TV #53 of 2024: The Umbrella Academy, season 4 Even for a messy series that’s always coasted on vibes and fun personal interactions at the expense of any legible story elements, this farewell season is a bit of a rough time. The shortened episode count doesn’t help, nor does the fact that the writers have …
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TV #52 of 2024: What If…?, season 3 This once-promising Marvel cartoon continues to deliver diminishing returns, and since this third season is apparently intended to be its last, it’s hard not to feel a sense of good riddance at this point (and to ponder the wasted potential left on the table, truly the biggest …
Book #187 of 2024: The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter A cute winter mystery story, in which a famous elderly writer of detective fiction has invited several younger peers to her mansion for the holiday, along with her seemingly ungrateful relatives. Soon after the guests arrive, their hostess vanishes amid evidence …
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Book #186 of 2024: Doctor Who: Death in the Stars by Bonnie Langford and Jacqueline Rayner Overall a fairly average Doctor Who-adjacent volume of science-fiction, somewhat marred by a plot structure that’s more akin to a three-part serial than one cohesive full-length adventure. (The mystery teased on the cover, in which the heroine winds up …
Movie #17 of 2024: Doctor Who: Joy to the World (2024) [Note: No, I don’t know why Disney’s marketing has pluralized the last word of the title on this poster. I assume it’s just a typo.] Whether as showrunner himself or, as here, contributing a script to someone else’s editorial oversight, Steven Moffat tends to …
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Book #185 of 2024: Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: Beginnings Omnibus by Robin Furth, Peter David, Jae Lee, and Richard Isanove This graphic novel collects the initial arc of Marvel comic book adaptations of Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic western Dark Tower novels, comprising 30 individual issues published from 2007 through 2010 under the subheadings of The …
Book #184 of 2024: Notes to a Science Fiction Writer: The Secrets of Writing Science Fiction That Sells by Ben Bova I saw this 1981 title on my mom’s shelf over the holidays, and since I’ve read plenty of the late author’s fiction here and there, I decided to take it down and see what …
Book #183 of 2024: Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire by Dr. Chris Kempshall A staggering work that I would unequivocally recommend to any obsessive-minded Star Wars fans like myself. This book, written by an actual academic historian, applies the investigative principles of that field to the continuity of the franchise …
Book #182 of 2024: Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #9) Broadly speaking — although this is as inaccurate in the details as Eleanor West’s flawed Logic / Nonsense dichotomy that she tries to fit all the student experiences into — there are two types of stories that the Wayward Children novellas …
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TV #51 of 2024: Star Trek: Lower Decks, season 5 I’ve never quite loved this cartoon, but I’ve come to appreciate its place in the Star Trek canon, which it regularly comments upon with the most lovingly esoteric references imaginable. (In one episode this season, for instance, a Klingon gets cut off in traffic and …
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