Tag: <span>science fiction</span>

Tag: science fiction

Continuing last summer’s re-read of the Dune series by Frank Herbert, I picked up with God Emperor of Dune a few days ago.

My reading choices are often dictated by whim or nostalgia, and so Dune has to be read in the summer, just like the first time I read it.

So far, I’m enjoying the character of Leto II quite a bit. Where Paul Atreides is all doomy and self-important, Leto II is much more fun and quixotic.

“What do you despise? By this are you truly known.”

When I first read that quotation in Dune twenty years ago, it struck me as something true and profound. It’s been incorporated into my worldview so long and so thoroughly that I don’t always notice the words themselves, even if they’re there at the back of my mind.

It’s one metric by which I judge others and myself, and it’s something that’s been in my head a lot lately not only because I am re-reading Dune and realizing what a formative book it was for me, but also because of everything going on in the world right now.

We live in an age of militant, polarized opinions. Some people share their opinions online; others go out to protest. Either way, this is always the question I ask.

I’m not a car person, so I can only describe what passed by me on my walk in my rural New England town as a retro-future, cyberpunk Indy 500 car with strips of neon green lights blinking along its edges.

It was blasting not the synthy industrial action music that is its birthright by genre, but one of the more emotional Goo Goo Dolls songs.

There’s a saying about dressing for the job you want, not the job you have. It sounds suspiciously like the kind of thing a high-end suit manufacturer might have come up with.

Anyway, I’ve accumulated quite a few outfits that make me look like a sci-fi character, so I’ve been following that dubious piece of advice either way.

One of my rewards to myself for finishing Stars Fall Out (and also an early birthday present) was a box set of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Best Star Trek ever, and best show ever.

I should’ve bought it ages ago on whatever flimsy excuse I could come up with.

I started Thrawn: Alliances, and one thing that came as no surprise is that Anakin makes a terrible Watson to Thrawn’s Sherlock.

What did come as a surprise is that Darth Vader is a marginally better Watson.

And now I realize why I’ve been enjoying Elementary so much; it’s not a cop show: it’s what Grand Admiral Thrawn would be like solving crimes in New York.