I wasn’t sure what to expect from Timothy Zahn after the first book in this series. Johnny, the main character from the first book, now has three sons. The eldest at 27 is involved in politics, just like Johnny. The two other sons are a pair of twins, one which becomes a Cobra. I was hoping that there would be more action, but for the first third of the book I was fairly disappointed. It consisted mostly of political ramblings concerning a very controversial offer that one of the Troft trading partners proposed. They had identified a world near Troft space that was considered a significant threat. If the Cobras could neutralize this threat, the Trofts were willing to give the colony five new worlds.

After about 100 pages of hemming and hawing over ethical dilemmas, the Aventine government finally decided to launch a reconnaissance mission. The mission would be split into two parts. While the researchers determined if the worlds the Trofts were offering are viable, the Cobras would assess the threat on the alien world. What they didn’t expect was that the aliens were actually humans that split off from the Dominion of Man thousands of years ago.

These people named their planet Qasama and have been confined to their world since they lost their star drive technology. They all have these birds on their shoulders called Mojos which act as protectors. Everyone carries guns for defense against the dangerous wildlife, but if any Qasaman threatens another, the Mojos intervene. Because of this, there is virtually no serious fighting between Qasamans as far as war is concerned.

The Qasamans appear to be relatively friendly and willing to show the Aventinians the inner workings of their society. That didn’t last for long, because the Qasamans decided to try and steal the landing ship so they could study it and rediscover star drive technology. They weren’t counting on Cobras to be in the landing party, so had quite a surprise.

After this point, the story picked up quite a bit. The rest of the book was mostly battles between the landing party and the Qasamans. There was quite a bit more action than in the first book, which I appreciated, but it seemed that when the story was starting to get good, it ended. Overall, this book was better than the first one, so if you already have time invested, you might as well read the sequel.

I recently started reading the Cobra Trilogy by Timothy Zahn. Cobra, the first book in the series, starts off just after the beginning of the Troft war with the Dominion of Man. At the beginning of the novel, the Trofts have already conquered a two key worlds in the outer systems. The military, in a desperate move, created the Cobra program to train an elite force of enhanced soldiers. One of the first things that came to mind when I came across this series was Starship Troopers, the BOOK, not the movie. I immensely enjoyed the first few chapters of Starship Troopers with the cap troopers in the Mobile Infantry. The main difference is that instead of troopers inside of huge external mech hardware, the Cobras’ enhancements are essentially hidden, yet very deadly. On the outside they look like a normal human, which is one of their advantages.

The main character is Johnny, who wants to join the Army. He wants to out of sincere patriotisim, not just to impress some girl. He tells the recruiter that he wants to get right into the fighting and help the citizens of Adironack and Silvern through guerrilla warfare. Johnny’s father had fought in the previous war against the Minthisti, but aboard a ship in the Star Forces. Johnny ended up getting the assignment he wanted, but with a few unexpected conditions.

After initial selection for the Cobra unit, irreversible surgery to implant the enhancing hardware and software had to take place. Bones were hardened, lasers implanted in his pinkies, servos in his joints, and a combat computer eventually was installed in his head. This, along with other weapons that could be externally equipped, made Johnny one of the most advanced soldiers in the Galaxy.

The first hundred pages or so covered Johnny’s training in the Cobra team and subsequent deployment on Adironack to help the citizen underground resist the Troft occupation forces. The battles were exciting and detailed, which reminded again of Starship Troopers. That is about where the similarities ended. Before I knew it, the war was over and Johnny was back at home trying to readjust to “normal” life. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to screw with Johnny too much and his combat computer kicked in and killed someone.

The book takes a turn towards politics after this. The government had quite a dilemma. They couldn’t remove all of the Cobra hardware without killing the soldiers, and they also couldn’t have soldiers accidentally killing others when they were threatened. Eventually a solution was devised; they would be used to colonize a small group of planets on the other side of Troft space. These were worlds yet to be tamed with plenty of dangerous flora and fauna that the Cobras could be used to protect colonists against.

At this point I kind of felt my interest dissipating. There was some guy jumping through the air with lasers coming out of his hands, kicking some major ass on the cover! I was all psyched up for huge battles and got just a taste of it.  The action slowed down considerably during the colonization and picked up briefly during a small uprising. Overall I was a bit disappointed. Having finished the first book, Cobra, and I’ve decided that I like Zahn’s later work more. Hopefully the next book, Cobra Strike, will live up to the title and offer more action than the first in the Trilogy.

Cobra Timeline:

• 2403 – Trainee
• 2407 – Veteran
• 2414 – Loyalist
• 2421 – Politician
• 2432 – Statesman

I guess we’ll all have to wait until the new content comes out.

