I'm gonna do a bigass review of all of her stuff.
Stay tuned for that.
Well, here it is!!!
Took me all goddamned year, averaging a book a month, but here we finally are.
And away we go!
Star Trek: Dwellers In The Crucible (1985)
From here.
Somewhere between "The Motion Picture", and "Wrath Of Khan".
I'm thinking closer to "Khan".
Definitely a prequel to "Strangers", cuz Cleante from this pops up in that one as a cameo.
So, we get a look inside a Klingon prison camp through the eyes of two female protagonists, while Kirk and crew race to save them.
It's really all in the execution, you gotta read it.
I dunno why, this one messed me up for a couple days.
And, you can see from the sorts of things I'm desensitized to, that's no minor feat at all.
Well done.
Bravisima.
Magnifico.
You WANT a story that sticks to your brain, doncha?
Who the hell wants something you forget about?
Watch "Honey boo Boo", if that's what you want.
The thing that messed me up, is she was way ahead of her time, and put some dark "Outlander" level shit in there.
Trek wasn't ready for that!
The Paramount+ shows have caught up though.
Star Trek: Strangers From The Sky (1987)
From here.
"First Contact", written before "First Contact".
And, cooler, IMHO.
Kirk from just before "Wrath Of Khan", flashes back in a Spock mindmeld to lost memories of a timewarp adventure before "Where No Man Has Gone Before", where he went back to the 2020's, and took part in Vulcan first contact before the historically recorded one by Cochrane.
It's epic, and still works in continuity with minor dent hammering.
I stand by that.
This one still stands as her blockbuster.
Saturn's Child (1996)
Acquired here.
Um, pretty good.
Having read a lot of Margaret now, I can tell her voice from Nichelle's.
Nichelle's imagination is like..."Heavy Metal" or heavy-PG-13 rated He-Man.
Maybe with a little "Farscape" sprinkled in there.
Margaret obsesses over all the nerdy little details.
If this had been made into a 90's SyFy channel movie of the week, it sure as Hell would have been better than fucking "Tekwar".
Of the original fiction written by Classic Trek stars, Nichelle wins.
Hands down.
It needed sequels though.
This just gets you right up to the completion of Saturna's origin, then cliffhangs.
There is a sequel, but Margaret wasn't involved, and every review I've seen says it's blowful and problematic.
I refuse to touch it.
I only mention it to warn you away from it.
Otherwise, I'd pretend it didn't exist.
Preternatural (1996)
Preternatural Too: Gyre (2000)
Preternatural³ (2002)
Margaret sent these to me autographed.
I wouldn't sell them if I were starving to death.
So, Margaret as a self-insertion character, with the help of dimensional jellyfish aliens called the S.Oteri, travels time, and unscrambles the timelines, and both meets and becomes her ancestors.
Parody versions of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner pop up along the way.
And "Govanon" is totally her RL boyfriend/partner Jack Donner.
No question.
Volume 1 predicts "Galaxy Quest" and volume 2 predicts "Outlander".
Volume 3 is her getting revenge on her douchebag of an editor, and I liked that one...not as much.
But...overall, I'd rank these up there with her best Trek ones, and almost as good as "Ain't Exactly Clear".
Star Trek: Catalyst Of Sorrows (2004)
From here.
"Catalyst Of Sorrows".
Which has young Sisko meeting an old Uhura.
And, that completes the Margaret Wander Bonanno canon.
Jesus, I still haven't read this, I feel awful....
And, read it!!
Set in the era in between the original Trek movies, and TNG.
About old Uhura, old McCoy, young Sisko, young Beverly Crusher, Tuvok, Dr. Selar, Kurzon Dax, and the guy who Uhura shoves into a locker in "Search For Spock" trying to stop a mysterious plague.
So, she predicted covid.
And squeezed all 4 (up to that point) show eras into it.
And got the Sub-commander Tal (her boyfriend, Jack) cameo in there.
Umm...it was good, but not one of her best ones.
While I enjoyed it overall, I think it was my least favorite of all these.
Sorry. *Shrug*
Star Trek: Burning Dreams (2006)
From here.
The life story of Captain Pike.
Old-TNG-Era-but-pre-JJTrek-Spock re-encounters the Talosians, who give him a flashback of Pike just after "The Menagerie", and within that flashback, Pike flashes back to his whole life.
Then, when it catches back up, we get filled in everything that happened to him after "Menagerie".
So, there you go, back to TOS-era.
Heh, now this needs continuity dent hammering thanks to Discovery season 2 and "Strange New Worlds".
