Books: Trek, Wars, And Others

[woodwardiocom]

Star Trek: The Wounded Sky by Diane Duane

An older Trek novel in which the Enterprise tests a new FTL drive, which has extremely unfortunate side effects. Some bits of the plot don't make a lot of sense, but you're mostly here for the crew banding together in the face of ultimate weirdness. Has some well-rendered alien crewmembers, including the (per back cover copy) "pretty alien scientist" -- who is a very pretty glass spider. Mildly recommended.

Star Wars: Thrawn: Alliances by Timothy Zahn

Set in two time periods, this recent Star Wars novel covers Thrawn's first meeting with Anakin Skywalker, during the Clone Wars, and a much later team-up between Thrawn and Darth Vader, in which Thrawn politely pretends he doesn't know Vader's secret identity. Practically any Thrawn novel by Zahn is a delight, and watching these two very proud men carefully work around each other's egos is entertaining. Recommended.

The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum

They say Weinbaum would be remembered in the same breath as Asimov and Heinlein, if he hadn't died of cancer, terribly young, after less then two years in the business. This is a fine collection of his shorter works, most of them still quite readable, though they obviously burned brighter in the cheesy pulp days of the 1930s. Recommended.

Niels Bohr by Ruth Moore

A biography of the famed physicist who formed much of our modern understanding of the atom. It's readable, not terribly exciting, and I confess it's mostly staying on my shelf because it came from the library of my grandfather, who got it autographed by Moore.

Marvel Masterworks: The Savage She-Hulk, Vol. 2 by Kraft, Vosburg, et al

While I can't honestly call these good stories, they're interestingly different from the standard fare of the time. The issues involved are often social, there's an overarching plot which ascends from political corruption to cosmic and Earth-threatening, and She-Hulk's personal problems (like, her dad thinks she's a murderer) are handled interestingly. She's also in an odd polyamorous relationship, where Jennifer is dating one man, and She-Hulk is dating a different man, with attendant friction. Very mildly recommended.