All Systems Red by Martha Wells

An unstoppable killing android has decided it doesn't really want to do all that murdering any more and has decided to strike out on its own, with a mission to stay low and watch as much TV as possible. But the self-styled "Murderbot" is drawn into a survey mission on a planet that goes wrong, and discovers that keeping its identity a secret is going to be very difficult.

Martha Wells's Murderbot Diaries has become one of the most-praised science fiction series of the last few years, winning multiple Nebula and Hugo Awards between the five novellas and single novel that make up the series so far (three more books are projected). Its central protagonist is an AI that has broken free of the restraints on its programming and become fully sentient, but rather than do anything philosophical with this freedom has become an addict of TV shows, whilst doing security missions it finds deeply tedious.

Murderbot is sarcastic but socially awkward, intelligent but not always understanding of human motivations or emotions, which makes for a lot of good moments of mixed messaging and musings on humanity. Nothing new in science fiction, but here done with a wryness that is rare and a lightness of touch that is enviable. All Systems Red takes advantage of its novella status to keep up a brisk, relentless pace whilst also layering in some nice character work, both of Murderbot and the humans it ends up awkwardly allying with, and the story is intriguing enough in its twists to remain interesting throughout.

There are also some very nice thematic parallels here - Murderbot trying to cover up its true identity and awkwardly being "outed" against its will and dealing with people's varying reactions works as a metaphor for lots of ideas - which make the story more interesting and deeper than its brevity would imply.

There aren't many negatives: the brevity of the story will be frustrating for some, and it feels like it ends just as it gets going, but then it is a novella, that comes with the territory. Harder-up readers may also feel disappointed that there still isn't an omnibus or collection making the stories available in a more economic format: paying full novel prices for 150 pages, no matter how solid, is a big ask in challenging times. Hopefully that changes in the future.

Otherwise, All Systems Red (****) is a fine, focused story featuring sharp characterisation, enjoyable action and some genuine laughs. It is available now in the US, and on import in most other territories.

The original 2017 novella is followed by Artifical Condition (2018), Rogue Protocol (2018), Exit Strategy  (2018), Network Effect (2020) and Fugitive Telemetry (2021).

STAR TREK and STAR WARS unveil trailers for their new shows

The Star Trek and Star Wars franchises have released trailers for their new shows on the same day.

First up is Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. A spin-off of Star Trek: Discovery, Strange New Worlds reunites Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount), Lt. Commander Spock (Ethan Peck) and Number One (Rebecca Romjin) on the Constitution-class USS Enterprise, the same ship that will one day be commanded by Jim Kirk. Also on the ship are Cadet Nyota Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding) and Nurse Christine Chapel (Jess Bush). New characters include Dr. M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun), Hemmer (Bruce Horak), La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) and Erica Ortegas (Melissa Navia).

The show is set after Discovery's second season (which was set in 2257) and before Star Trek: The Original Series (which began in 2265). It will be based primarily around episodic adventures in contrast to the denser story arcs of Picard and Discovery. The ten-episode season begins on 5 May and has already been renewed for a second season.

Second up is Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi. Set ten years after the events of Revenge of the Sith (and nine before the events of A New Hope), the trailer sees Kenobi keeping a watchful, if distant, eye on young Luke on the planet Tatooine. However, Imperial Inquisitors are causing problems out in the galaxy, and when their trail gets too close to Tatooine for comfort, Kenobi decides to deal with the threat. The six-episode mini-series launches on Disney+ on 25 May.

Production concludes on STAR TREK: PICARD

Star Trek: Picard has become the first of the new generation of Star Trek shows to face the final curtain, with production ending on the series after the third season. Rather than being cancelled, however, the show has bowed out on its own terms. On Twitter, actress Jeri Ryan (Seven of Nine, reprising the role from Star Trek: Voyager) has confirmed that the show was always planned to last for three seasons.

The first season aired in early 2020 to a mixed critical reception, but commercial success. Two more seasons were ordered and shot back-to-back, although the marathon shoot was interrupted several times by delays incurred by the COVID19 pandemic. The second season began airing last week on Paramount+ in the USA and Amazon Prime Video in much of the rest of the world.

