The fourth and latest novel in the expanded Firefly universe is the closest story fans will have encountered since the short-lived series’ first season. Tim Lebbon’s Firefly: Generations leans into its science fiction roots as Mal Reynolds and his crew find themselves balancing the life of a crew member and her desire to fulfill a destiny promised from the first episode. Two keys put them on their next adventure across the ‘verse: one key they’ve had all along, and the other is a bit of a treasure map that goes to the very heart of understanding the old Earth-That-Was. Only they may find it’s not treasure waiting, but a ship. And not just any ship, but a seemingly haunted ghost ship.
Insidious. That’s the nature of the threat to all life in the trilogy of novels called Star Trek Coda, which winds-up in David Mack’s character- and action-packed novel Oblivion’s Gate, coming to bookstores tomorrow. Star Wars gave us the Death Star, but at least you could try to negotiate with the Empire. The enemy here is more like a virus, where resistance may–this time–actually really be futile.
For every effort worth fighting for, somebody will stand in the way, attempting to thwart actions even when they are aimed to benefit everyone. In this tale that role falls to Will Riker, although readers will find a different twist, different from doppelganger Thomas Riker but also similar, more Tuvix actually. And despite the twist this Riker is as brilliant as ever. As with Coda book one, Dayton Ward’s Moments Asunder (reviewed here), and book two, James Swallow’s The Ashes of Tomorrow (reviewed here), Mack pulls some of our favorite supporting characters in for a swan song of epic proportions.
Earlier this month here at borg I reviewed Moments Asunder, Dayton Ward’s first act in a trilogy of books that are intended as a major shift in the tie-in novel universe of Star Trek. The story is a giant convergence of many major nexuses of the Star Trek television series’ casts of characters from the original series to Voyager, with an older and wise Wesley Crusher as experienced Traveler (see TNG: “Journey’s End”) at the heart of the tale. The book is an engaging read and fun-filled start to the trilogy full of great throwbacks and surprises. The action doesn’t let up in the second novel, James Swallow’s The Ashes of Tomorrow, which digs deeper into the futures of all the key Deep Space Nine characters, and it pits Jean-Luc Picard against an old colleague and friend.
It may seem a long time coming, but the Star Trek tie-in novels and the new era of Star Trek television series are finally becoming one. On the heels of Disney discarding decades of Star Wars stories written after the original movie trilogy into a bin called the Expanded Universe, Star Trek’s novel writers have embarked on a shoring-up of the franchise’s decades of novels with a single trilogy of novels. Titled Star Trek Coda, the novels lean into what Star Wars can’t–it’s sci-fi multiverse. As discussed last week in my review of Rizwan Virk’s The Simulated Multiverse, lots of science fiction relies on the multiple timeline, parallel universe, alternate history tropes to expand opportunities for storytelling, something Star Trek fans have known since 1966. In the first novel of the Coda trilogy, Moments Asunder, author Dayton Ward takes the crews of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager there and back again, to places that will be both familiar and new to television audiences, while continuing stories–and characters–that fans of the novels will know well. But the future for some of your favorite Federation heroes is dicey, so take heed.
Spanish artist Fernando Dagnino (Superman, Resurrection Man, Suicide Squad) has designed the future of Blade Runner in the continuation series of Ridley Scott and Syd Mead’s future world for Titan Comics over the past few years. Now fans of his artwork can see Dagnino take his work further in his own series. In Smart Girl, readers will meet Yuki, a multitasking gynoid in the future called a Smart Girl, as in “smart phone” (the male Smartdroids are called Smart Boys)–human-like tools created exactly like the domestic assistant Synths of BBC’s Humans television series. But like the Emergency Medical Holograms of Star Trek Voyager fame, the time comes when Yuki is no longer the latest, most advanced model, and it’s time for her to be replaced by the new androids and be deactivated. Yuki becomes self-aware, and like the Replicants of Blade Runner, she decides she has more to offer the world and makes her escape before it’s too late.
Writer and illustrator Dagnino offers a black and white future noir comic that leans into what he does best–those shadows and layouts that feel like the stuff of 1950s pulp novels. As much as I’d love to see his work in color, the black and white works for this tale of the bleak not-so-distant future. Yuki is Atomic Blonde and Alita upgraded. The story is tech-forward like Altered Carbon. Dagnino’s style is familiar in a good way, mixes of Mike Grell layouts, Phil Noto characters, and the action and appeal of Jackson Herbert–the best of the modern Miss Fury artists. If you like speculative science fiction, issue-driven narratives wrestling with timeless questions in the manner of the best of Alan Moore and Frank Miller, this should be your next graphic novel.
