I started watching the Star Trek Picard series pretty much right when it came out and was keeping up week to week. I am a long time Star Trek fan. Sadly, I got sidetracked before watching the last couple of episodes, thanks to COVID and kids. But, I recently set out to remedy the situation.

I have mixed feelings about this series. There are lots of things I like, and some not so much. However, in the end, I think I'd rather have it than have nothing.

For me, the genius in Start Trek is that besides being cool sci-fi with good storytelling, it has tried to cast a critical eye on social problems. Some obvious and contemporary, such as racism. Other cases have been more abstract such as what rights an artificial intelligence might be entitled too.  Then, such real-world importance has been paired with exhibiting forefront scientific and engineering thinking. Sure, there is artistic license, and sure, some things are wrong in retrospect. But, it is easy to see how Star Trek has tried to come up with as realistic of scientific ground for the sci-fi fantasy as possible. From warp drive to replicators, and sometimes Trek has been remarkably prophetic, such as computer voice interaction and tablet computers. Heck, in my experience, few sci-fi properties have even tried to explain how they achieve faster than light speeds. And of the few that do, none have been more realistic than Trek's warp drive.

Now, much of that went out the window in the JJ Abrams Trek movies. They were first and foremost action movies. While much of the cast was great, I wasn't especially thrilled with rehashing old characters or throwing out the Trek fidelity to science. Still, after years without a new Star Trek, I could at least take some satisfaction in the property being revitalized. And to give credit where it is due, I don't imagine it would have been as easy, perhaps not even possible to have the Discover series or the new Picard series without the Abram's Trek movies. So at least there's that.

With that in mind, where does Picard fall? For me, the series is all about character. The Picard character is beloved, and now we get to bring him back and double down on his screen time. With that, we get to revisit a few other beloved characters along his journey and meet a few new ones. This is different from previous movies and series, which have been rather ensemble-driven, maybe more like many of the Star Trek books over the years. And I can buy into it. I, too, love Captain Picard.

It's the rest where I have some trouble. Rather than weight what remains aside from Picard's life in realistic science, we get a lot more action. In fact, what technology can do or cannot do seems entirely dependent on what is easiest for the story. (Spoiler Ahead) If the science and tech exist to recreate Data's consciousness form one positronic neuron and taking for granted all the miracle medical advancements we've seen in Trek, how the heck can Picard be so fragile to a brain abnormality? It's just total disregard for any realism and, in many places, a move backward in technology. Another example, now the ships are controlled through holographic interphase. Is there some reason to think this is an advancement? They've had holograms since TNG began. I guess it looks more futuristic, but that's not the Star Trek way to me.

Next, there's the social conscious. The entire season arc is based on the rights and treatment of synthetic life. Now, this on its own is a Trek worthy idea. So much so, that we've seen it explored more than once on TNG through Data-centric and Borg-centric episodes and even movies. Revisiting it alone doesn't bother me, but the notion that somehow Starfleet has taken huge steps backward in this area is hard to swallow, and the explanations seem more convenient then well thought out and intelligently explored.

I wanted to love this series, but instead, I just like it.

That's right, I still really like it. I am a fanboy in some regards here, so see Picard in any way is delightful. Getting throwbacks to Riker and Troy, 7 of 9, and Hugh, that's right the borg Hugh. These are all wonderful. And a season 2 promises more. I also very much liked most of the new characters.  I'd like to have seen better fidelity to the Trek of old in spirit, but Picard is superior to the recent movies, and I'll take it. See you for season 2.

Reggae music.

I used to live in Houston, and have one of those stop-and-go, 12-standstill-lanes sorts of commutes that took an hour to travel less than 15 miles. I often found myself pretty worked up and even downright angry during the drives. That's when I discovered that jamming to some reggae along the way helped ease my mood. Like a little mental teleport to a laid back beach somewhere. Who cares about traffic then?

Between COVID-19 driven change in my life and household, struggling daily with disappointment over finding next to no time to work on my writing, and with little loved ones seemingly going out of their way to try my every last nerve, I've returned to relying on island grooves to keep me sane. From roots stuff like Marley, Toots, Tosh, and Jimmy Cliff, to modern stuff like Ziggy, Damian, Tribal Seed, Soja, and Natural Vibes, to outliers like Joss Stone's "Water for Soul" album, and much in between, I'm pretty much spanning the genre.

Maybe you didn't know I was such a connoisseur.

Over the last year or so, I've read the first three installments in Martha Wells's Murderbot Diaries series. I've mentioned how the main character is fascinating, but that his sarcasm can get a little grating as everything is seen through his POV. Still, I like the concept and enjoy the world. I just can't read them back to back. It would be too much murderbot. But, as it's been a few months, I picked up the fourth in the series, Exit Strategy (Wells 2018), and gave it a read.