News story link

Let me start off with a huge ***SPOILER ALERT***

continue past the break for my rant

Going into the series finale, I had no idea how they were going to tie up all of the loose ends in just 2 hours. I really hoped that they could, but I was left a bit disappointed in the end because even more questions came out.

What the heck is Starbuck? Not a Cylon, but an angel like the shared vision of Caprica Six and Baltar? Why did Brother Cavil shoot himself? Where is Admiral Adama going to stash his Raptor? Did nobody stash away one small piece of technology to make their life on Earth v2.0 any easier? Where will the Centurions go with their basestar? What about all of the other rebel Cylons 1,000,000 light years away?

I’m a bit annoyed because I think that the producers wanted to leave everyone with a burning need for more information. I shook my fist at the TV when I saw the advertisement for “The Plan” which will cover the events prior to the destruction of the Colonies from the viewpoint of the Cylons. Also, there is the new series “Caprica” which will be straight to DVD and digital download on April 21st.  I’ll watch them both, because I’m hopelessly addicted. I just hope the BSG franchise doesn’t get beaten to death like Stargate, which looks like is getting yet another spinoff.

I’m sure that there will be lots of discussion going on in the coming months.

So, I’m interested in hearing other people’s thoughts on the finale. What did you like or not like? What do you think Starbuck is? Are you going to watch the new series?

I’m not sure how many of you remember the good old days playing online games through a BBS (Bulletin Board System). In1994-1995 I ran a small one line BBS called The Black Lodge back when I lived in Phoenix. Among other door games I hosted a small TradeWars 2002 game on my BBS and played quite a few other games on other boards. About 1996 or so I migrated to mainly using this new thing called “The Internet” and rarely dialed into a BBS anymore. Sometime around 2001-2002 I ended up discovering several telnet boards that were hosting Tradewars 2002 tournaments. I got back into my grove and actually competed in the 2001 Battle of the Elite (BOTE). The gameplay through telnet was quite a bit different for me than back in the BBS days. Much of the work I did in my corp was through REXX scripting. I had a 2nd computer that was logged in 24/7 defending our bases ready to photon torpedo any attackers and destroy them in less than a second (if possible).  I lost interest for a few years and started playing again around 2005 or so, then didn’t really have the time to dedicate to the game to compete well.

Sometime after that I learned about a new browser based game now known as TradeWars: Rising. I’ve been following this game since developement was announced and am impressed with how much it has progressed. Version 1.0 has been released and 1.1 looks like it is just around the corner. The games are split into two categories: Turn Based and RTS. The turn based games are closer to the classic TradeWars gameplay. The RTS games are a little different and last only an hour or so. There are free basic accounts, but you can get more option for paid premium accounts.

If you want more information, please check out the forums.

I can’t really emphasize enough how important it is to read the Appendix of 1984 first. It covers the official government language of Oceana. This is called “Newspeak,” and is designed to simplify the English language and control human thought. As a quick example, there is no word for bad, just ungood. Excellent would be replaced by something like doubleplusgood. Another important word central to the plot is doublethink, or the ability to hold two contradicting ideas in one’s mind and truly believe both.

The story takes place in Oceana, one of three superpowers that is always at war with either Eastasia or Eurasia. The Party controls all information and feeds political propaganda to the public and keeps the public under constant surveillance through telescreens which act as both televisions and video cameras. The main character, Winston Smith, works for the Party in the Ministry of Truth.

The description of the Ministry of Truth was very scary. Essentially it is responsible for storing all information and knowledge, and subsequently can modify any of it to suit its own purpose. For example, Oceana can swith alliances with one of the other two superpowers, and all of historical information would be changed. Winston’s job is to modify records to match Party policy whenever changes or errors are made. He secretly despises Big Brother and the Party, and is eventually approached by a woman named Julia who shares his feelings. They eventually become lovers, but Winston is a bit concerned. She does not seem to be as aware of the political brainwashing as he is.

It was rather more of a shock to him when he discovered from some chance remark that she did not remember that Oceania, four years ago, had been at war with Eastasia and at peace with Eurasia. It was true that she regarded the whole war as a sham: but apparently she had not even noticed that the name of the enemy had changed. ‘I thought we’d always been at war with Eurasia,’ she said vaguely. It frightened him a little.

They eventually make contact with O’Brien, a secret member of an underground resistance. He warns them that they will get caught eventually, and they will confess (under torture), and for that reason their knowledge of who are members will be kept to the absolute minimum. They are given “THE BOOK” which contains the musings of Goldstein, the leader of the resistance. The excerpts that Winston reads describe some very morbid ideas about war, which are very interesting. There are quite a few other tidbits in there as well.

