Robert A. Black, Mathematical Storyteller

I don't always do an end-of-year "Best Of" list or anything like that. In fact, some time ago I gave up calling it a "Best Of" list, because how would I really know what the best of anything is? This year, however, I've got the New York Times helping me out, by including my personal favorite anime series of the year among their Best TV Shows of 2018 . You wouldn't expect any anime to make the New York Times list (unless it had Hayao Miyazaki's name attached to it, anyway), but A Place Further Than the Universe pulled it off. This 13-episode series about four high school girls who join an expedition to Antarctica works on so many levels - characters, plotting, details, and themes. It's also one of the few shows that's ever affected the course of my real-world life. That doesn't happen often, but I'm a writer, so it does happen from time to time. In this case, when I heard about the habitat restoration project on San Nico...

WARNING! WARNING! Danger, Will Robinson! I'm going to talk about Star Trek: Discovery , so if you're not up to speed on the latest episodes and don't want to be spoiled, turn back now! In fact, at the moment I'm just typing enough stuff so that the link on my Facebook page won't give anything away. Blah blah biddy blah, I'm so stuffy hand me a scone. And never eat pears. By the way, does anyone else think that spin-around thing the Discovery saucer section does is really silly? Okay, that should do it. Discovery is back from its midseason hiatus now. Actually, I'm a week behind, having just seen the January 7 episode last night. And what a surprise it was. Not all the stuff with the Mirror Universe, as I'd already read about that. I'm referring to the scene where Doctor Culber gets killed out of nowhere. Doctor Hugh Culber, one half of Trek 's first canon gay couple, partner of Lieutenant Paul Stamets. I found myself having ...

Last night was the much-anticipated premiere of Star Trek: Discovery , the first new series for the franchise in twelve years. I'm still processing what I thought of the two-part pilot. The setup reminds me vaguely of David Gerrold's Voyage of the Star Wolf novels, which are also centered on the first officer of a starship that gets blamed for bumbling into a war - but I'm pretty sure that similarity will end within an episode or two. I was irked by the main character's behavior, although you can't say she didn't suffer the consequences of her actions, so maybe she'll grow from here. And I was ticked that they killed off Michelle Yeoh, even though I suspected they would it do after both she and Jason Isaacs were announced as the new Star Trek Captain. What I found most dismaying is that we have yet another Trek series about war. The final years of DS9 covered almost nothing but the Federation's war against the Dominion. Voyager , being a si...