As always, spoilers abound. See Wikipedia for production details
Doctor Who - Tom Baker Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen
2013, dir. Ruairi Robinson, Liev Schreiber, Elias Koteas: IMDb / allmovie
Towards the end of a manned mission to Mars, things start to go wrong.
My first tech job was doing tech support by phone for a certain large ISP. (It's still around, but it's just a brand name now.)
The YB-35 and YB-49 were flying-wing bomber prototypes built during and in the wake of the Second World War.
Anthology from 1998 of alternate histories based on different decisions by military leaders; edited by Harry Turtledove, Roland Green and Martin H. Greenberg.
Many designers of fantasy fleets like to come up with all sorts of plausible-sounding technological developments. I'm mostly going to borrow ideas which historically worked for the Americans, and transfer them to the British with appropriate modifications.
2013, dir. Caradog W. James, Caity Lotz, Toby Stephens: IMDb / allmovie
Some time in the nearish future, researchers try to build a self-directed robot soldier/assassin. It doesn't go well.
This time it was just Firefly.
In my first serious ISP job, we sold leased lines (among many other things).
The SeaMaster was to be a flying-boat strategic bomber for the U.S. Navy.
Things heard, and links, from the Mild Day on Saturday. In no particular order.
Second of the Dickson McCunn novels, though he has only a minor part in most of it. Two of the former Gorbals Die-Hards, Dougie and (no longer Wee) Jaikie, go off on a walking holiday, and get involved with a kidnapped press baron and two separate lots of Sinister Foreigners.
I'll come back to what the British are up to, but the historical enemy has to be considered.
2011, dir. Gonzalo López-Gallego, Warren Christie, Lloyd Owen: IMDb / allmovie
The found-footage story of the secret final Apollo mission in 1974.
This was late in 1999. I had to get into Telehouse.
Yeah, I pretty much have to do this one, don't I? The Valkyrie was to be a Mach 3 high-altitude nuclear bomber.
Here's what I've read in March.
Jerry Mitchell, aboard an Ohio SSGN, goes on a mission to extract two Iranians with knowledge of the nuclear weapons programme from that country. Mild spoilers will follow.
Salute is the UK's biggest wargaming show of the year. For me this one was frustrating in some ways, rewarding in others.
I often come up with alternate histories. The usual way of doing this is to change some historical detail and then speculate about what might have gone differently. In this case, I have a specific goal in mind, so I'm trying various divergences to try to get to the state I want.
Tenth in Brett's Fethering Mysteries series. Several pubgoers go down with food poisoning, and other events start to make it look like a concerted campaign against the pub. But who's doing it? And why?
2012, dir. Colin Trevorrow, Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass: IMDb / allmovie
A journalist and two interns, trying for a human-interest story, interview a man who's placed an advertisement for a companion in time travel.
You tell it to the kids these days, they won't believe you. This happened some time late in 2000, when I was working for a medium-sized consumer ISP (that's now a forgotten asset owned by a brand name of a business-only ISP).
Concealed in Death is the forty-eighth story of J. D. Robb's In Death series, and a huge improvement on its immediate predecessor Thankless in Death. It drops many of the science-fictional trappings of the setting to deliver a powerful and well-told story.
The Vigilante was a carrier-borne supersonic bomber.
This small one-day boardgaming event happens twice a year in a village hall in Deepest Buckinghamshire, and has been going for quite a few years. This was my first visit.
Third in the Carrier series. "Tombstone" Magruder is a naval aviator aboard a Nimitz-class carrier, as the USA gets involved in a major conflict with India.
Lots of wargames, particularly those simulating space combat, have some sort of acceleration value for their units: you were going at speed 5, you accelerate by 5, you're now going at speed 10, so you move 10 units this turn.
This is wrong.
The TSR-2 was to be a highly capable low-and-fast bomber and reconnaissance aircraft. It was famously cancelled in 1965.
In the 1950s, retired MTB commander Philip Vivian gets into trouble while struggling to run a small yacht charter business.