Star Trek is to Paramount as Cow is to Farmer.

So, Star Trek: The Next Generation is 20 years old. Man, I feel ancient. I was thirteen years old when I watched the first episode that aired, Encounter at Farpoint. My best friend and I were still renting science fiction and fantasy B-Movies on a weekly basis to satisfy our craving for new and interesting entertainment. Things changed a bit, we found ourselves looking forward to each and every fresh episode. As time went on they started showing a rerun every weeknight and we watched those too. It's one of the few memories I have of tuning in at the same time on the same channel five nights a week.

The Next Generation will always be my favorite Trek, mostly because it hit me just at the right time. Sure, I love the Shatner, the Nimoy, even the Doohan. Sisko, Janeway, and Archer were fantastic characters as well. Having said that, Picard is still my favorite Captain, Riker is still my favorite Number One, and the rest of the cast are still golden in my eyes. I shed a nerdy little tear as the credits rolled on Nemesis, mostly because I was certain that it was going to be the last Generations film.

Moving on, though I do so grudgingly, I'm sure most of you have heard that JJ Abrams, whose work I respect and enjoy, is doing the Star Trek reboot Prequel/Sequel film. I think it'll be brilliant, but more so I think it's quite necessary.

Sadly, the show runners of Trek tried their best to keep the franchise going on television but with Voyager and Enterprise they just took a few wrong turns. By the time they corrected their course (by bringing Manny Coto on board for Enterprise's last season), it was too late and most of the viewers were back to watching reruns of DS-9 and Next Generation instead. Turning to a completely new team was the best thing Paramount could do.

Will it work? Well, who knows. Paramount has already delayed the release of the new Trek film to May of 2009, and the studio developing the Star Trek Online game that was supposed to be available at the time of the film's release (Generations era, by the way), has laid off everyone working on the project and Paramount is looking for another studio to work on it. If you listen to the rumors Paramount is already liscencing the property to another studio, and I hope that's true. I was looking forward to logging onto my character and jumping into an academy runabout for whatever purpose. Even if a new studio is working on it, Star Trek Online may be facing a complete restart after over a full year of development. Pretty dark times in general.

The Trek Cow still goes 'Mooo' for Paramount. They're redeveloping the old 60's television series with new High Definition special effects, cleaning up the live action video and trying to recapture that classic magic for a new generation of viewers. Will it work? Who knows? I know they'll sell a lot of boxed sets, so they'll still make cash on the old stuff. Perhaps there will be renewed interest in syndicating this updated version of the original series? That's where the real money is, syndication. Funny thing, last I checked Generations was almost as well syndicated as the original series. The only reason why there are more screens showing Kirk, Spock and Bones, I imagine, is that it has been translated into more languages.

Having said all that, I'd like to wish everyone who cares about Generations a happy 20th aniverssary. To me that first episode and the seven years that followed on the small screen were magic. I enjoyed the Next Generation movies as well, everyone involved did a fantastic job of bearing the torch through over a decade. Not bad for a crew exploring the galaxy in their pajamas.

Now if Trek keeps on making cash for Paramount, I don't think we'll have to worry about seeing Trek die off. In fact, JJ Abrams and the people he works with bring a fresh eye to the franchise (I hate that word...) and I think we're in for an entirely new Generation of Trek with new movies and maybe even a new television show. I would actually love to see Star Trek back on television. I like what they did there, and the fact that they used the spectacular characters and settings to show us a few things about the world around us.

In any case, I'm excited, I think all science fiction fans should be. There is more Trek coming in one form or another. Money is being spent, great minds are being tapped, and the fans are just starting to line up. I'll be pre-ordering my new Kirk lunch box in May 2009, I already have a spot reserved for it beside my Generations crew bobble head collection.

RL

First Light Chronicles: How It's Going

There are a lot of people reading the first book in the First Light Series, and I have to say that the news I'm hearing is encouraging. Most people really like it and I'm waiting for someone to tell me they don't, just to hear that first bad review that makes you feel like the general public have actually had access to your work.

