Thoughts on Andy Weir’s The Martian and Project Hail Mary

Posted on August 7, 2026 by JC

I have been quite critical of modern science-fiction and for good reason. Examples covered on this blog include N.K. Jemsin’s woeful The Fifth Season which saw her win the once prestigious Hugo Award for best novel. She then scored a questionable hat trick after also winning for the two that followed in the trilogy. John Scalzi’s Starter Villain had almost no science-fiction elements and reads like something he lazily turned-out to fulfil contractual obligations with his publisher; yet it still managed to get nominated for best novel in 2024 and he had previously won in 2013 for Redshirts. Then there is Patrick S. Tomlinson’s In the Black which was not nominated for any awards but the fact he was ever published is egregious enough. 

If it is accepted that the Hugo Awards hold the prestige they once did it would  imply that two of the above authors are commensurate with  pioneer authors like Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert as well as greats that followed after such as William Gibson, Orson Scott Card and Neal Stephenson. If you have even a little knowledge of these authors and that doesn’t sound absurd to you, then I don’t know what more to say. Of course, most of these Jemisin would dismiss as “beardy white men” without including her beardy-white-ally Scalzi. I noticed while looking that Poul Anderson never won though he was nominated multiple times and I would take the worst book he wrote over almost any by contemporary authors.

Someone else who has only been nominated is Andy Weir and unlike most contemporary authors, he actually deserved to be.

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A Tactical Tech Retreat

Posted on July 31, 2026 by JC

 Over five years ago, I published an article about abandoning my “smartphone” and detailing some reasons why as well as  some observations after having done so. For the last five years, I have used three separate “dumbphones” including the one mentioned in the post. Just this week (as I write), I have begun using an Android mobile phone and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it.

Something else I did about a month back was install Windows 11 on my computer which the author of this article (also me), would have found somewhat shocking. The short story here is I was having a lot of trouble doing what I was used to doing on Nobara Linux and found a guide to making Windows 11 tolerable; at least for now. I have retained Linux on my other computers though.

Given these changes, I would be doing a disservice if I didn’t explain this betrayal and I will do so below.  Continue reading →

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The Rock (1996) Review

Posted on July 19, 2026 by JC

As I briefly reflected on in a previous post, there were changes in action film genre from the 1980s to the 1990s. The last films that resembled those of the 1980s were arguably Total Recall and Navy SEALs which both released in 1990. There was some deconstruction of the genre that followed with both The Last Action Hero and Demolition Man, mentioned in the linked post and many films also took a much sillier turn. You could make all sorts of arguments about what caused these changes. You could point to Die Hard‘s more “everyman” protagonist or James Cameron inserting the somewhat jarring sentimentality into his sequel to the SciFi/Horror film The Terminator. You could argue a lot of things but they certainly changed.

One of the more notable changes in the 1990s was Nicolas Cage leaving his more dramatic roles to become an action star. After his Academy Award winning performance in 1995’s Leaving Las Vegas he went on to star in The Rock, Con Air and Face/Off in 1996 and 1997. Although this was not the end of his dramatic roles, he became known for his action films and continued to appear in a number of others.

I remember well seeing The Rock in the cinemas in 1996 when I was twelve years old and thinking back as I often do on my childhood, I really should not have been allowed to watch this film when I was twelve. This was also my first introduction to Nicolas Cage who my parents probably recognised from films like Raising Arizona and Moonstruck. The Rock is also a film I’ve mentioned in another post and that was also the second film by director Michael Bay and if I was asked to choose a film that most represents 1990s action, this would be my go-to film.

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The Digital Dystopia Descends

Posted on July 2, 2026 by JC

I thought opening this post might be a great opportunity for me to metaphorically dance around about how right I have been proven in the last few weeks on observations I’ve made in a couple of earlier posts. But as with most of my observations, I am going by what others have said and have observed and my thoughts are certainly not wholly original. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, for most of the predictions I make, I would be far happier if I turned out to be wrong. This is certainly the case with the subject that follows. 

The context for this post is the announcement late last month that the “physical” edition of the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI would be an activation code in a rather useless box. Not content with this, they also announced the game would retail for $79.99USD or I should say from that price as additional game content is locked behind an ‘Ultimate Edition‘ that costs an additional $20USD. The Australian pricing puts the “Ultimate” edition at $159.95 which is a price I’d only previously seen for deluxe collector’s editions of games that include a number of novelties as well as the physical game. 

As if to justify all this, Sony, the company that famously mocked Microsoft’s clumsy attempt at bringing an end to physical media in 2013, has officially announced the end of physical media for PlayStation brand beginning in 2028. This came after another revelation that some customers would be losing access to digital films they had bought in September which follows on from another such incident in 2023; that I had heard they backed away from following through with. Microsoft is unlikely to capitalise on this the way Sony did all those years ago and so we will probably see the era of physical media all but ending for video games. 

Naturally, I have some thoughts about this. Continue reading →

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Splinter of the Mind’s Eye Review

Posted on June 26, 2026 by JC

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is a Star Wars novel published in 1978 that directly follows the events of the first film. It was written by Alan Dean Foster who also ghostwrote the original film’s novelisation. As it is the first original novel published in what later became the Star Wars Expanded Universe and it released before the direct theatrical sequel The Empire Strikes Back, it has become a curiosity for Star Wars fans. I bought a copy of a paperback reprint from the mid 1990s a few years ago and finally got around to reading it recently. Continue reading →

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The Conan Chronicles by Robert Jordan

Posted on June 14, 2026 by JC

The Conan Chronicles by Robert Jordan, Tor Books, June 15th, 1995

Robert Jordan is an American author best known for his The Wheel of Time fantasy series which began in 1990 with The Eye of the World and spanned fourteen novels; the last three being written by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan’s death in 2007. Prior to his breakout success with this series, he was commissioned to write a series of Conan pastiches including the novelisation of the 1984 film, Conan the Destroyer through publisher Tor Books. He was one of many authors to take on Robert E. Howard’s character during this time and he even produced his own series chronology placing his and other author’s works with Howard’s.

