David Gerrold - The Voyage of the Star Wolf

[ekaser]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

About whether these errors have been corrected or not, I would just like to add again: Has anyone recently bought THIS edition, please?

Yes, Don, I bought it (and read it) before I started this thread. I normally stumble horribly on typos, missing words, wrong words, etc, so if it was THAT horrible, I certainly would have noticed it. I have NO unpleasant memories of reading the book. I'm sure there were one or two textual errors (what book doesn't have that many?), but all-in-all, I'd rate the copy I got from Amazon as VERY clean!

So, please spend 99 cents and read the book, quite good and enjoyable! (And consider supporting the Kickstarter project to make a film(s) of it! Star Wolf Kickstarter Project) I'm most of the way through the second book ("The Middle of Nowhere"), and have enjoyed it as much as the first one. I'll add a review of it to this thread as soon as I've finished.

Everett

[ekaser]

Okay, just finished the 2nd book in the series, The Middle of Nowhere, an apt title. The book is on Amazon for $4.99, don't know about elsewhere.

The book starts on board the Stardock, but quickly shifts to the Star Wolf, hanging far away in empty space, in quarantine. The rest of the book takes place upon the ship, largely stationary. In the first half of the book, not a lot seems to happen, as we follow a new crew member around the ship. But in reality, we're learning a great deal about both the ship and its crew members, and (more importantly) being set up for the 2nd half of the book which... well, I don't want to give any more away. Let's just say that it's VERY satisfying, VERY enjoyable!

Bottom line: loved the story. An excellent read, the kind of story I can't seem to find very often anymore. I don't know if the science fiction field as withered (I'm sure it has), or it's just that there was such an incredible 'bank' of great stories when I was a kid, and now that I've mostly exhausted it, the number of new stories is much smaller than all those stories that were written before I became sentient. Ah well.

The Star Wolf books aren't just space opera with spaceships and laser-blasts and nova-torpedoes (ie, not just "navy in space"). The characters are foremost, and the plots are usually (so far) resolved through 'smarts' rather than brute force.

The only thing I'd like more than to see these books turned into a video series is to have more BOOKS in the series!

Next up: the final book, Blood and Fire.

Everett

[ekaser]

There's a new interview with David Gerrold, specifically about the video version of Star Wolf, it's history, how the Kickstarter project came about, and where they hope to take it. Part 1 is at:

Foes of Reality "Star Wolf" Interview with David Gerrold


Part 2 is supposed to appear next week. Partial quote:

Dorothy Fontana and I schlepped this project to every network, every cable channel, every studio that would let us in the front door. I expanded my two-hour pilot to four episodes. Then cut them back to a feature. Then revised the first four episodes. Then revised the feature. I developed one of the longest and most detailed writer/director’s guides. We had costume designs made. Mike Okuda designed and built a model. Karl J. Martin created CGI starships. We created presentation books and short videos. We made the rounds of the studios and the networks and the cable channels over and over. We went back to some of those places more than once, every time there was a regime-change. Over the years, I kept writing and rewriting, updating, polishing, fixing, adjusting, adding, cutting. The scripts are in pretty good shape, certainly ready for a first table-read.

I’m tired of schlepping. I’m tired of pitching this thing to studio executives. Some of the people we’ve met have been very good people, but some have been — well, there’s no polite way to put it — illiterate. Science fiction is about people in conflict with ideas. It’s about exploring, discovering, questioning, challenging. It’s about living in the realm of the impossible and the extraordinary. But television as it exists today isn’t about entertainment or information or inspiration, it’s about selling stuff. It’s about keeping you comfortably unconscious while telling you that you smell bad.

My biggest complaint about television is that here’s a medium that can change the world. It can touch millions of people in a matter of minutes. Imagine how we could change the world if we could inspire a million people to be blood donors or foster parents or simply plant a tree. Instead, television doesn’t just appeal to the lowest common denominator, it seeks to lower the level of that denominator.