Monthly Archives: May 2014
Writing Process Blog Hop
James Pailly of the Tomorrow News Network has asked me to participate in the Writing Process Blog Hop / Writer’s Blog Tour. [See James’ post for the hop.] To participate, an author answers the tour’s four questions about their writing, and then invites several others (three seems to be the most common number) to do […]
Review: Steadfast
Three flying saucers (3 out of 4 rating) This will be a brief review, as I recently posted about things I liked in Jack Campbell’s Lost Fleet series. As the Lost Fleet is one of my favorite science fiction series, why didn’t the latest book receive my top rating? My problem is with the structure […]
We have a “winner”
New Beginnings (Vitalis) has won the first Radioactive Dung Beetle Award! I think this victory provides an important lesson for authors: make sure your marketing blurb matches the genre, style, and tone of your story. Don’t bait-and-switch, and don’t assume that the customer has read your previous work and therefore knows what to expect. If […]
First Radioactive Dung Beetle Award
It’s time for Planetary Defense Command’s first ever Radioactive Dung Beetle Award. So far this year, the blog has featured six stories awful enough to be balled up and rolled away by my dung beetles. Now, it’s time to choose the worst of the worst. This will be done in a democratic fashion; it’s your […]
Alien Rover
In 2002, an alien rover landed on Earth, and Planetary Defense Command has been tracking it continuously since then. We have tapped into its transmissions to monitor the video and messages it sends home. It seems to operate primarily in Africa and Asia, with some activities in the Americas and Australia; it appears to avoid […]
Review: Seventy
One dung Beetle (1 out of 4 rating) I’ve given this story a dung beetle rating for its content rather than its writing style. I have two major problems with the content. First, the failure of certain terraforming technologies is a key plot device, yet the author fails to explain why those technologies were being […]
Series Review: The Lost Fleet
Four Royal Crowns (4 out of 4 rating) The Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell (pen name of John G. Hemry, a retired naval officer) is one of my favorite science fiction works. As a new book in the series (Steadfast) was just released today, I thought this would be a good time for a […]
Blog: the parasite guy
In my blog’s first post, I mentioned that 62,597 science fiction titles were available at Amazon’s Kindle store. That total is now up to 70,246 (a change of 7,649, or almost 65 per day). During the same time period, I inspected 17 titles for bad science fiction. Even if I had reviewed only new releases, […]
Planetary Defense Command 