Still tied with "Strangers" for awesomeness though.
Star Trek: Mere Anarchy (2007)
From here.
I guiltily had to finish off collecting the rest of Margaret's books.
*Sigh* I'm such a fuck-up.
This one is connected short stories about Kirk's crew re-visiting this one planet throughout the era of the original show, and the original movies.
Margaret does the last one set after Kirk (seemingly) dies at the beginning of "Generations".
Haven't read it yet, but I'm gonna do a bigass review of all of her stuff.
Stay tuned for that.
Holy fucking shit, this is my new favorite Star trek book ever.
"Strangers" and "Burning" are my favorites by her writing by herself, but this is my favorite Trek period.
It came out on e-book in '07, and paperback compilation in '09, and it totally predicted the MAGA/anti-vax movements.
SPOILERS AHEAD-
So, the plot is, Kirk's Enterprise makes first contact with a planet that's in the path of a roaming pulsar, and they try to prevent the pulsar radiation from hitting the planet with a grid of forcefield probes, but one of the probes fritzes like a broken Christmas light, and the shield leaks, and the planet gets devastated.
So, Enterprise re-visits the planet in the time gaps of Kirk's career, and we see how they progress.
Well, they got up up to the MAGA phase, cuz they (temporarily) drove Starfleet away with an anti-alien coup of the government that believes the environment will heal itself if they live like Amish, and pray hard enough.
And all the arguments of the anti-alien groups sound JUUUUST like MAGA & anti-vax.
You'd think it was written NOW in RESPONSE to the Trump era, but nope, again, '07.
Holy shitballs.
Her chapter, the last, has Bones reflecting on Kirk's life and death, and it was like her talking to me about her own passing.
It helped with the grieving process.
A lot.
I'm very glad I read this.
Star Trek: Mirror Universe: Shards and Shadows (2009)
From here.
A collection of short stories set in the mirror universe.
Margaret does one of them.
She sent just her story to me for free once, but I lost the file due to clumsy stupidity I don't even wanna get into.
I have fairly good memory of reading it, but it's fuzzy around the edges, and I could use a booster shot.
So, now I have the whole book.
Turns out, I remembered it pretty well.
I remembered she tied the Tantalus field to the Tantalus mental hospital.
You'd have to be a Trekkie to get that.
And, we get to see how Mirror-Pike dies.
The short version, rather gloomily.
Star Trek: Unspoken Truth (2010)
I'm in this one.
I'm Mikal.
Pretty significant character too, I thought I'd be a redshirt ensign who dies.
Nope, I get to bone Saavik.
And an older Russian lady captain.
And I save the day with a disease/poison cure.
Not too shabby.
Oh, and the worm people, the Deemanot, are definitely her S.Oteri from the Preters re-incarnated.
She even planted a seed in Preter 1 where an S.Oteri says "someday, you may write about us as earthworms".
So, there you go, the Preters are canon!
Took 14 years to pull off!
Talk about playing the long game!
How would I rank it as a book?
Despite my biases, um...better than Catalyst, not quite up in Strangers/Burning territory.
About tied with Dwellers.
Yeah, about there.
Then, adding my biases back in, a star and a half extra. 😉😏
Ain't Exactly Clear (2016)
From here.
Margaret gets parody revenge on the Wordforge trolls, and there's a spy story wrapped around it.
Can't wait to read this one.
I got started on it, but I got distracted by the birthday disks.
This is my favorite thing she ever wrote, ever, ever, ever.
It's Wordforge The Book.
And I'm in it.
I'm Renzo.
I lived this story.
I'm gonna be buried with this.
And "Unspoken". Of course.
These are my treasures.
For ones she wrote by herself, this one wins by a country mile.
For stuff on this list period, tied with "Mere Anarchy".
Ailuranth (2019)
From here.
About a girl in an alternate steampunk/cyberpunk world who discovers she's a were-kitty, so British intelligence decides to use her in cat mode to spy.
Gotta say, it's her weirdest premise, and she's had some doozies.
It's only volume 1.
It cliffhangs before were-kitty-girl can become a spy.
Jack got sick and died, then she died, so there was never volume 2. 😥
One part I dearly loved, in this timeline, Lincoln let the south secede, but he built a literal underground railroad, undermined their economy, let Texas secede from the confederacy, cuz they're loons that see themselves as a country to this fucking day, then a weakened confederacy gets conquered by Mexico, and they had already abolished slavery, then America makes peace with a Spanish confederacy, then the North merges with Canada, and boom, bigger US, bigger Mexico, and no rebels at all.