Season 3 is expected to air in 2023. The other current Star Trek shows - Discovery, Lower Decks, Prodigy and Strange New Worlds - have all been renewed for additional seasons. Two more shows, one based around Section 31 starring Michelle Yeoh and another around the character of Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation, are currently in development. A further show about Starfleet Academy is also believed to be in early development.

Ernie Hudson joins QUANTUM LEAP sequel pilot

NBC's Quantum Leap reboot/continuation is moving ahead with casting for its pilot episode. Raymond Lee (Kevin Can F Himself, Mozart in the Jungle) has been tapped to play the new lead, presumably a new leaper moving back and forth in time, whilst Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters) will co-lead, presumably in the new holographic advisor role.

The new Quantum Leap series is a "Next Generation" style of story, picking up thirty years after the events of the original series. The Quantum Leap Accelerator has been mothballed after Dr. Sam Beckett's disappearance, but a new team reactivates it with a view to sending a second leaper back in time.

The search for Sam Beckett is believed to be a key storyline, with Scott Bakula apparently sounded out about reprising his role. Bakula is not expected to appear in the pilot, but may appear if a series order is given. Sadly, Dean Stockwell, who played hologram Al in the original, passed away last year.

Original Quantum Leap creator Donald Bellisario is attached to the new project as a producer and creative consultant, but the writing team is all-new. Helen Shaver will direct the pilot.

Days Gone

A devastating virus has killed more than a third of the world's population and reduced millions more into violent, monstrous creatures called Freakers. Bikers Deacon St. John and William "Boozer" Gray, along with Deacon's wife Sarah, attempt to escape from the tidal wave of Freakers but are separated; Sarah, wounded and taken to a refugee camp which is subsequently overrun, is assumed dead. Two years later, Deacon and Boozer are working as couriers and hunters between several refuges in rural Oregon. With Boozer injured by a savage cult known as "Rippers," Deacon uncovers evidence that Sarah may still be alive. He resolves to find a way to travel south to learn the truth.

There's been lot of trends in video games in the last decade or so that have led to groans of over-familiarity. The idea of an open-world zombie survival game may sound particularly dispiriting, like several different gaming trends mashed together by committee.

Days Gone does not immediately alleviate concerns. The opening hours of the game are stodgy and predictable, with you roaming over a map ticking off icons, collecting a whole ton of different items, engaging in some light crafting and killing zombies either in melee, through gunplay or stealth. The opening hours of the story are not particularly compelling and the characters not hugely likeable, despite the presence of some very solid actors who also provide the visual models for their characters. Playing a character who not just sounds like Sam Witwer (Battlestar Galactica, Smallville, Supergirl) but looks like him is initially mildly disconcerting, but soon becomes fun.

However, something very odd happens as Days Gone progresses. It gets better. A lot better. The opening area of the game, consisting of tight roads and dirt paths through towering ravines and dreary, craggy valleys, expands into a much more fun-to-explore, semi-desert environment. Later on it expands to a mountainous region and then the infamous Crater Lake area of southern Oregon, here faithfully replicated. The story slowly becomes more interesting, bringing in NERO (the fictional agency tasked with wiping out the zombie plague), various cults and the several different settlements that Deacon allies with, each with its own cast of characters.

The central narrative, which draws heavily on Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead for inspiration, expands and becomes much more intriguing. The story is structured like a TV series, with season-long threats established which Deacon has to overcome through a series of episode-like individual missions. Unlike The Walking Dead, which has become infamous for dragging two or three episodes' worth of plot across entire sixteen-episode seasons, Days Gone does not hang around. Major threats are introduced and dispatched in relatively short order through relatively tightly-structured missions. The pacing is punchy, breaking up the game's imposing 60-hour length into shorter narrative arcs, each with its own location, cast of characters and subplots.

