The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Kevin by Paul Kupperberg (A Teen Family Reading Review)

Review of Kevin (from Archie Comics) by Paul Kupperberg (Grosset& Dunlap paper-over-board novel, April 18, 2013)

Kevin Keller is the first openly gay kid at Riverdale High. He had a comic miniseries which was very successful, so he went to an ongoing series which is now on its eighth issue. The second issue of that series dealt with Kevin’s first high school prom. Kevin had been elected class president in issue four of the miniseries, so it fell to him to select a theme for the prom and get all the decorating done. Being a smart leader he delegated most of the decorating to classmates Veronica Lodge and Jughead Jones.

The time the three characters spent decorating for the prom is the framing story for this novel, which tells of Kevin’s middle school prom. As with all Archie tales, the teenage characters are realistic and have a wide variety of family situations. This novel has a strong anti-bullying message and shows how both victims and bystanders can change the situation. One character has a particularly bad home situation where even his father bullies him. Kevin befriends the boy, whose name is Luke, and ends up helping him accept that many students at Medford Middle School are willing to be his friends.

In a time of crisis, Luke comes out as gay to Kevin, trying to show Kevin that no one will want to be his friend because of what he is. Kevin has a nice speech about what he thinks of people who will hate someone for being gay and tells Luke, everyone but the bully will like you for who you are, not who you love (Note that at this time Kevin was not identifying as gay). Helping Luke makes Kevin realize something about himself which had caused him a great deal of confusion and eventually leads to Kevin coming out to his middle-school friends (how he came out to his parents is shown in the comics).

This coming-out story of Kevin and Luke is sweet with a hint of sadness, as well as funny in some places, particularly when Kevin tries to figure out why he doesn’t think his female best mate Sammie is sexy. Luckily for Kevin she is understanding and she is more relieved that there is not something wrong with the way she looks than she is concerned that Kevin likes boys. For anyone who is struggling to find who they are, for people who want to understand those who are doing so, and for those who did so in a time when Luke’s words about hatred were true almost everywhere, this is an excellent read. Read it yourself to see how great it can be when you have understanding friends and family. Riverdale is a fictional place, but the relationships are realistic; share it with friends and family members to make your own coming-out story an easier one. For adults, sharing this book with your teen can help them understand themselves or someone they know because the message is not just about coming out as gay, it is about standing up to bullies and how people with differences can be accepted. It truthfully shows how sometimes having two differences can lead to acceptance, because identifying as a geek makes you fit in that crowd, no matter what other differences you have. If you have ever attended a science fiction convention, you have seen this idea in action because you see every type of person imaginable and they are all part of the geek crowd, and they don’t notice the differences of others because they feel different too.

If you like the Kevin Keller character and would like to read more, check your local comic or book store for comic issues, and compilation paperbacks. Issues can also be read by way of digital comic book apps.

The Exploding Spaceship Visits the Doctor Who Experience Cardiff, Wales.

In honor of the finale of this season of Doctor Who, Your Humble Columnists present a review of our trip to the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff Bay. First of all, pay attention when you buy tickets because they offer a package deal with a brochure, a t-shirt, some postcards and a cool certificate that says you flew the TARDIS, which looks expensive at first until you realize that most of the stuff you can’t buy even at the Experience. They even have a way to buy a family-of-four package. When buying tickets in the US for events in the UK, pre-paying for extras is always a wise move because of fluctuations in the exchange rate and the usual cash shortage when on holiday overseas. The Doctor Who Experience is a bit of a hike from the closest bank machine so you are better off to pre-pay for some goodies and save your cash for those “I MUST have this!” moments in the little shop.

One of the first things you will notice upon arrival in Cardiff Bay is that as you look out over the water with the Millennium Center and the Torchwood Tower behind you, looking off to the left you will see the TARDIS parked rather unsteadily on an outcropping of rock. This marks the entrance to the Doctor Who Experience, so you simply hike or take a taxi (recommended if you have little ones) as close to the TARDIS as you can get, then you will be outside the building for the Experience.  Once inside you will see that there is a little café and a ticket counter.  The café is a good place to rest after your hike and to take turns watching your things as everyone makes a restroom run. The Experience is like a museum with a specific path to follow through which is timed by the electronic things going on around you, so leaving to go to the restroom can cause you to miss most of it.

