Wesley Britton's Blog - Posts Tagged "sci-fi"

The first issue of Wes Britton’s new newsletter debuts tomorrow, June1!
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THE QUEST: Book two of Illusional Reality
Karina Kantas
Series: Illusional Reality (Book 2)
Paperback: 239 pages
Publisher: Asteri Press (December 31, 2018)
ISBN-10: 1912996049
ISBN-13: 978-1912996049
https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Illusion...


Reviewed by Dr. Wesley Britton

While it first appeared in 2016, it was only last fall when I read Illusional Reality, volume one of Karina Kantas’s then in progress “duology.” Now, volume two, The Quest, is here and I’m more on target in terms of timing.

First, I freely admit I liked The Quest much more than its predecessor. It carries on the story of Princess Thya of the magical land called Tsinia. Like book one, the story opens with the princess living on our earth using the name Haty. This time around, she knows prophecy says her people will reach out for her again, asking her to return to their realm as their defender and protector. This time around, Haty/ Thya is also responsible for her son Alex, the result of a union with her forbidden lover, Alkazar, on the fantasy world. At the end of illusional Reality, Thya thinks Alkazar is dead. Now, Thya thinks her main sacrifice may be leaving Alex back on earth and taking the reluctant throne of her people without him.

After this setup, the story is very different from the plot of Illusional Reality. Thya remains a stubborn, willful, strong-minded—often to the extreme—heroine who sets out with a small company of companions to take on the dark forces of evil. Sound a bit like Tolkein’s Ring series? Part of their journey takes the party through a harsh desert populated by sandworms. Sound a bit like Frank Herbert’s Arrakis? Well, only for a few passages.

Happily for Thya, Alkazar wasn’t killed and joins her once again as the two head the quest encountering a series of vividly described obstacles, monsters, alien species, and Thya’s strange, double-edged powers that seem to wax and wane as she tries to control a dark side to them. In short, there’s a lot going on in the journey to save Thya’s people, a populace currently living in caves after being chased from their homes while their Princess lived peacefully in England.

Fortunately, readers don’t need to have read Illusional Reality to jump into and fully understand what’s going on in The Quest. In the first chapters of the fast-paced yarn, Kantas fully lays out what happened in her first book for new readers. More fantasy than sci-fi—by miles—The Quest should appeal to readers who like their settings and characters vividly described with well-developed flaws and motivations.

Readers who like strong female protagonist should especially like meeting the complex and often conflicted Princess Thya. In addition, The Quest seems a perfect YA novel as I often found myself thinking back to the L. Sprague De Camp and Andre Norton adventures I enjoyed when I was YA myself. Nothing profound here, nothing preachy. Lots of the fantasy tropes young readers enjoy these days with a nice layer of romance to boot.


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Jan. 12, 2019:
https://waa.ai/ox0X

From now (January 31, 2019) to next Friday (February 7, 2019) you can take 25% off any print book published by BearManor Media, and that includes Wes Britton's The Blind Alien! Just use the coupon code SALE25 at checkout!

http://www.bearmanormedia.com/the-bli...

Find your next favorite mystery or thriller title among these FREE stories. Click on the covers of the books you want, sign up to learn a little more about the authors, and start reading! Don't forget to enter to win a $25 gift card! Enjoy!

This is also your first chance to read my latest story, "THE DUTIFUL DETECTIVE AND THE DEADLY DECOYS."

https://mybookcave.com/g/4acc53e0/

In addition to "The Blind Truth" Harrisburg Trailer video airing tomorrow, (described below), Wes Britton will be one of three panelists on "Attracting Your Unique Tribe of Readers" live YouTube chat Thursday, August 15, at 10PM EST.

Check us out and join the conversation at:

https://¬www.youtube.com/¬watch?v=hLf...

The other two guests will be:

Errol Baptiste (https://¬www.amazon.com/¬author/errolba
and Donald Firesmith (http://¬donaldfiresmith.com/)

Fans are welcome to participate!