Orwell’s 1984 is very deep and thought provoking. If anything, it is more relevant today, than when it was published in 1949. Technology is advancing at an alarming rate. Within the last few years, the FBI obtained warrants to wiretap cell phones of mobsters under investigation. This might seem innocuous, but the technique they used was able to activate the microphone on the phones remotely without a call being placed, and might have been possible to record conversations near the phone while it was turned off! Just recently, in The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne develops a technology that ties into cell phones to create a much more elaborate surveillance system. How long it will be until something like that is possible?

I’m partial to reading physical books, but if you like to read ebooks, 1984 is available at Project Gutenberg.

Zhan appears to integrate a couple familiar elements here:

Token smuggler:
If you like Han Solo from Star Wars, you’ll enjoy Jordan McKell’s narrative. They both are unscrupulous smugglers that have debts to pay back to underworld crime lords. They both have alien partners; however Chewbacca appears to be both a pilot and mechanic while Ixil is mainly a mechanic. Both are asked to pilot another person’s ship under mysterious circumstances. Jordan is the main character in this book, so is much better developed as a character than Han.

Star travel monopoly:
The Patth don’t have a complete monopoly of star travel, but hold the key to star travel four times faster and three times cheaper than any other technology. They use their power to pressure other races. This reminded me of the Guild Navigators in Dune.

Not too long after the journey begins, McKell discovers that he is being pursued by the Patth. This, along with the mysterious death of the ship mechanic (which he replaces with his partner Ixil) complicates his mission. I kept waiting for him to say “I have a bad feeling about this!” Following these developments, this story takes goes through quite a few twists and turns, especially toward the end. Zahn kept me guessing, and when the mysteries were finally revealed, I was pleasantly surprised.

I was a bit torn when I heard that the first installment of the new CGI Clone Wars TV series would be released in theaters. My first thought was that George Lucas was trying to milk Star Wars fans for even more money. I’d like to think of myself as a pretty loyal Star Wars fan, but to a point. Let me give you a little background on my Star Wars movie collection before I move on to the review.

One Christmas way back when, I asked for the Star Wars Special Letterbox Collector’s Edition (THX Remastered). I told my dad that if I only get ONE present, that it had to be this! One of the main reasons I wanted it was because I had never seen Star Wars in the theater, let alone in widescreen. The SE versions hit the theaters, which I went to see a few times each, then I bought the widescreen VHS versions. I mainly bought those because the special effects were a bit better, but I vowed to hold out on buying them on this new “DVD” technology until the original versions came out.

Well, they never came out! George Lucas said outright that the original unaltered movies would NEVER be released on DVD. I figured he would break down eventually, but before that happened, I gave up and bought the SE DVD release. When I watched them I just chose to ignore the whole Greedo shooting first in ANH and the stupid replacement of the Ewok song at the end of RotJ.

Several years later Lucas tried for one more money grab and released the SE on DVD again. He only offered the fans a “Bonus Disc” of the unaltered Trilogy, a crappy Laserdisc transfer (barely better than VHS according to my testing) with none of the restoration work that was done for the SE DVD release. There was no way buy them without buying the SE on DVD. So, I didn’t have a DVD of the original versions, and refused to buy the Trilogy a THIRD time just to get what I wanted. I vowed then to never spend my own money on Star Wars movies again. Sometime between then and now I got Star Wars: Clone War Volume 1 and 2 for Christmas. From what I remember, it was a pretty good series so I was interested to see how a CGI version would be.

Now onto the review:

With the goal of not giving George Lucas any more money than needed, I figured that a rental would suffice. I was correct. The plot and general feel after the first fifteen minutes or so was that I was watching a Saturday morning cartoon. This might have been the goal for the writers, but it didn’t really appeal to me. The “witty” banter between Anakin and his new padawan learner was somewhat annoying. The whole plot with Jabba’s son being kidnapped by Count Dooku and subsequent framing of the Jedi was laughable at best.

I just about lost it when I heard Ziro, Jabba’s uncle, speaking in English (or Basic if you prefer) with the weirdest accent. After searching for a sound clip to link to, I found a blog that had a bit more information than I expected. Lyle Masaki over at AfterElton reports that according to director Dave Filoni this accent is based off of Truman Capote. Lyle explains that Capote’s lisping speech is often associated with effeminate gay men. I’m familiar with the stereotype, and when I was watching the movie it just felt “wrong.”

Controversy aside, another thing that bugged me was the feeling that I was watching a really long drawn out episode. This didn’t have the type of depth and scale that you’d expect from a motion picture. Aside from these things, the special effects were dazzling and action sequences were pretty good. If you are a completist, grab the DVD or BluRay, but if not just grab a rental or skip it altogether.