Some positives form this installment: I liked the external character development for Ren (the murderbot). We've seen (slight series spoiler ahead) Ren transition from an autonomous tool to a feeling and reasoning lifeform, but most of that development has come inside his head. He has also been mostly cautious and distancing with the humans around him. He has developed a few relationships with other digital systems, such as another bot, and the controlling AI for a space ship. In exit strategies, we see Ren's relationship with some of the humans around him proliferate, mostly getting stronger. In a way, in turn, we see him becoming more human, or at least more emotionally like us. It's good. It helps us care for him.

What I didn't like: the plot doesn't advance the series storyline very much. Ren is mostly out of danger in this book, and his overarching goal of uncovering his own memory-wiped history has just fallen away. He gets himself into danger by endeavoring to help the humans he was first liberated with, his wards from the first book. The danger they're in is clear but not largely compelling. The plot is more of a simple frame on which to build the character growth. These books are short, so I understand there is a challenge in having a great plot and excellent character development in limited pages, but I still found myself drifting on the storyline and struggling to keep my focus on it.

The fifth Murderbot Diaries book, Network Effect, is due out in May. So, I can forgive that this book is a bit transitional. Book 1 introduces the Ren and some important supporting characters, plus some action. The next two books let Ren out on his own, to try to uncover his history, and in turn gaining himself a big political enemy, plus lots more action. Now with four, we develop his relationships while stocking the fire of how powerful and far-reaching his big enemy really is. Thus, I'm giving Exit Strategies some extra credit on good faith, securing a solid four stars in my mind.

Certainly, I'll be sticking around for the fifth installment. I've come this far...

I read Stephen King's The Outsider about a year ago, which HBO adapted into a miniseries. The show began in January and recently aired its 10th and final episode (I'm assuming). Thus, I gave it a watch.

Let me start with a look back on the book. I enjoyed quite a bit about it. The story had a lot of cool and fascinating, dark ideas. But there was something I didn't at the time quite put my finger on that I think detracted from it. Ultimately, I have the book four stars. Now that I've seen the TV adaptation, I think I've sorted it out.

But let me mention some high lights. First, the mood in the series was spot on. I was attracted to the talent involved. I like Jason Bateman, who played a key role and directed a couple of episodes. The rest of the cast is excellent, particularly Cynthia Erivo. I also found the adaptation to have a lot of fidelity to the book. There were some superficial changes. The adaptation took place in Georgia while the book was set in Oklahoma. (I'm sure production incentives are responsible for that,) There were also a few secondary characters altered. One secondary character had a mother in the book with a tiny part, which they shifted to a brother in the adaptation. I don't consider fidelity necessarily a defining point of quality in an adaptation, mostly I feel that the changes are valid so long as they bring something new. Still, in this case, where the changes are small and mostly insignificant, it can be a positive. At least they didn't change something radically and not deliver added value with the change. Altogether, I'd say its a good adaptation and an entertaining watch.

But here's the trouble, I think this story, both book, and adaptation, fail in two key points—first, the suspension of disbelief. When you tell a story, if you are going to have magic or creatures, or anything supernatural, you have to control the suspension of disbelief for the audience. If you don't, you can give them a shock that kills that story, a surprise that is too out of left-field to swallow. If magic is going to play a part in your story, you can't introduce it in the last act; it's off-putting. You have to suggest that possibility at least early in the story. Imagine reading a mystery, something like a police procedural, trying to figure out who killed so and so, only to have a new character show up in the last 20 pages, who ends up being guilty. You'd be angry that you never heard of the character. It's the same with the supernatural. In The Outsider, there is a supernatural element in the story, but it starts as a murder mystery from the POV of the detective trying to close the case. It doesn't really give us a peek at the supernatural element for a while. It's not so bad as to not appear until the last act, but probably not until a quarter of the way into the story, and I think it still manages to be problematic.


Second, one of the book's strengths is in character development. We get to know the lives of something in the range of a dozen characters who are either the people hunting the bad guy or a few who are his victims. But this proves to be a weakness as well, because the antagonist, the bad guy, who is essentially a boogie man, is almost completely undeveloped. By contrast, this, too, is awkward. He's not a creature who we might think of as animalistic. He posses as and acts like a regular person, and thus we can presume he has human intellect at the least. Yet, about the only motive we're given for his terrible acts is that he's hungry. We know he's capable of really horrific acts, but have no real understanding of why he's ok with doing them. Thus the character falls flat, and it's hard to endure through a long book or 10 hours of a tv series.

In short, the adaptation captures the novel well, but in turn shares the books weaknesses.

I saw an article about a unique concept album from Harry Nilsson called The Point! which was turning 50 years old. It was released in 1970. I'd never heard of it, but its release preceded my arrival on the planet by more than ten years. Still, it sounded odd and interesting, so I found it on iTunes and gave it a listen or ten. I love it.

