapons develop with Battleships forming the backbone of the new navy. The story is simple – a deep raid using new FTL technology puts Vanguard and her formation deep behind enemy lines. The idea is to thump the alien homeworld and get […]

July 31, 2022

We have always lived on Mars (take 2) (Review)

o this was one a coworker handed me, a short piece of fiction of a failing Mars colony from Tor Books. Imagine a Mars colony totally cut off. Earth no longer communicates. Dust covers their sky – they’ve not seen the moons or stars or anything. The colony has no resources to expand. All they can do is carefully monitor life support, sending out old folks to die while replacing them with occasional births. Everything is dusty and worn and bleak. So Nina, one of the young women of Mars, turns out to be special. With her suit ripped in […]

March 10, 2024

Are We Rome (Review)

his was an interesting one, and the sub-title, The Fall of and Empire and the Fate of America makes it even more-so. And no, this is not a work of fiction. Here, author Cullen Murphy takes apart history (particularly of the Roman Empire through 400 AD and beyond. The obvious drive – Rome fell, and are we falling the same way? Well, it might not be the same, not really. After all, the Roman borders were indeed far away and news took forever to travel. Now, events that occur are available across the American Empire instantaneously, without control and sometimes […]