Though I’ve not read any of The Wheel of Time series, I was interested in his Conan pastiches as I’d been led to understand they stood out from the crowd. The collection to be reviewed here includes the first three of his six original novels collected into an omnibus. The other three are collected in The Further Chronicles of Conan with only his novelization of Conan the Destroyer being omitted.

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No, Time to Die

Posted on May 31, 2026 by JC

This past week has seen the release of the first video game based on the James Bond 007 since 2012’s poorly received 007 Legends. Outside a couples of pastiche novels, it is also the first major piece of media based on the franchise since 2021’s No Time to Die. I have not played and have no interest in the new game which is titled 007 First Light and serves as an origin story for the character. Nor, for that matter, have I seen the last film and though it is readily available on streaming services, I have no interest in seeing it.

My loss of interest was initially due to rapid decline in quality of the films starring Daniel Craig that began in 2006 with Casino Royale. I didn’t mind the first film but I hated Quantum of Solace and Skyfall got a pass mark for not being as bad but I didn’t much enjoy it either. I’m not absolutely sure if I saw Spectre but that simply means it was forgettable.

As someone who used to love the franchise, this is quite a change. I have read all the original Ian Fleming novels and seen all the films from Sean Connery’s first in 1962 through to the Pierce Brosnan era; many of these multiple times. I was also in the perfect demographic for the now classic video game GoldenEye 007 based on the 1995 film. I played most of the games that followed (and at least one that came before); including many of the bad ones too.

How did a once beloved franchise fall so far in my esteem?

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The Face that Launch’d a Couple of Bark Canoes

Posted on May 17, 2026 by JC

If you follow entertainment news even vaguely, you would have heard about Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic, The Odyssey based on the Greek Epic of the same name. You will also have heard that “based on” should be emphasised as it usually is for so many films that draw on any works of literature as well as those drawing from real life events. This isn’t always a bad thing as 1995’s Braveheart is still an entertaining film though also littered with some truly bizarre errors and anachronisms that would have a historical purist tearing their hair out. The same is true to a lesser extent of Gladiator which I have reviewed here previously.

From what has been revealed in the trailer and through promotional interviews so far, suggests that this will be a disaster for more than a few reasons and I truly hope it is.

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Reginald Pole was the last Archbishop of Canterbury

Posted on May 9, 2026 by JC

I have discussed Christianity on this blog numerous times over the years; especially as I began writing on it regularly around the time of my conversion and before I was received into the Catholic Church in 2017. This naturally meant it was on my mind and I often wanted to write about it and share what I was reading and learning. I even have an entire unpublished story of my conversion that I may still make public one day; when I feel it is ready. This may never be. 

In these posts, I know I’ve mentioned at least once that I was brought up in the Anglican Church of Australia which is part of the Church of England. Until, the 1970s, this was the largest Christian Church in Australia but it has dropped off significantly in observance since then. To say “significantly” is classic British understatement and “disastrously” is perhaps more apt. This was also around the time churches within the “Anglican Communion” began “ordaining” women beginning in the United States Episcopal Church. This began in Australia shortly after my birth though I didn’t really know of it until I was older. Christianity as a whole, has seen steady decline in Western nations but due to mass immigration, the Catholic numbers have been more steady in Australia.

The reason why I’ve used the “scare quotes” above is deliberate. The Anglican Church is at best, separated from the Catholic Church and should not be regarded as a legitimate church by Catholics. This is even more so now that it claims more acres than it does adherents and has continued to depart from even the most basic tenets of Christianity. More importantly, women can not be ordained to the priesthood and so can not be bishops or even deacons. This is an ontological impossibility and not up for debate or serious discussion. This has special relevance now because since earlier this year, there has been a woman who dresses up as a bishop and claims to be the Archbishop of Canterbury. More scandalously, the public head of the Catholic Church has written an official message to her on the Vatican website and even received her in Rome.

As someone who left Anglican Church for the Catholic over this and a number of other issues, I have a pretty strong opinion on this.

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John Scalzi’s Cat Book

Posted on April 29, 2026 by JC

Starter Villain by John Scalzi, Tor Books, September 19th, 2023

It may be hard to believe but the United States came really close to legalising rape in late 2012. You might scoff but this was all but a certainty according to many reputable pundits and major news sources; especially on the Internet. If the Republican candidate Mitt Romney had won, binders full of women would have been raped and the men who did the raping wouldn’t have faced any consequences at all! This was of particular interest to John Scalzi who made a timely post on his blog thanking conservative politicians for their work making it easier to rape as well as declaring his intention to vote Republican. He also claimed this was satire but it doesn’t read like that. Whatever the truth, Barack Obama won a second term and no more women were raped in the United States until after inauguration of Donald Trump in January, 2017. We will thankfully never know just how many would have been raped had Mitt Romney been elected.

John Scalzi isn’t just a rape apologist someone that is really good at getting into the mind of a rapist for the purposes of satire. He is also an author and not just any author but a Hugo Award winning and New York Times bestselling author. That I have not read any of his books until recently is a personal scandal of mine that I’m glad I’ve finally addressed by reading one of his most recent novels.

My review follows below.

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