It's sort of a mini-musical with both songs and narration, telling a simple but poignant story about a boy who suffers prejudice. It's offbeat, calm, and dare I say soothing in execution. It gives you pause to think about behavior, and comes to a satisfying resolution of improvement in the society of the story. The album is also simply beautifully sung and spoken, and the music is easy on the ears. On top of all this, it's full of well thought out word-play. I'd also say it has stood the test of time very well and is easily relatable to the world today. (Maybe anti-prejudice never goes out of style.)

I was familiar with Harry Nilsson, if for no other reason than his singing the main song from Midnight Cowboy (1969), Everybody's Talkin'. However, I'd not heard of this work. I'm so glad I came across it. If you don't know The Point!, give it a listen!

PS I've also found that an animated version came out in 1971 and that Dustin Hoffman lent his voice as the narrator for the first broadcast, and Ringo Starr later narrated the video release. I'm going to have to get my hands on a copy.  Odd, Nilsson sings Everybody's Talkin' for Midnight Cowboy in '69, which starred Dustin Hoffman in his iconic Ratso role. Nilsson released The Point! album in '70, after which Hoffman narrates the animated version of The Point! in '71. I wonder if there is a story behind that? We may never know.

PPS It seems to me, The Point! is ripe for Broadway adaptation. 1. It is already full of great songs. 2. It could be staged with both Ringo and Dustin Hoffman filling roles. 3. Nilsson has a vast inventory of songs with which the soundtrack could be reinforced if needed. 4. It could be visually fascinating with all these pointed sets. 5. It would be poignant to explore the current climate of prejudice with a bit of an update. - Who do I call to get this plan in motion?

Andy Weir's The Martian has been on my radar for a long time. Most people who weren't aware of it eight years ago had it brought to light when Matt Damon starred in the 2015 movie adaptation. Well, I finally got around to it, and I loved it. Two notes, first, I did see the movie back when it came out. Also, full disclosure I audiobooked this one, narrated by Wil Wheaton. I'll touch on both.

First of all, this is just a great story, particularly to fans of sci-fi grounded in practical science. It's a survival story, much like Cast Away or the Revenant. We follow a rollercoaster of one character devising solutions to survival problems, only to have gut-wrenching new troubles pile on top of one another. All along, we're pulled forward with the single question of "will he live?"

The book stood out, however, in the main character, Mark Watney's attitude. He was very sarcastic and seemingly cavalier about how bleak his situation was. We can presume many of his jokes were his way of dealing with his hopelessness. But it was still often funny, which one doesn't see in many survival stories.

Then, there's the science. Science themes are thoroughly embedded and run consistently throughout. I'd say, Weir kept as much fidelity to practical science as one could while still coming up with new (near-future) ideas. It was wonderful. I imagine it took tremendous research, and I applaud him.

Next, as my experience was with the movie adaptation first, let's compare. I found the movie to have many of the same merits as the book. It had lots of tension and edge-of-your-seat suspense as to whether Mark Watney will survive. It had a great deal of science fidelity. It also preserved Watney's sarcastic humor, though to a lesser extent. However, what it lacked, which was engaging in the book, was Watney's internal thoughts. When Watney encountered a problem in the book story, he'd walk through ten ideas of how he might try to solve it, but have to humorously point out how nine of those options would likely kill him. Then he'd opt for the least likely to result in death. This style gave readers a deep connection to his way of thinking, and what it would take to survive, it gave a number of opportunities to showcase Watney's humor, and helped build just how dire the situation was. We observed Watney die a hundred times in his mind. The movie didn't and probably couldn't do the same.

In a movie, we'd have to listen while the actor explained all the bad options, which would be a lot of non-action on screen. Otherwise, we'd have to see his thought played out as if real, ending in his death, only to be brought back and told it didn't really happen. That, over and over again, would have come off more silly than scientific. So it had to be reduced, and I don't fault the film, I just appreciate that the book had that extra layer to enjoy.

Finally, let me address the audiobook aspect. I'm a big fan, as they let me turn thinks like doing laundry into book time. This one had Wil Wheaton narrating. I have mixed feelings about Wheaton. I'm a Star Trek fan. I'm sure that fans of Trek and fans of the Martian are a Venn diagram barely worth drawing. I liked some TNG episodes with Westley. Other times, he rubbed me the wrong way, coming off as arrogant. Likewise, I sometimes like Wheaton in his more recent rolls and endeavors, but half the time, I think he comes off as too smarmy. To my surprise and my delight, he hits just the right balance with The Martian audiobook. Watney is sarcastic, and Wheaton does that wonderfully. Watney is positive in the face of nearly impossible odds, and Wheaton pulls that off just right.

I highly recommend this book. I think the movie is worth a look as well. And if you like audiobooks, give Wheaton's narration of The Martian a try.