As most of you know already, the copies currently available in town are misprints, so the people who buy them will have something there will only ever be 14 copies of and each will be signed. I don't know if they will have any value, but I hope the fact that there will be so few helps people who own a copy with a few typos on the back cover feel better. What really matters is that the internal contents are all correct and all the scenes featuring the Bannanabear(TM) are gone.

As far as the second book goes, the few people who have read it really enjoyed Limbo and I'm glad to say that there are a few copies left in Sudbury. I'll be ordering more soon since the proof copies of the second installment turned out so well.

The third book in the series is being written right now. In fact I just finished writing a major turning point in the story. The purpose of the third book in the series is to give the characters a sort of ending to their first real plot cycle, to sort of lay the last brick in the foundation of the rest of the series. These three books are to be the launch pad from which everything springs, even Black Abandon, which will not be under the First Light Chronicles banner, but involve a number of the same characters and take place in the same universe.

The third installment of the First Light Chronicles series; Starfree Port, may be the longest of the three. I expect it to weigh in at about two hundred pages after a second draft. I'm still looking to write this one as though it were made for television but I'm allowing for even more character development, expansion of the universe this all takes place in, and I'm looking at this as though it is the season finale; the one episode that tells a story good enough for people to tune in again after the summer break.

As always, I'll do my best to have you white knuckled and raw by the time you read the last few pages. There are a few who have read the second book who tell me that I've already accomplished the white knuckled part at least once, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the flattery, but I firmly believe that accomplishing that sort of thing once can be chalked up to a happy accident. Doing it twice, now that's where the beginning of imagination and story telling talent really live. That's what I'm going for in the third installment, even if it kills someone.

More on First Light Chronicles: Starfree Port later!

RL

PS
There was never a Bannanabear(TM) in First Light Chronicles: Freeground. It would never get along with Oz.

Go Gutsy Gibbon! Go!

Down with our oppressors!

It just felt good to say that, since I have completely rid my new laptop of all traces of Vista. I didn't install Windows XP either, I went straight for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution and is free to anyone who wants it. They have very active forums that cater to experts as well as beginners such as myself. With a bit of help, a few hacks and no tutorials (though it's important that I did play with early distributions of Red Hat ages ago), I have my laptop working 100%. Go Gutsy Gibbon, go.

For anyone just looking at making the switch to Linux on a laptop, here are a few of the upsides I've found to Ubuntu:
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There is no cost to this OS. They sent me the CD's free and you can download the most up to date version. All the software you want (except for most games), is on Ubuntu, and everything I'm running is free. It's stable (Vista crashed over a dozen times in less than twenty hours of use, bluescreen of death all over the place!). My wireless connections are more stable, networking is easier, and my battery somehow gained over half an hour of life since the switch. Ubuntu also requires less ram, less hard drive space, comes secure and loaded with Open Office (complete office software), Firefox, and all kinds of useful stuff. It can also look better than Vista. It also took 20 minutes to get the main OS installed.

Here are the downsides as far as I'm concerned:

Some of the drivers were hard to dig up, it took some Google searching and I had to read a couple dozen forum posts. Then I had to learn a few new things (GASP!), copy and paste some commands and install some software to get my earphone plug, graphics adapter and playing DVD's working. No biggie, took about an hour and a half for me to dig up what I needed and have it all working together. What I was missing the community already had, I just had to go find it.

Score one for everyone who hates Vista and wants to be free of Microsoft without having to pay through the nose for an Apple. This laptop is a joy to work on now that it's set up. I was looking at this laptop as a temporary solution until I could save up enough for my black mac, but I think I might just add 4GB of ram and keep it until I've worn out the keyboard.

You know, the Free Light Series is all about being independent of big corporate influence and fighting the ideals behind their actions. What's really funny to me is the fact that I'll be finishing the third book on this recently liberated laptop. *snicker

RL

PS: Everything that got soaked last week is dry and operational again, even the LCD monitor. I'd like this opportunity to thank all the guardian angels who watch over us nerds. Now, back to work on First Light Chronicles: Starfree Port.