The show clearly shows Murderbot as being ACE and uncomfortable with the sexual and gendered reactions of others towards them — which is as important in my view the outward and physical apparent gender.

The sale is supposed to last until the end of today September 15th. Usually, that would be until midnight Pacific time.

Suggest trying through the link on the officials Star Trek website to follow through to Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/StarTrekDaySale

We picked up 3 copies of Resurgence the evening of the 14th from Canada.

We’ve tried most of them over time.

Star Trek Resurgence has consistently excellent reviews. It’s about a 25 hour role play where the player makes choices for two different crew - a senior bridge officer and an NCO in engineering. It’s well done and one of our teens and I are enjoying it a lot. Great value for the sale price. My patience on this one was reinforced by its initial release being exclusive to Epic - but on Steam and on sale it’s worth it.

Bridge Crew is an older game. I have had it for a couple of years, and took advantage of the sale to pick up copies for each of our kids Steam accounts. One of them got really into it right away.

Timelines is also older. It held their interest for a bit in middle school but doesn’t seem to be one of the better tie-ins.

Star Trek Online is a long running massively multiplayer game that starts out free but then can cost a lot for in-game purchases. One of our teens is into it, and got fairly far without purchasing much, but the Steam sale is a good opportunity for them to buy things they’ve had on their wish list.

As a parent, I find these better than the endless number of Star Wars mods on Roblox that one of ours got into for a while.

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Startide Rising is the best of them all.

Sundiver is quite good too.

The later books were deeply marred by Brin’s giving into pressure from his editors to centre them on a group of adolescent males of diverse species because his publisher was of the view that the average scientific fiction reader was a 14 year old male. Brin has written about this and how difficult it was for him to write outside his natural quite adult style. His fantastic characters from Startide Rising are pushed into the background and only get to step forward and shine again at the very end.

Yoon Ha Lee really plays with fun math concepts. Great stuff. The Ninefox trilogy was a real entry point for me to begin to appreciate Korean mythology.

Yup, lack of advanced science concepts and an accumulation of errors despite a pretension to working problems for the audience.

Even some basic geography errors - early in the book, he claims that the sample had to be landed in Saskatchewan for a high latitude to match the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Baikonur is at 45 N latitude, about the same as the border between North and South Dakota. Everywhere in Saskatchewan is North of the 49th parallel and south of 60. Sigh.

I have to say that I just don’t get the hype about this book.

Project Hail Mary is really targeted at a middle grade reading and maturity level. I would have happily given it to our kids to read in middle grade (as I did The Martian).

It’s a Robinson Crusoe meets a buddy in space boys-own-adventure tale (although Weir insists on male gendering a hermaphrodite when ‘they/them’ is well understood). There are clear indications that the story was told to pull in immature readers - starting with the ludicrous scene where Grace has spent days waiting for zero G without stowing any of his lab equipment or supplies.

It’s a compellingly written ‘work the problem’ read but anything beyond high school science concepts isn’t really there. Once again, I feel like we’re seeing more overhyped STEM based on concepts that haven’t advanced beyond what a mid 20th century bachelors degree would cover.

It held my attention as an easy read while fighting a bug, I can’t see picking up another of his books for myself.

There are a few very odd ‘too much information’ references to sexual relationships and use of alcohol that seem almost awkwardly placed to bump up the level, but there’s not really enough in there to even warrant the ‘school edition’ treatment that ‘The Martian’ got. Otherwise nothing stretches past middle grade emotional maturity.

All told, I was expecting more.

Working through ‘Ten Low’ by Stark Holburn now. My partner is through the sequel already and recommended.

Love Scalzi but wish he could vary his voice more. I find I have to spread out reading his books as the snark will all blur after a while.

The orgy in The Diamond Age isn’t much better.

Stephenson got a pass on a lot of his weird stuff.

I found The Sea of Tranquility a bit dry but whimsical nonetheless.

In a genre overburdened by books with two dimensional characters and core dumps of exposition, it was an interesting puzzle but it also isn’t making me want to reread it either. 7.5 or 8.

Hugely disappointed by The Diamond Age after Snow Crash. It really lost the plot.

Sorry no, it never was good. I couldn’t get through the first season even.

It had some potential. Knowing the first seasons of Star Trek are often the weakest, I gave it a solid try. But no.

I’d rather watch the second season of Space 1999 than any Andromeda if we’re looking for benchmarks of good concepts badly delivered.

In case you weren’t already aware, fan-favourite Star Trek tie-in fiction author shared the script credit for Only a Paper Moon.

His other DS9 script credit is for Starship Down.

If you haven’t tried Mack’s tie-in novels, you’re missing some of the best.