Check out our sneak preview of Fernando Dagnino’s new graphic novel, Smart Girl:
The sixth volume of the encyclopedia of Star Trek ships has arrived as publisher Hero Collector continues its library where Star Trek Shipyards: The Borg and Delta Quadrant (reviewed here at borg), left off. Continuing the voyages chronicled over seven seasons of Star Trek Voyager,Star Trek Shipyards: The Delta Quadrant Volume 2 documents, in a coffee-table class, full-color hardcover edition, the ships of the alien races in alphabetical order from Ledosian to Zahl. It’s available now here at Amazon. Star Trek Shipyards is known for its colorful, high quality illustrations, providing an in-universe guide–with the goal of creating an exhaustive library–to the seemingly endless array of the franchise’s highly-detailed spacecraft.
When we last saw Patrick Stewart′s good Captain Jean-Luc Picard, he seemingly died and came back to life as something new. In the first season of CBS All Access’s latest live-action Star Trek incarnation, Star Trek: Picard, audiences met a primarily new crew of characters supporting the efforts of Picard–and a range of good villains. Stewart has said he decided to bring his character back to the screen because of the role he performed for even more years than Picard–Charles Xavier in the X-Men series–specifically the strong finish he was able to give the character in James Mangold’s Oscar-nominated finale Logan. Stewart succeeded, as Star Trek: Picard showcased the beloved character as Old Man Picard and wrapped far better fans’ last meeting with not only Picard, but Data, Riker, and Troi, too. And surprisingly it did that for Star Trek Voyager, specifically for Jeri Ryan′s Seven of Nine, who also had a rather anticlimactic finale in the last episode of that series.
Now audiences have a first look at Season 2, and an official poster with hints at a voyage back to an era closer to our own time as seen in Star Trek Voyager and Star Trek IV–and echoes of the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Check it out below.
The fifth volume of the encyclopedia of Star Trek ships has arrived. This time Hero Collector is taking on the ships of Star Trek: Voyager. It’s all in the new full color hardcover book Star Trek Shipyards: The Borg and Delta Quadrant,Volume One, available now here at Amazon. Star Trek Shipyards is known for its colorful, high quality illustrations, providing an in-universe guide to the seemingly endless array of the franchise’s spacecraft. Because of the timing of cutting edge computer-generated design during the seven years of Star Trek Voyager, writers Ben Robinson and Marcus Riley were able to compile two volumes worth of images, using the actual renderings used by the show’s art and visual effects departments. But first it takes a look at the ships of The Borg, the cybernetic race first seen in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Tor Essentials is a new library of backlist science fiction and fantasy novels from Macmillan Publishing’s Tor imprint, so far featuring 15 novels plucked from the past few decades. One of those 21st century titles is a well-constructed gem, Canadian author Robert Charles Wilson’sSpin. A broad, epic story that traverses literally billions of years from the vantage of a doctor living on Earth, the novel packs a lot of ideas into 300 pages. The sub-genres covered are a mix of apocalypse, speculative fiction, and Martians, but not quite the aliens of H.G. Wells or Robert Heinlein. Like the inexplicable monolith of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a giant black barrier has blocked the atmosphere so we no longer see the Sun, the Moon, or the Stars, but some secret force is protecting the Earth from the effects of such an occurrence. Somehow Wilson connects the dots between the absurd and the improbable with the realities of the human condition to arrive at a story similar to Daniel H. Wilson’s The Andromeda Evolution, another intriguing, creative tale that made readers believe the unlikely was possible.
For most television viewers, the names after a show scroll by without much notice. But if you pay attention, you may find the writer of one of your favorite episodes is the writer of many of your favorites, which may point you to other series and episodes you’ve not seen yet that you may like. You might not have heard of Paul Robert Coyle, but it’s likely that anyone who is a fan of one or more genre shows has watched the results of his work. Or maybe you haven’t heard of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Xena: Warrior Princess, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Superboy, The Dead Zone, Simon & Simon, or earlier detective and police series like The Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones,Crazy Like a Fox, Jake and the Fat Man, and CHiPs. Coyle wrote for these series, and readers of his new book Swords, Starships, and Superheroes: A TV Writer’s Life Scripting the Stories of Heroes may find he wrote some of their favorite episodes.
