Ever since Solo debut in the box office, we’ve been hearing rumblings from the media about how the film was a dismal failure. Forbes came out with an article on May 27th calling it a “bomb”, following several articles across the internet where it mentioned Disney was ready for the movie to fail. In some […]
Book Blast: The Stones Of Silence by Peter Grant
Peter Grant is a man who has my utmost respect, and is a wonderful author. He penned one of my favorite books, Brings The Lightning, which won the CLFA Book Of The Year Award last year (of which my book, For Steam and Country is the winner this year). So he’s a man I like […]
Retro Review: The Rebel Worlds by Poul Anderson
The next story in the Dominic Flandry series brings about another change for the character. Ensign Flandrey brought us a nice war with the Mersians and showed how one world escalated a galactic conflict. A Circus of Hells showed Dominic floating around doing spy work, expanded the Mersian conflict, and it truly felt like a […]
Retro Review: A Circus Of Hells by Poul Anderson
A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Ensign Flandry, the first of the character of Dominic Flandry, and I was so impressed with the space opera that I found myself eagerly awaiting the second book. Been actually rereleased these books as 3-book omnibuses in a seven volume set a few years back, so I was […]
Why Disney Can’t Make A Good Star Wars Film To Save Their Soul
Disney just can’t do Star Wars. They don’t understand it. And there’s a big reason why—they’re a soulless monolithic corporation trying to recapture nostalgia in a property that is really about intense spirituality. You can’t create spirituality if you have none. Star Wars really fell off my radar after The Last Jedi, which I found […]
Space Opera Talk With David V. Stewart
I went on author David V. Stewart’s youtube this weekend which did really great, over 1000 views. We delved deep into writing and genre, and I think it was one of the more interesting streams I’ve recorded. Now we’re about one week into The Stars Entwined‘s launch, which has gone really fantastic. Though I didn’t have […]
Jon Del Arroz’s Epic Military Science Fiction Extravaganza
On Tuesday, March 20th, I’m releasing my new Mil SF book, The Stars Entwined. A book reviewer sent this to me: A welcome window into a new sci-fi space opera from the pen of John Del Arroz, After reading both his previous works I was honored at the chance to get a review copy of […]
Book Review: Dream Of The Iron Dragon by Robert Kroese
I’ve been a fan of Robert Kroese for a couple of years. I discovered him with The Big Sheep, which is an excellent novel, and went into his Rex Nihilo adventures, which are a star wars-ish parody that really is a love letter to sci-fi. What they have in common is a lot of comedy, […]
Space Opera and Spirituality
Yesterday I had a good question from another writer about characters with spirituality in space opera making for something important to the genre — or better stories. I thought about it over the course of the evening, and in context of the discussion with DS9 and Babylon 5. Deep Space 9 was the first Star […]
What I Wanted From Space Opera
We’re about 15 days out of The Stars Entwined‘s release, and I want to shift gears to talk about space opera. 1999 saw the end of an era on TV with both Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9 going off the air. Those shows really were the blueprint for great space opera on TV, with […]
Richard Fox’s The Ember War: Comic Adaptation!
Yesterday, Castalia House made a big announcement, which is going to make a much bigger splash in the entertainment world than a lot of people might realize. I’ve signed with their new comic imprint to adapt Richard Fox’s bestselling military science fiction novel The Ember War into a graphic novel. Fox is one of the biggest […]
The Book 20 Years In The Making
Last night I finished up my edits on what will be the first in what I hope will be many space opera / military SF novels set in this particular universe. It’s titled The Stars Entwined and follows an Internal Affairs investigator for humanity’s Interplanetary Navy as he navigates a powder keg of a political situation […]
Retro Review: King David’s Spaceship by Jerry Pournelle
Last week, like many, I was saddened by the news that Jerry Pournelle died. He was one of the giants of Science Fiction, so prolific and really having done so much for the genre. I hadn’t in the course of my readings, read King David’s Spaceship, however, and so I figured I would honor his […]
Book Review: Thrawn
Several weeks ago I mentioned I was rereading the original Thrawn trilogy in preparation for the new book by Timothy Zahn. I hadn’t read them since I was a teenager, and was wondering if they held up as much as I’d enjoyed them as a kid. It turns out these are some of the best […]
The Death Of Star Trek
I know I owe part 2 of my article going over the numbers of science fiction publishing. I’m still working on that because it’s very research intensive, spent a lot of hours on it so far and am not complete yet. I have to check and double check everything for accuracy, so bear with me. […]
What Makes Great Sci-Fi Tv?
My hands are a bit sore because I’m cranking away at a novel, so I did a periscope rather than a couple thousand words on the topic. This stems from a Facebook discussion I had yesterday where I said both Farscape and Andromeda are better than Battlestar Galactica and Firefly. It stirred up a lot […]
Star Trek: Discovery’s PR Disaster
I’ve always been a big Star Trek fan. I’ve been known at science fiction conventions as dressing up in my screen-authentic Kirk uniform, and have watched every Star Trek series at least twice, some more than that. Naturally, the Abrams film franchise came as a bit of a disappointment to me as it was certainly […]
Film Review: Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets
This weekend I went to see Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets. I saw it was the most expensive indie movie ever made, and that Luc Besson was involved, of Fifth Element fame – which might actually be the greatest science fiction movie of all time. So I figured, why not? I got […]
Retro Review: Star Wars: The Last Command by Timothy Zahn
Earlier this year I was pretty excited to find that Timothy Zahn had a new Thrawn novel out. The original trilogy was something I found exciting in my youth, and I was eager for more with this character, which they’ve actually done a great job of incoroporating into the Rebels tv show as well. It’d […]
30 Minute Author Interview Podcast
I was interviewed on this podcast and it was very fun. Talk abou Star Realms: Rescue Run and For Steam And Country, plus a chance to win a free ebook! http://www.leighgendarium.com/2017/07/12/episode-61-jon-del-arroz/
New Star Realms Kickstarter!
Star Realms: Frontiers hit Kickstarter today. Of course i backed it immediately and it’s doing swimmingly (congratulations to doubling funding on day 1 WWG!). I love new Star Relams content and cards to make the game a different experience, and this looks to be a lot of fun: I still haven’t exhausted all the fun […]
The Right Geek Podcast Interview
My apologies for not posting this link when it was live but today I was on The Right Geek podcast talking For Steam And Country, Star Realms as well as their respective genres. It was fun times. Enjoy:
Retro Review: Star Wars: Dark Force Rising by Timothy Zahn
In my review of Heir to the Empire, I called it space opera t its finest. After reading Dark Force Rising, I am sorry to report that I am wrong, because THIS is space opera at it’s finest. While Heir to the Empire did a lot to set up the story in Dark Force Rising, […]
A Moon Full Of Stars by Jon Mollison!
There’s another Jon out there in SF who’s very much worth your while, and his name is Jon Mollison. He writes in the vein of the old school pulps like very few I’ve seen. If you’re into hard action/adventure in your sci-fi, this work’s for you. Fun fact: he’s also an audiobook narrator, most recently […]