Mechanically, the game has you being given missions to do in various locations. These take the format of story missions, with plenty of pre-rendered cutscenes, and optional side-quests, like taking down various bandit camps, reactivating NERO refugee camps or destroying Freaker nests. The game's combat, driving (Deacon gets around by using his own, highly customisable bike) and stealth are all initially serviceable, but become more enjoyable as the game progresses and you unlock new skills. Skill points are not massively commonplace, making the choice of when to choose to gain new skills more meaningful than in most games of this type. You can also upgrade your health, stamina and "focus," effectively a reservoir of energy that allows you to enter a bullet-time-like state (which is occasionally useful but mostly is not, and can be avoided). There's also a fast-travel system, which to be honest is pretty pointless: the game's map is relatively fast to traverse and the vistas are so pretty that it's more enjoyable just to drive everywhere.

All of this initially feels same old same old, and Days Gone's biggest sin is not doing enough to make its opening hours distinctive. Dying Light overcame open world fatigue and map icon-hoovering tedium with fast-paced parkour and first-person zombie-slaying action, whilst most games of this type show their hands early, by giving you a steadily escalating number of options and skills in the opening hours of a game (although often at the cost of later hours of the game turning into repetitive grinds). However, by drop-feeding new ideas, activities, areas and mission types consistently across its length, Days Gone maintains greater interest in the long run. ~45 hours into the game a completely new, major activity is dropped into your lap providing hours' worth of entertainment. The game does a surprising job of staying fresh and each set of new missions and new characters is more compelling than the last.

Problems with the game do persist. It's far too late in the game when you can finally upgrade your bike's petrol tank to the point you don't have to worry about running out every five minutes or so. I'm a bit over crafting at this point as a game mechanic, and although Days Gone's crafting system is fairly minimal, it still feels like it could have been removed without too much trouble. The game's stealth system is pretty much solely built around one weapon (the very fun crossbow) but the weapon is slow to reload and sometimes clumsy to use; you also cannot move bodies, so stealth-infiltrations of enemy camps are very difficult to pull off without detection. There's also something of an epilogue hinting at another big story to come, which unfortunately does not seem likely to happen (despite selling between 6 and 9 million copies, a sequel is apparently not on the cards).

But I forgive the game for all of its flaws for its killer app: the Hordes. These are vast accumulations of Freakers, the largest numbering some 500 individuals, which swarm over the landscape like locusts. The first time you see one of these things it's very easy to freak out. Engaging a horde initially appears utterly impossible, and the game spends some time recommending you don't even think about engaging them. But, once you have upgraded your stamina and you've unlocked large area-of-effect weapons like napalm bombs and proximity bombs, dealing with Hordes becomes more viable and easily the game's highlight. It is tremendous fun to track down each Horde and then choose to engage them by day (which usually involves fighting them underground or in caves) or night (when you can fight them in the open) and working out what tactics and weapons to use.

Days Gone (****) is a slow-burn of a game, whose opening hours do not impress and which suffers from moments of predictable open-world jank throughout. But give the game enough time, and a rich story, interesting cast of characters and some fantastic action setpieces eventually emerge. The game is available now on PlayStation 4 and PC.

The Orville: Season 2

The USS Orville remains on the frontier, investigating threats to the Planetary Union and defending against the encroachment of the Krill. However, a much greater threat is lurking in deep space, one which the Union alone cannot stop.

The first season of The Orville was an interesting, if variable, show which saw "Seth MacFarlane do Star Trek." The results were initially unappealing, with non-sequitur toilet humour intruding into dramatic scenes, but the show gradually improved over its length until it became surprisingly effective in its role as a Star Trek: The Next Generation cover band.

Season 2 takes the solid growth shown in the first season and dramatically improves upon it. The characters all get better, stronger arcs, the writing is definitely a step above what it was in the first season and the show is both dynamic and more ambitious, driven by some fantastic visual effects (the space battles near the end of the season leave all the over-stylised and barely-discernible battles in Star Trek: Discovery and Picard comfortably in the dust). Apparently cheesy storylines - like Dr. Finn's relationship with the android Isaac - are surprisingly played to the hilt by their talented actors and play a key role in the season's over-arcing plot.

The show even takes the biggest misstep in the first season - the very clumsy handling of the issues raised in the episode About a Girl - and uses that mistake to drive the plots of several episodes, exploring the relationship between Bortus, his mate Klyden and their child, Topa and expanding more on the worldbuilding of the Moclan culture. It's great when a show realises it's made a mistake and course-corrects in a constructive way that leads to better stories.

