Seven Question Book Questionnaire

Instead of apologizing for the lack of updates around here, I decided to use one of the reasons for my silence as fodder for a new post. This was made easy when I came across an entry on one of the science fiction blog/websites that I frequent that fit my situation perfectly. And since I’m being all meta right now, this upcoming summer season looks to be a weak one and I was starting to plan what I would do extra for The Null Set (maybe another round of anime quizzes, for instance) but I just received a letter saying that I’ve been picked for jury duty for the first half of July. This will not be conducive to spending time on a special project for The Null Set and might disrupt normal posting as well 😦 .

So, anyways, here’s my answers to a seven question ‘Book Meme’, found here.

My Problem with –ists Who Believe in –isms

The Null Set is supposed to have a little SF sprinkled in between its coverage of anime but I’ve been neglecting that promise of late. Sure, I discussed the classic era of the TV series Doctor Who back on March 24, 2014 but one has to go back to April 5, 2013 to find the last time I talked about print SF (a review of the March 2013 issue of Asimov’s SF Magazine). So, being semi caught up with anime I decided to cast around for something SF to discuss. I remembered reading a review of a book that I’d just finished that rubbed me the wrong way because I thought it did a great disservice to the book and now here we are.

The book is Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.

Reflections on Classic Doctor Who from a New Who Fan

With Doctor Who’s Christmas episode signaling the start of a new era for the show I decided the best way to prepare for a new Doctor and to show my appreciation for everyone who, over the last 50 years, worked so hard to keep Doctor Who going was to watch as much of classic Doctor Who, the original 26 season run of the series, as I could stand and/or easily get my hands on.

Even with this resolve, as a person who’s only seen the new Doctor Who, I had worries; what I knew of the original run is what I read from comments and articles. I was expecting a show that bore little resemblance to the new Doctor Who based on the vehemence of comparisons made between the two by fans of the old. I was expecting a show with such truly horrible production values that it would impact the enjoyment of the show. I was expecting padded, questionable writing to be the standard with only a couple serials good enough to compete with the new series.

In short, I wasn’t expecting to particularly enjoy the task I’d set out to accomplish.

Read on to see how I fared or infer the results from the pile of current airing anime I’ve let accumulate from the last couple of weeks.

Shingu Begins

After collecting dust for almost year, my long simmering desire to watch this science fiction series finally converted itself to actually watching Shingu. I’m only a little ways into the series. So it’s a little early to start recommending Shingu to people looking for smart science fiction anime; but, Shingu is definitely trending in that direction right now.

Normally, I would be writing up my conclusions 8 days after starting to watch an older anime series because, normally, I would marathon it in a couple of days. (For example, I had Ghost Hound completely watched within 48 hours of starting the first episode.) In light of my current experiment of watching Space Battleship Yamato 2199 at one episode a week – to mimic the TV broadcast that no one is subbing – I decided to severely limit the number of episodes I would watch of Shingu in a day. I want to see if the generated anticipation increases my enjoyment of Shingu, like I think it should.

Thus, while this isn’t a review of Shingu, there have been several items I’ve already observed that I wanted to write about.

Review – Asimov’s Science Fiction: February 2013

No, I didn’t forget about my pledge to review Asimov’s SF magazine this year. I wanted to finish my look back to the 2012 year of anime first but that’s done now and I can get to the other posts I’ve had cooking in my head.

Now onto the review of what just might end up being the strongest month of Asimov’s this year.

Review – Asimov’s Science Fiction: January 2013

I’m not one to make a New Years resolution but this year I decided to try one out and so I’m going to attempt reviewing this year’s run of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazines for this blog.