Book #150 of 2019: The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold This short novel starts out feeling like it will be a fun sci-fi romp, but it soon turns mind-bending and profoundly reflective in equal measure. Bequeathed a device that can travel back and forth along the timestream, our hero encounters many alternate versions …
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Book #116 of 2019: Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds Although everything moves just a bit too slowly at the start and then too quickly by the end, the wicked time-travel plotting of this novella ultimately wins me over. It’s the first thing I’ve read from author Alastair Reynolds, so I can’t compare it to his usual …
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Book #65 of 2019: Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen There’s a little bit too much telling over showing in the beginning of this novel about a futuristic time-traveler who creates a new life for himself after getting stranded in 1996. Luckily the plot picks up once the protagonist is belatedly extracted back …
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Book #34 of 2019: All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai The idea that our version of 2016 is a dystopia caused by an errant time-traveler is a great premise, but I find the execution here to be severely underbaked. This is a curiously apolitical book — it could easily have been set anytime in …
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Book #9 of 2019: An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim A bittersweet sci-fi take on the immigrant / refugee experience, this debut novel from author Thea Lim imagines a world in which people can enter into indentured servitude and time-travel to when their services are needed, generally to pay off a loved one’s medical …
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TV #52 of 2018: Doctor Who, season 11 I love the new Thirteenth Doctor, along with plenty of other tweaks in this first chapter of Doctor Who under showrunner Chris Chibnall. I adore the dynamic between companions Ryan and Graham, and I like that the season is immediately approachable for brand-new and lapsed viewers, which …
Book #217 of 2018: The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke (The Balloonmakers #1) I have a hard time investing in this novel’s central romance, which consists of two frequently blushing and stammering teens who basically fall for one another at first sight. I also sometimes want more from the prose, which doesn’t …
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Book #202 of 2018: Doctor Who: Lungbarrow by Marc Platt (Virgin New Adventures #60) This is a fascinatingly weird book, the culmination of a series of adventures that the Seventh Doctor continued to have after the classic run of Doctor Who was canceled as a television program in 1989. When that version of the Time …
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Book #195 of 2018: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #3) This has always been my favorite book in the Harry Potter series, and it is no less excellent even now that I’m closer in age to the second title character than the first. Harry and his friends …
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Book #187 of 2018: Arcadia by Iain Pears This novel takes a little while to get going and clearly establish its plot, but it ends up as a mind-trip of the highest caliber. There are essentially three layers of reality that author Iain Pears is playing with here: 1) the twenty-third century, where a brilliant …
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