Now, the first interview is complete for Central PA: The Human Trailer Project featuring Wesley Britton talking about the impact of blindness on his life. "The Blind Truth" (not "Blind Trust," my error) running 4 minutes and 45 seconds, will officialy debut Thursday, August 15, 2019 at 9:00 AM

m.youtube.com/watch?v=lmaEj3kI1rk

If you're on Meet Up, Harrisburg, you can tell Alex you're coming--

Or watch anytime at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmaEj...

Alien Vision is proud to announce that Dr Wesley Britton's, The Blind Alien, the 1st book one Beta-Earth Chronicles just won a silver medal from Author Shout as Recommended Read of 2020



 

The book can be purchased in ebook for just 99c  - 99p- And you can also buy the paperback.

http://bit.ly/BAAMA

These Are the Voyages: Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek in the 1970s Volume 2 (1975-77).
Marc Cushman
Publisher: Jacobs/Brown Media Group
Release date: July 1, 2020
Number of Pages: 650 pages
ISBN-10: 1733605320
ISBN-13: 978-1733605328

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/173360...


Reviewed by: Dr. Wesley Britton

Volume Two of Marc Cushman's three volume coverage of everything that happened in the Star Trek universe during the 1970s is the tenth of Marc's books I've read and reviewed to date. Starting with his single volume book on I Spy, I've read everything from Marc's first three books on Star Trek: The Original Series, his three volumes on Lost in Space, not to mention his explorations of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Moody Blues. All these books share one major attribute. Comprehensive is too mild a descriptor. Exhaustive is much more on target. Marc is the master of never leaving any stone unturned, no memo unread, no potentially useful data is left out of any of his tomes.

In the case of Cushman's Star Trek journalism, Marc was given unprecedented access to apparently every scrap of paper associated with Gene Roddenberry and everyone involved with the original franchise. In this volume, this resulted in a very comprehensive overview of all the scripts and stories we never saw in the never filmed Star Trek Phase 2 TV project. These chapters were my favorite passages in this history, reading about some adventures I'd like to have seen, some I'm glad were never produced. No Star Trek fan will want to miss these descriptions.

In addition, we get detailed histories of Roddenberry's lesser-known TV attempts like The Questor Tapes, Genesis II, Spectre, and The Nine. On top of that, Cushman tells us about projects featuring Star Trek cast members like Leonard Nimoy's In Search Of . . . documentary series and William Shatner's short-lived Barbary Coast. We hear about how cast members fared in their lives outside of Star Trek, like the sparring between Nimoy and Roddenberry involving Nimoy's possible participation in any Star Trek revivals.

A healthy portion of the book explores the growing fan support for Star Trek including the nationwide success of the show in syndication, the beginnings of Star Trek conventions, the expanding bonanza of Star Trek merchandise, and the public speaking tours of Roddenberry, Nimoy, and Shatner. Cushman also talks about the state of science-fiction television shows of the era, most notably a detailed overview of Space 1999, a program clearly influenced by Star Trek. Toss in generous samplings of contemporary reviews of all these items and it's no wonder the book reaches 650 pages.

As Cushman told me in a recent interview, he doesn't target his books to the casual fan but instead aims for the serious aficionados of his various subjects. In the case of Star Trek, that's a pretty hefty audience who will treasure this authoritative history of a cultural phenomenon. Sure, even this readership will likely find chapters and sections to skim over, other sections will be devoured for all the information never made available before. If you're a Star Trek lover, casual or serious, you won't want to miss any of Marc Cushman's extraordinarily researched studies. No previous histories match him for detail, fresh insights, corrections to popular myths; every possible stone is turned over and examined.

As I write this, I'm about to dive into Volume Three of this set which means one last long summer read. That's before Marc dives into all the movies and later series in the '80s and beyond. Stay tuned . . . six books later and the voyages have just begun . . .