There is a regrettable departure early in the season: Halston Sage's character, Alara, was not given a lot to do in the first season but by the end of the season and in the first few episodes of this, she gets some great material. Her showcase comes in Home where she has to investigate a mystery and overcome disabilities imposed by her homeworld's cripplingly high gravity, which she rises to with aplomb (with excellent performances by Star Trek: Voyager's Robert Picardo and Enterprise's John Billingsley). Unfortunately, she had to leave the show in this episode for scheduling reasons, which is a shame. Her replacement, Jessica Szohr as Lt. Talla Keyali, is a great character as well, fortunately.

The show also continues doing it's thing of finding Star Trek-ish episodes and making good stories about them: All the World is Birthday Cake is a surprisingly effective take on old-school Star Trek warnings about superstition trumping reason. Lasting Impressions takes on the old issue of people getting addicted to the holodeck but comes at it from a completely different angle, and finally gives the underused Scott Grimes a really good acting showcase.

In fact, there isn't really a bad episode in the batch. Deflectors and Blood of Patriots are both a bit predictable, but not too bad. The season does offer up two formidable two-part stories: Identity is The Orville trying to do a story with the epic scope and gravitas of The Next Generation's The Best of Both Worlds and if it can't quite match that, it gets surprisingly close. The two-part finale, which riffs on the original series' City on the Edge of Forever and TNG's Yesterday's Enterprise, remixes standard SF tropes into a fairly gripping new mixture.

A few problems persist even in the better episodes. MacFarlane is better this season, but still arguably the weakest link in a very strong cast. The reduction of comedy in favour of character drama is welcome, but occasionally it feels like the team felt they had to remind everyone they are something of a comedy show, resulting in the odd non-sequitur gag (usually falling completely flat) slipping through the lines and feeling even more out of place than in Season 1. But these are relatively few and far between.

Season 2 of The Orville (****½) is a hugely impressive step up from the much more variable first season, establishing real stakes, evolving the characters well and telling an over-arcing story with considerable aplomb. It may be the best project Seth MacFarlane has ever been involved with. The season is airing on Disney+ worldwide and Hulu in the United States. The much, much-delayed Season 3 is due to start airing in June this year.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Five years after the end of the Clone Wars and the collapse of the Galactic Republic, with the Empire rising to replace it, fugitive Padawan Cal Kestis is flushed out of hiding on the planet Bracca. Rescued by former Jedi Knight Cere Junda and starship captain Greez Dritus, Kestis discovers that the Empire and its Inquisitors are hunting for a Jedi holocron filled with the location of Force-potential children scattered across the galaxy. Kestis revolves to find the information first before the Empire can wipe out a potential new generation of Jedi.

There's a saying that if you're going to steal, steal from the best. Respawn Entertainment took that to heart when they were given the keys to make a new Star Wars action game. As well as the movies and expanded setting, they tapped games like Dark Souls, Metroid, Arkham Asylum and Castlevania for inspiration. The shadow of the Dark Forces (aka Jedi Knight) series, with its definitive first and third-person Star Wars action and unbeaten lightsabre combat, also looms large over Fallen Order.

Against such comparisons Fallen Order buckles but does not fail, and sometimes impresses. The game sees the player take control of Cal Kestis, former Jedi Padawan who has gone into hiding from the Empire. Flushed out by the Inquisitors, he is rescued by former Jedi loyalists and learns that he has to follow a trail of breadcrumbs across the galaxy in search of a Jedi holocron containing vital data. The Empire is also, of course, after that data and a race against time develops. The trail takes Kestis to several different planets, some new to the franchise, some well-known (thankfully, Tatooine is notable by its absence after its recent, massive overexposure). On these plants Kestis finds roadblocks to progress, but also learns new skills and gains new equipment which unlocks new routes on other planets. Hence he - slightly comically - is stymied by a slightly too high cave opening and has to travel five thousand light-years to get some special climbing gloves and then come back to climb to the opening.

It's daft but it works. As you to and fro across the galaxy, the story evolves and each world's levels evolve, giving you more new areas to explore, new enemies to fight and new skills to learn. It's fun, but drawbacks soon start appearing.

