TV #7 of 2025: Farscape, season 3 Cast shakeups are hard. Some TV series take such overhauls in their stride, like Doctor Who‘s revolving door of companions and regenerations, while others can weather the occasional new arrival or departure by leaning into the mission at the core of the premise and how the ensemble pursuing …
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Book Review: Pull to Open: 1962-1963: The Inside Story of How the BBC Created and Launched Doctor Who by Paul Hayes
Book #20 of 2025: Pull to Open: 1962-1963: The Inside Story of How the BBC Created and Launched Doctor Who by Paul Hayes A probably definitive overview of the creation of what would eventually become the BBC’s flagship science-fiction program Doctor Who, well before it had secured that reputation by longevity and popular acclaim. Although …
TV Review: Sex Education, season 3
TV #6 of 2025: Sex Education, season 3 I do love when a season of television has a distinct, contained storyline bracketing it. In conversation with someone else who’s seen the program, you could succinctly refer to this year of Sex Education as the one where Hope takes over Moordale, in a way that you …
Book Review: Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? by Crystal Smith Paul
Book #19 of 2025: Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? by Crystal Smith Paul I’m convinced there’s a stronger story buried somewhere in this authorial debut — the tale of a Black woman whose biracial daughter passes as white to eventually become a big Hollywood film star — but unfortunately, the version presented on the …
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Book Review: Doomsday by John Peel
Book #18 of 2025: Doomsday by John Peel (2099 #1) A neat teen sci-fi thriller that I can just vaguely remember reading in my youth. Since the series was written in 1999 and set a century later, I thought it would be entertaining to revisit now that we’re a quarter of the way there, to …
Book Review: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Book #17 of 2025: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir A simply excellent piece of science-fiction. I enjoyed the majority of this novel immensely, only to be blown away all over again by how the ending elevated it further. That’s an easy five stars, in my opinion. The story takes its time in revealing the …
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Book Review: The Last Song of Penelope by Claire North
Book #16 of 2025: The Last Song of Penelope by Claire North (The Songs of Penelope #3) Easily the best installment of its trilogy, and not only for finally dealing with the most exciting sequence of the plot, when the wayward king Odysseus returns home to Ithaca and defeats the perfidious rivals for his wife’s …
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TV Review: Marvel’s The Punisher, season 2
TV #5 of 2025: Marvel’s The Punisher, season 2 This was the last piece of Netflix’s old Defendersverse (2015 – 2019) that I hadn’t seen before, both because I hadn’t felt very invested in the first season of the show and because at the time, the parent company seemed to be drawing a hard line …
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Book Review: Iorich by Steven Brust
Book #15 of 2025: Iorich by Steven Brust (Vlad Taltos #12) In many ways, this Vlad Taltos installment feels like a rehash of #10 Dzur, with the reformed hitman protagonist again lured back against his better judgment to the hometown where his enemies still have a price on his head, in order to sort out …
Book Review: Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent by Scott Lynch
Book #14 of 2025: Locke Lamora and the Bottled Serpent by Scott Lynch What a delight it is to reenter the world of Camorr, that medieval Venice-inspired city-state with its elaborate criminal underworld staking out rival gang territories along the canals. Author Scott Lynch has published a variety of shorter fiction in the years since …
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