To hear Karina Kantas and Wes Britton interview Marc Cushman about his Star Trek books, here's a link to Karina's "Behind the Pen" Podcast:

https://youtu.be/kchFuD9p64o


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Aug. 27, 2020:
https://waa.ai/ue9q

You can now read Phoebe Darqueling's brand-new blog interview with Wes Britton and find out about her new Fairy Tales Punk: An Illustrated Mythpunk Collection you might want for Christmas at:

https://wp.me/p8hyqd-2wp

If you haven't yet subscribed to Wes Britton's Beta-Earth newsletter, you can still sign up before the December issue is sent out tomorrow (the 15th) at:

http://eepurl.com/dwvfQr

It's a special holiday edition with a Christmas trivia contest, lots of stuff on Sherlock Holmes, a special excerpt from a forthcoming story featuring one of the most popular characters in the Beta-Earth canon and, well, lots of cool stuff!


Happy Holidays! All of them!

Tales From The Pirate's Cove: Twelve tall tales of piracy and plunder
Rob Edwards et al
August 14, 2020
Inklings Press (August 14, 2020
https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Pirates-...

Whenever I review an anthology with contributions by a variety of writers, I usually fear I'm not going to be able to offer much in the way of overarching observations. The quality, styles, and approaches are usually uneven with some yarns appealing to me more than others.

But, in this case, I can indeed point out some aspects that do keep a sort of consistency bonding all these imaginative short stories. And I promise to do so without overmuch reliance on cliche's that seem irresistible when writing about pirates. For one thing, every story is at least partially set on one kind of ship or another; some are set on old-fashioned wooden sailing ships on earth's seven seas, some are spaceships voyaging out in the cosmos. Most pirates wield swords or other hand-held weapons making the frequent battle scenes bloody and deadly. In every case, readers should expect extremely surprising twists. After all, this is a sci-fi collection, not historical fiction.

For example, Lawrence Harding's “For Love of the Sea” is perhaps the most allegorical of the adventures with two leaders from two different species clashing over misunderstandings with ecological consequences. The trope of religious zealots in overkill mode is in "The Mouth of the Wicked" by Bob Finegold. We get time pirates in "Iris, Like the Song" by Jennifer Lee Rossman and "Lost Treasure" by Brian A. Harris where pirates not only steal precious moments but one entire year, namely 1998. Yep, an entire year.

Many stories are more horror than sci-fi like “Xibalba’s Curse” by Ricardo Victoria with a new take on menacing fogs or “The Black Spots” by Pat Woods in which pirates are infected by disease that turns them into deadly monsters. There are many chilling moments in Tom Jolly's “De Leon’s Fountain” where water has rejuvenation powers with frightening and almost Faustian results. I especially liked Leo McBride's “To the End of the World” with its demonic climax turning all romance stories on their heads.

To add a few more overall comments: it's hard to imagine any reader not finding at least one tale an entertaining read for the coming winter months and beyond. Most of us will find many more excursions into the weird a lot of fun. And every writer represented here knows what he or she is doing. The same can be said of Inklings Press which, once again, excels with another of their theme-based anthologies.

In short, Tales from the Pirate's Cove are well worth the deep dive into the strange, surprising, stunning, and startling. There, I knew I could do it. A review on pirate stories without a shiver me timbers, yo ho ho, pieces of eight, or "A-r-r-g!" Well, till the finish line . . .


This review first appeared at BookPleasures.com on Dec. 18, 2020:



https://waa.ai/tBUQ

Here’s a link to a radio interview I’m doing Friday at 1:00 with Karina Kantus out of Corfu, Greece:

https://artistfirst.com/kantas.htm


And here’s a link to my latest YouTube trailer plugging my Return to Alpha. Actually, there are two versions; one, the more-or-less normal version; the other was crafted for the blind and visually impaired with audio descriptions of the slides and text:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69MjO...