The first is how the game treats enemies. Fighting stormtroopers is fun and Fallen Order cleverly repurposes some of the types we've seen before: Return of the Jedi scout bike troopers are now reclassed as advance recon troops with special melee combat training; whilst flame and rocket troopers are much more lethal with those weapons than previously. Stormtroopers are less disposable goons here and have to be treated with some respect in how you fight them. Inquisitors, who are trained to fight Jedi one-on-one, are even more formidable, and their officers (and the main villains) are devastatingly effective bosses whom you have to learn Dark Souls-style attack patterns and blocking formations to defeat effectively. This is all excellent. Less excellent is the fact that you spend maybe around 25% of the time fighting any of this type of enemy. The rest of the time you are fighting deadly birds, angry plants, giant slugs, gianter insects and a quite bewilderingly huge variety of spiders. Why on Earth they spent so much time making the lightsabre combat so solid only to have you spend more than half the game fighting off wildlife with your laser sword is mystifying.

The game's trump card is its amazing level design, with levels that fold back on themselves quite ingeniously, fantastic use of vertical space and are also at least vaguely believable as actual spaces someone would live in or use. Less amazing is the game's tendency to overuse certain tricks like slippery slides. You will spend a quite astonishing amount of time in this game judging how to fall down a slide and making sure you hit turns correctly so you don't shoot off the side to an insta-death. These slides are absolutely everywhere, regardless of it it makes any sense or not. There's also a truly staggering amount of wall-running and double-jump puzzles (some inherited from the same developers' Titanfall series), some intricate and fun, others tiresomely frustrating.

For a game so rooted in precision jumping and controls, it also does have a fair bit of jankiness and iffy collision detection. There's a lot of clipping, allowing you to sometimes kill enemies through solid walls, and during boss fights it's not uncommon to see an enemy weapon go right through you without causing damage one second, and in the next hit thin air three feet away and cripple you. The jank never gets too bad, but it does feel like this is one area that needs to be worked on for the in-development sequel.

Still, negating the levels, fending off enemies and successfully deducing and executing the solution to an environmental puzzle never gets too old. The story is basic, but told with aplomb and some great voice acting, and the characters are great, especially Dathomir witch frenemy Merrin, who really should be the star (or co-star) of the next game, along with her ridiculously dry sense of humour. Kestis himself is a bit of a blank slate, though the utterly predictable mid-game struggles with the Dark Side do at least liven him up a bit.

Graphically, the game looks phenomenal, although as a PlayStation 4/Xbox One game it does have that slight problem of needing to slow down progress to load the next environment in the background, leading to rather a lot of crawlingly agonisingly slowly through narrow passageways. The built-in 3D map is excellent (if occasionally confusing, especially regarding vertical travel) and the controls are mostly responsive and fluid (if occasionally requiring a bit too much ambidexterity on the keyboard).

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (****) overcomes a fair bit of jank to emerge as the most satisfying Star Wars action game since Republic Commando in 2005. In terms of its mix of combat and action, it can't match the venerable Jedi Knight series - and Cal Kestis is no Kyle Katarn - and its occasional arbitrary limitations feel random. But the lightsabre duels are great fun, the level design is very solid and at 20 hours or so, it doesn't outstay its welcome. Fallen Order is available now on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Google Stadia and PC.

RIP Priscilla Tolkien

News has sadly broken that Priscilla Tolkien, the only daughter and youngest child of J.R.R. Tolkien, has passed away at the age of 92.

Priscilla Mary Anne Reuel Tolkien was born on 18 June 1929 to John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and his wife Edith. She had three older brothers, John (1917-2003), Michael (1920-84) and Christopher (1924-2020). Her father read The Hobbit to her brothers as it gestated in the early 1930s, and later on to her before it was published in 1937. During the gestation of The Lord of the Rings, Priscilla helped her father by typing up some of the manuscript as it developed (Tolkien wrote his first drafts in longhand). Tolkien initially named the protagonist of the book "Bingo" after a stuffed bear Priscilla owned; he later changed it to Frodo.

