Trek Novels - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Warped

Well, it’s time for me to finally look at a Trek book that features the crew of Deep Space Nine. I’ve only read a couple that involves this crew. I tend to gravitate towards the TOS crew and TNG crew when it comes to novels. Now, I actually found this hardcover novel at a big thrift store in West Tennessee called Top Dog. We were down with my dad’s family for the weekend back in 2010. My granddad had gotten all of the stuff we wanted. I had started to read the book sometime later, but I didn’t finish it until now. I’ll get to why later.

Warped was written by K.W. Jeter and released in 1995. I haven’t heard of the guy until this book. He’s written a lot of original novels as well as ones for this franchise and others. He’s done books in the Star Wars universe. He’s also written some sequels to Blade Runner. Now that was a shock to me. I still need to see Blade Runner. By the way, the book takes place after the events of “Battle Times” and before the beginning of the second season. So, we’re in Season 1 territory… yee haw. Anyway, I’ll get on to the synopsis.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Warped

Writer: K.W. Jeter

BRIEF BLURB: The crew of Deep Space Nine has to discover the cause behind a series of murders while Bajor’s government suffers a takeover from another group.

TV Talk - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

I bet Uhura's thinking "Wow, the 24th century's looking pretty nice."

Well, it has come to this. I finally gather up the guts to talk this show. I’ve heard this show get praised by most and not praised by others.  I think it’s time to add my name to the list as I finally talk about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

My first memory of DS9 was actually on a church trip. I think we went to Louisville for the weekend and there was an episode (In the Hands of the Prophets) playing. At the time, we didn’t have cable at my house, so I didn’t know what this show was. I knew it was “Star Trek” and that’s it. I think my uncle may have even recorded a couple of episodes. When we finally got cable in ‘98, I got to watch the show on FOX 54 coming out of Huntsville. I have no clue how we got that channel, but I guess it had to do with the fact that we were so close to Alabama. While the channel showed current episodes of DS9, it also showed reruns early in the morning at about 5am. 

After DS9 ended its run, it was probably a few years until I saw the show again. I know Spike TV had it in reruns when I was in college. It didn’t stay on there long if I remember. I also remember this YouTube channel had all of the episodes on there. I think I watched the latter half of the show on that channel. Then came Netflix which has every Trek show on there. I’ve mostly been watching a lot of the early episodes on there as well as my favorites. I haven’t finished the show since I’ve seen the latter half a lot, but I’m getting there.

"It's a Video Game!" - The Mass Effect Trilogy

So, what does one get when they combine elements of Star Trek, Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Aliens, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, and everything in between? It’s possibly one of the coolest trilogies around. Today, I’ll be looking at the Mass Effect Trilogy, so sit down and lay back. This’ll take a while.

Where can I begin with Mass Effect? I guess I’ll start at the beginning. I didn’t know crap about this trilogy before March of last year.  All I had heard about it was it was good and that its third game had a crappy ending.  I had finished up a new game called Watchdogs. The game itself was fine, but it didn’t have any replay value for me, so I decided to trade it in at Gamestop. Since I got a sizable amount back for it, I looked around for something that might be good. I saw the Mass Effect Trilogy for a pretty cheap price, so I got it. The rest, you might say, is history… also, the helper there was pretty cute. I think I saw her at Hastings in Murfreesboro.

Anyway, here’s a little info for the uninformed. Mass Effect was released on the Xbox 360 and PC’s (it got ported to PS3 much later) in 2007. It was developed by Bioware who was responsible for games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, and Dragon Age. It takes place in the somewhat distant future (2183) in the Milky Way galaxy. You play as Commander Shepard, an Alliance soldier who you make your own. Mass Effect 2 was released in 2011 on all consoles while Mass Effect 3 was released in 2013. For this review, I decided to play through the whole trilogy again in order to give it a better look and see what trouble I could really get myself into.

My Shepard’s black and looks like he’s trying to do his best Captain Sisko imitation.

Book Review - The Martian Chronicles

So, Ray Bradbury… Yeah, I got nothing on him. All I know about him is that he was apparently an awesome author. He’d written his fair share of novels and short stories. I’m not sure if I’ve read many works by the man. I’ve probably seen most of his stories adapted to television or movies. I know I haven’t read Fahrenheit 451. That’s definitely on the reading list for this year.

I don’t remember when I first heard about The Martian Chronicles. I probably found out about it at a book fair, one of the stories was in our reading books, or  the television mini-series that was released in the 70’s. Either way, I found out about it eventually because I finished reading it some time ago. The Martian Chronicles was released in 1950. From what I’ve read, it’s made up of a series of short stories that have been cobbled together.  It’s had some revisions since then. Some stories were added or taken out. Some revisions also have it taking place in the mid-2000’s instead of the beginning of the 21^st century.

The Martian Chronicles

Author: Ray Bradbury

BRIEF BLURB: The book talks about how Earth tries to colonize Mars.

Random Thoughts #36 - Garrus Vakarian is one bad brother from another planet!

Well, it's noon and I really need to get back to the gym. Work's been good.A co-worker of mine isn't doing too well though. This whole situation in Baltimore has been annoying and really freaky. The world just feels weird in general these days. I'm not worried though since you're gonna have your good times and bad. So, I'll get to some random thoughts.

Sci-fi Month

 So, for this month (formerly known as Star Trek Month and Star Trek/Star Wars Month), I wanted to change it up. While I love Star Trek and really like Star Wars, they aren’t the “end all, be all” when it comes to science fiction. If you’re saying “Star Wars isn’t science fiction!”, the franchise has cyborgs and clones. It’s at least lite Sci-fi. Anyway, I wanted to branch out and look at other things in the sci-fi genre whether they are movies, TV shows, books, or video games. I already got some things planned out, so stay tuned. 

Women

I don't have anything to say... yet.

This Weekend

This weekend is looking pretty fun and busy. There's Free Comic Book Day, Murfressboro's Jazz Fest is out, and a friend of mine is having a birthday party. There's also this little indie movie about a group of folk beating up James Spader... that might be fun.

The Joker???

Recently, an image of the Joker from the new Suicide Squad movie was released. It's... weird to say the least. I'm now hearing that Jared Leto may not look this different in the movie. Still, it's alright. As long as Leto plays the role well, I'm good. Still, I think one can have fun with this.

Wow... the Insane Clown Posse will take anyone these days!

...

So I guess he'll be teaming up with Lil' Wayne next?

...

I'd hate to be that tattoo artist. 

Well, I'm out. I really need to hit the gym. Peace, God Bless, and be safe out there.