Heh, WF had a confederate-licker, and this is no doubt her giving him the finger.
Gorgeous. 😏
So, that's all the ones she wrote.
Now ones adjacent to her...
The True Believer:
Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
(1951)
From here.
Margaret recommended this to me when I was in the full grip of that Gamergate bullshit.
I shrugged her off, cuz my head was up my ass.
With her passing, and stumbling on it again in our old PMs, I decided to get it.
I get the sense that if I'd have read it, I would've seen the rise and fall of "the atheist movement" coming.
She thought the whole thing was suss from the word "go".
From the fucking jump.
I didn't want to listen.
I mean, I made all my best friends from it, so I don't regret that, I just wish I didn't have to watch formerly smart people become MAGA nuts, and then later TERFs.
So, I've totally gotta read it now.
So, I have now.
Yep, it predicted the crash of the Dawkins movement, and Dawkins the person.
And the Trump/MAGA/QAnon mess.
All mass movements, good or bad, liberal or conservative, share things in common.
Most, not all, but most, corrupt and go afoul.
And it happens in predictable patterns and phases.
This book had both revelations, and therapy for me personally.
It diagnosed the troubles I was having that led me to get sucked into angry fist-shakey anti-religionism.
I'm okay now.
Eric Hoffer didn't have a piece of paper saying he was a philosopher, he was just a smart cookie who could see the structure in things.
He earned multiple honorary degrees and the Presidential Medal Of Freedom after writing this.
But, before that, he was just some guy.
Margaret compared me to him.
Flattering, dunno how to process a compliment that big, but there it is.
Anyhoo!
This, and "Mistakes Were Made" are the closest thing I have to a Bible now.
Thank you, Margaret.
Never would have stumbled into this on my own.
Star Trek: A Time To Sow (2004)
From here.
Dayton Ward said he snuck a "Strangers From The Sky" reference into this one, so it's Margaret adjacent.
Thought I'd check it out.
The reference is on page 106-107.
Was it worth reading the whole book for?
Ehhh....gotta say no.
It cliffhangs, and it's volume 1 of a whole series.
I'm not reading a whole fucking series.
If you wanna read 'em all, knock yourself out.
Don't get me wrong, the writing is all right, but it's episode 1.
It's like reading half of "Best Of Both Worlds".
Except you have to pay for part 2.
And there's 4 more after that.
No thanks.
Sorry, Mister Ward.
I just came for the Easter egg.
And, that's the books.
I have that one all locked and loaded, it was the reading that was the slowpoke part.
Got just 4 of those.
These were the paper books, see.
Stay tuned for those!
3 comments:
I'm assuming you may have already seen this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKGhtSCVovo&t=304s
It's....uh, okay, I guess. Makeup, scars, voice and acting from this guy are....well, decent.
But yeah, I'm still not eager to have a FOURTH Joker in 14 years.
You can skip the 2019 movie "Charlie Says," directed by Mary Harron who directed "American Psycho" (she used that movie's writer too) about the Manson family. A slightly more feminist film than we've usually gotten about Manson and a bit more focused on daily life at Spahn Ranch, but it doesn't amount to a terribly great movie or have anything great to say.
I'll leave it to you to decide if you want to watch "We Need To Talk About Cosby." It's best as a history of Cosby--I knew he'd done lots of stuff but I wasn't ENTIRELY aware of just how important he was even in the 1960s.
The main point the film makes about his crimes, aside from lots of lurid first-person accounts of what he did, is that he repeatedly DROPPED HINTS about putting stuff in women's drinks for YEARS.
I'd say it's an okay film but it probably didn't need to be four hours. Your call.
Re: Joker again.
Yeah, I did see that.
Again, I hope they keep Joker in Arkham for this trilogy.
There's Easter eggs that Hush might be the villain for part 2.
The reporter Falcone killed for Thomas Wayne has the same last name as the guy who becomes Hush.
I could go for that if it was him.
In this grounded universe, they can't use the powered villains like Mister Freeze, or Poison Ivy, so that limits their options.
Re: Cosby.
I watched this instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khIS98DltT8
It covers the show season by season, and the sneaky (and not so sneaky) conservatism that was sprinkled all over it.
Then, at the very end, he gets into the rapey shit.
It's two hours shorter than the one you saw.
One other comment: that guy's Joker makeup makes him look like Marilyn Manson somehow. Like Marilyn Manson did when he showed up without the makeup on "Sons Of Anarchy" or something.
The Cosby thing I watched reiterated your claim that "Bill Cosby: Himself" was stretched to ten years for his show.
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