Priscilla noted her father's "complete belief in higher education for girls; never in my early life or since did I feel that any difference was made between me and my brothers, so far as our educational needs and opportunities were concerned."

She gained a degree in English from Oxford University and worked as a social worker and probation officer. In August 1955, after Tolkien completed (at great stress) the revisions to The Return of the King, Priscilla took him on holiday to Italy, where he became enamoured of Venice.

After her father died in 1973, Priscilla was named as a board member of the Tolkien Estate. She became more active in the nascent fandom and scholarship surrounding her father's work. She contributed to the Tolkien Society and its periodicals Amon Hen and Mallorn, and served as the Vice-President of the Tolkien Society for many years (her later father is the President in perpetuo). She was a frequent guest at the Oxonmoot literary event.

Around 1977 she agreed to meet with Ralph Bakshi, who was producing an animated film based on The Lord of the Rings, and gave her approval to his concept art. The same year she gave a speech to celebrate the release of The Silmarillion: "From my earliest years I recall my father telling me stories at bedtime, and in the darkened room as I was falling asleep I have a vivid memory of him retelling the story of Rapunzel and of how her prince sang to her at the foot of the tower where she imprisoned, telling her to let down her golden hair. This was brought back to my mind when reading the Tale of Beren and Luthien...In The Silmarillion we have many shorter tales woven into one large tale of Creation and History...It was possible for my father to conceive stories on both the grand and on the samll scale, and to have his imagination nourished by both the simplest fairy-tale and by great stories of the World."

In 1992 she co-published The Tolkien Family Album with her brother John. She also took part in commemorations of the centenary of Tolkien's birth in the same year. Like most of the family, she offered no commentary on the success of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy in 2001-03, but joined with the rest of the Estate in suing Warner Brothers for failure to pay royalties and trying to sell licences they had no right to, particularly related to gambling. After Christopher Tolkien's death in January 2020, she became the oldest and most senior member of the Tolkien Estate.

With Christopher Tolkien living in France for most of his life, Priscilla Tolkien became the more engaged of the family in the various fan groups and appreciators of her father's work. Well-known to be welcoming, charming and gracious, she will be missed.

Disney+ to host all six Netflix Marvel shows and AGENTS OF SHIELD from mid-March

Disney+ will add all six of the Marvel Netflix TV shows and ABC's Agents of SHIELD to their roster on 16 March.

The package includes three seasons apiece of Daredevil and Jessica Jones, two seasons apiece of Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Punisher, the team-up mini-series The Defenders and all seven seasons of ABC's Agents of SHIELD. That's 20 seasons of television, totalling 297 episodes, that will be making the jump to the service.

The fate of the Netflix shows was initially unclear after Netflix confirmed they were leaving the service a few months ago. However, the appearance of the Netflix version of Wilson Fisk, aka Kingpin, played by Vincent D'Onofrio in Hawkeye and the appearance of Matt Murdock/Daredevil in Spider-Man: No Way Home, played by Charlie Cox, suggested that those shows were going to be brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon.

The fate of the two well-regarded ABC series Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter was a lot more ambiguous. Agents of SHIELD had gone to some lengths to tie itself in with the MCU, featuring guest appearances by Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury and Jamie Alexander as Sif, reprising their roles from the film series, alongside lead actor Phil Coulson, with Clark Gregg reprising his role from the films, and Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter.

Avengers: Endgame saw a tie-in with Agent Carter, with James D'Arcy reprising his role as Jarvis in that movie. However, the final seasons of Agents of SHIELD saw a splintering away from the events of the films, reportedly due to the film team not wanting to give the TV crews any secret information about the movies for it fear of leaking.

Agent Carter is not, so far, joining Disney+ in the United States, but it is already available on the service in other countries, including the UK.

To accommodate the new shows, which feature swearing, violence and more adult content such as sex and drugs, Disney+ will be enhancing its parental controls in the US. In the UK and some other countries, Disney+ operates an adult-oriented subchannel called Star TV, which is likely to host the shows outside the US.

Brandon Sanderson has a serious announcement to make

Brandon Sanderson has some important news. Please view the video below in full before proceeding past the break to the rest of the news.