The interactive parts of the Experience which you enter first are quite well-done, with things in the room reacting, videos turning themselves on, and a TARDIS to fly.  This is quite good fun even for adults, as all the sides of the console have controls so many people have the chance to fly it and you get directions as to what to do.  Of course you have some monster experiences, which are quite exciting and possibly a bit scary for the under 8s, just like the show.

After you exit the interactive portion of the Experience, you enter a section with costumes of companions and monsters, models of technology from the show and an exhibit of all eleven Doctors’ primary costumes from 1963 to present day. There you can also step onto the edge of The Tenth Doctor’s TARDIS console and you can take a picture of yourself there.  Nearby is a photography area where you stand in front of a green-screen and it places you in the background of your choice.  This is quite cool because you can end up with a souvenir photo of your group with the TARDIS on an alien planet.  Like this:

Once you exit the museum area you end up in the souvenir shop, which sells a large variety of Doctor Who merchandise. If you are interested in t-shirts, be sure to ask which ones are not available anywhere else. Also they have other special merchandise for the Experience only, so check on which these are before making your buying choices. The prices are standard retail so unless one of the main street stores is having a special you will not pay any more for things than you would at Toys R Us (there is a large one of these in a Cardiff retail park) or Argos (a UK store sort of like Service Merchandise used to be).

On return to Cardiff Bay, there are several sites which were used as filming locations both in the Bay and short distances away by car or taxi. Look for a list on the web of these sites before heading out to explore. Some food suggestions: you must not miss Welsh cakes which are sold hot from a shop in the bay. Also for child-friendly fare there is a good hamburger restaurant in the bay and a Pizza Express which carries many American style entrees. For Asian fusion food there are branches of the Wagamama chain in Cardiff.  For inexpensive UK entrees try one of the pubs in the area, there are several with good food near the bay and in town. There is a massive shopping center in town which has just about every chain in the UK and some stores you don’t find in London, like the wonderful shoe store Hotter.

Hopefully this information will make all our Whovian readers want to visit Cardiff; it is well worth the train trip from London. Too many Americans think a visit to London means they have visited the UK, but by skipping Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland they have really missed out on some beautiful countryside with much cleaner air.

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Transgalactic and World Divided Book Two of the Secret World Chronicles

Coming to paperback this month, Transgalactic by A.E. van Vogt and World Divided Book Two of the Secret World Chronicles by Mercedes Lackey, Cody Martin, Dennis Lee and Veronica Giguere.

In case you missed it last year when the hardback was released, Mercedes Lackey has a second book in her (and her co-authors) superhero series. It goes to paperback this month.  Echo and CCCP including John Murdock continue to battle the Thulians. In this volume a rare chance at some intelligence on the Thulians allows Echo and friends to attack in the Thulians’ space rather than waiting for them to attack.  This gives some of Echoe’s misfits some field experience working together but also reveals some weaknesses embedded in the group.

The angel does her best to steer people to the best path for humans to beat the Thulians, but this isn’t always so pleasant in the short term.  Tesla is still hamstrung by the democratic processes of Metis in this volume but communication to him is restored somewhat.

There are some changes in the Echo management and oversight which cause the heroes to do more things off the book but even with the problems many members of Echo and CCCP do not feel as helpless by the end of this volume. Hope has been restored in a limited way even though the Thulians are far from defeated.

This volume shows more depth of some younger characters presented in the last volume and shows maturing relationships of the characters on which the action was centered in the last volume. Several of the troubled characters make psychological progress in this volume. These changes make the cast of supers more interesting and the action not as predictable since the changing psychology can result in surprise behavior.

If you like superheroes in any form, whether in media, science fiction or action-adventure then this is a good reading choice. The details of the partially-destroyed present-day Atlanta are particularly interesting to those who live or visit there, which is a surprising number of readers since Dragon*Con is held there. This is a fast-paced adventure with plenty of danger filled moments to keep you reading until the very last page.

It will be interesting to see the Thulian response to the attack in volume three, but we must wait until January 2014 for the release of Revolution.

Also coming to paperback this month from Baen is a reprint volume of classic science fiction from A.E. van Vogt, edited by Eric Flint and David Drake, which came out in hardcover back in 2006. Transgalactic  contains Empire of the Atom and The Wizard of Linn which are set in a civilization which has fallen but still contains some remnants of science, and Mission to the Stars along with two short novels from the Ezwal series which are all space adventure.

These are all classic adventures which haven’t seen print in some years, so for classic science fiction fans this volume is a treat. Many of today’s readers have probably never read any of them, but they are all good stories with action, good characterization and that bit of a strange view of our civilization which is common to van Vogt. There are quite a few quirky characters in the fallen civilization novels and the Ezwal short novels have a very strange but interesting alien.

The Exploding Spaceship Reviews Portal by Eric Flint and Ryk Spoor and House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion by David Weber

Portal (Baen, May 7 2013 hardcover) is the third volume of hard science fiction adventure from Eric Flint and Ryk Spoor following Boundary and Threshold.

The previous volume left the heroes crashed on Europa with no one near Earth knowing what happened to them, and the survivors did not know if there were any of their fellows remained alive on the ship still in orbit about the Jovian moon. This volume picks up directly from that point with communication being re-established and Earth trying to build a rescue ship. The survivors on Europa realize that it will take some political wrangling as well as many months so they decide to rescue themselves by taking the working parts of the two ships and putting them together to make one ship capable of returning to Earth.

This volume has some harrowing space action and some technical talk about orbits, ships, and the propulsion technology used. Also there is quite a bit of archaeology discussed, but of alien cultures not of Earth.  The aliens mentioned in previous stories, the Bemmies, are also discussed a great deal in this volume.

The survivors on Europa put together housing and a centrifuge to survive until they can get the ship built. All the technical descriptions of this and the combined ship project are well done, with enough mechanics to be believable without burying the reader in mathematics.

This is a hard science fiction adventure with good characterization from two of Baen’s best writers, so lovers of hard science fiction, space adventure, or science fiction with highly-polished prose should give this one a try even if you missed the first volumes. While it is not necessary to have read the previous volumes to enjoy this one, they are well worth seeking out.

House of Steel: The Honorverse Companion (Baen, May 7, 2013 hardcover) from David Weber and BuNine is the newest Honorverse book.  This volume contains a new short novel from Weber called I Will Build My House of Steel that covers the early days of the Manticoran Star Kingdom and the reign of King Roger, including a look at his death and how Queen Elizabeth III handled becoming monarch at a very young age.

It starts during Roger Winton’s time as a navy lieutenant and follows him through his meeting his future wife, his marriage, and the birth of his heir Elizabeth. We see the relationship of Elizabeth and her father as she grows up. This gives some insight into her motivation for her decisions regarding the investigation of his death, which we get some clues about in other Honorverse material.

This novel really gives Elizabeth and Roger more depth and fleshes out some information not known in detail by other characters. Given the importance of Elizabeth III plays in the more recent novels and the part she must play in the next one as Manticore and Haven fight the terrorists and the Solarian League, this novel gives important insight to what motivates her.

In the rest of the volume contains technical information about the Royal Manticoran Navy, Marine Corps, and Army, historical information, and information on the Protectorate of Grayson, including a wealth of information about the Grayson Space Navy and Army. Also included is information on the non-human sentient species in the Star Empire of Manticore.

The second half of the book provides a wealth of reference information which will be helpful to readers, both new and old. For those who have not read the series yet, or whose reading has gaps, this is a good way to see everything in overview. For those who have read everything it is a convenient way to refresh your memory on culture, ships and people who may not have been the center of a novel in many years.

2013 is the 20^th anniversary of the Honorverse and BuNine is throwing a celebration November 1-3, 2013 by hosting the first all-Weber fan convention, HonorCon. Information can be found at www.honorcon.com.