A Baker's Dozen Series I Have Binge Watched More Than Once

Early Edition (Marissa, Gary & Chuck)

Thanks to being just out of range of Seattle's network stations and me having the Internet and streaming services and downloadable movies (think Nord VPN - 'nuff said), I keep stumbling over TV series that I used to love or new ones that draw me in and suck up my weekends. I'll put on the ones I've run through once or twice while I'm fixing things around the house or doing chores.

This is a very personal and not an exhaustive list. I left out some of the more intense series like NCIS, NCIS New Orleans, Criminal Minds and such to keep it to a "Baker's Dozen" (13) shows. It's an arbitrary number, but the shows all have a similar tone. Not all are easily available. I found Early Edition on YouTube, and the others in various streaming services that I'm not boycotting like Netflix. 

Each of these series have a lighter tone for the most part. I left off the very well written Criminal Minds because it's too intense to binge. I have to take a break, in much the same way the actors had to given the subject matter. NCIS can be fun but when they lost Abbie, they kind of lost me.

So here are my 13 of my favorites in no particular order, although the last few are special favorites of mine. All of them are ones I've gone through a couple of times. Every year or so I'll line 'em up and run them again. I look forward to forgetting what episode comes next and as I age, I have become more adept at forgetting how each episode ends. 

AMERICAN BAKER'S DOZEN BINGEABLE SHOWS:

Falling Skies - Noah Wylie leads a ragtag group of human survivors of an alien invasion. This is one that I like mostly because of Wylie, but also because it introduces some really nice music that appeals to my eclectic tastes.

Numbers - Crime procedural with David Krumholz (Mr. Universe from Firefly/Serenity and The Santa Claus), Rob Morrow (from Northern Exposure) and Taxi's Judd Hirsch. Krumholz plays a math whiz who helps his FBI agent brother (Morrow) solve tricky cases with math. Fascinating premise.

Leverage - Timothy Hutton plays an insurance investigator who gathers up an assortment of con artists, grifters, hackers and thieves he's pursued and or busted over his career and goes about like Robin Hood getting justice for people who have been abused by the rich and powerful. Even though they canceled the series, it wouldn't die and is coming back this summer with Noah Wylie taking Hutton's place with the old team in Leverage: Redemption.  Can't wait.

Early Edition - Quirky series about a guy (Kyle Chandler from Friday Night Lights) who gets tomorrow's Chicago Sun-Times today. Poor guy winds up running around town trying to prevent murders, accidents and injustice. Fun series gone too soon.

The Librarian/Librarians - The Librarians is an extension of the TV movies with Noah Wylie. This series followed with a colorful cast that includes muscular and multi-talented Christian Kane from Leverage in which a group of people are drafted to be librarians and protect the world from troublesome problems with magic artifacts and persons up to no good. Fun romp through history with occasional help from Noah Wylie as the loner head librarian.

Warehouse 13
Claudia, Artie, Myka, Lena and Pete

Warehouse 13 - Sci-Fi Channel's series with a similar premise to the Librarians. Here Secret Service Agents working for Saul Rubinek and CC Pounder and a mysterious board of regents, collect artifacts that have been accidentally or deliberately imbued with dangerous magical powers and neutralize them. The stories are interesting, the characters likeable and fun to watch.

Castle - Firefly's inimitable Nathan Fillion (Captain Reynolds) stars as Rick Castle, a successful novelist who thanks to his friendship with the mayor gets to tag along on murder investigations with Stana Katic as leggy police detective Kate Becket. My favorite part of the series, however, is Castle's amazing relationship with his daughter, Alexis (Molly Quinn) and his prickly relationship with his diva actress Mom. 

  
Monk - Tony Shaloub heads a great cast of characters as widowed OCD police detective Adrian Monk whose incredible obsessive pursuit of villains and microscopic attention to detail makes him San Francisco's go-to consulting detective despite his being removed from the police force due to his obsessive behaviors. It's kind of a comedy, but my obsessive neat-freak wife (whom I adore) views it as more of a tragedy and often corrects the writers for allowing things like Natalie (his nurse/girl Friday) placing her germy purse on the counter and Monk not noticing. A P.I. with a full time nurse sets up a lot of unique situations for San Francisco's defective detective.

Stargate SG1 - MacGuiver's Richard Dean Anderson takes on the Kurt Russel role from the movie - Colonel Jack O'Neil. Benjamin Browder from Farscape took his place during the last seasons. Amanda Tapping plays Samantha Carter the team scientist and Michael Shanks takes the James Spader role as egghead historian/archaeologist Daniel Jackson. The team with an alien named Teal'c (Christopher Judge) travel through mysterious stargates connecting many different planets and fight interstellar parasites and assorted evil aliens in an effort to save the galaxy. A rare sci-fi series that doesn't take itself too seriously. Someone asks Col O'Neil in one episode why people on every planet seem to speak English. "Just go with it," advises Jack. It's that kind of fun. Dom Deluise's sons direct and take supporting roles over the years and even Dom shows up for a couple of episodes as an alien caretaker with a split personality. There were two spinoff series and a couple of movie sequels, the show was that popular - and it ran for more than a decade so there is lots to binge on.

.
The Last Ship - Grey's Anatomy's Dr. Dreamy (Eric Dane) and Adam Baldwin (Firefly and Chuck) star as Captain and First Officer of US destroyer Nathan James, the last surviving American ship after a virus takes out the crews of the US Navy. Cruising out of the way of the disaster in the arctic, the James's crew survives when the world is stricken by a devastating pandemic that destroys food and kills billions of people. Scientists on board attempt to create a vaccine while rogue militaries and warlords attempt to loot, pillage and conquer everyone who is left. The series really shows off the capabilities of a US destroyer. 

 

Chuck - Morgan, Ellie, Casey, Chuck, and Sarah

Chuck - Based on a comic book series, Zachary Levi (Shazam) and Yvonne Strahovski (Handmaid's Tale) are a nerd recruited by national security agencies and his beautiful CIA handler, Sarah. Chuck's scientist dad has created a program called the Intersect, tailor made for Chuck's brain. Chuck receives an email which downloads the program to his brain and finds himself able to do kung fu, pull up all kinds of data in his brain and generally becomes a superspy. Adam Baldwin is Colonel Casey, a no-nonsense NSA agent who is highly uncomfortable in his cover as a stock boy at a Buy-More electronics store where Chuck works as part of the store's Nerd Herd, computer fix-it guys. The show is all kinds of fun with some really weird nerd action and quirky characters for comic relief.

Eureka - The cast's faces are familiar from other SF and TV series. It's a fish out of water story. A US Marshall blunders into a secret scientific community and gets himself drafted as the town sheriff whose job is to contain the constant stream of disasters caused by the collection of dangerously smart geniuses that work for Global Dynamics, the Defense Department funded employer and center of pretty much everything about the town. Sheriff Carter and his daughter move into a bossy smart house and learn to deal with the insane disasters that threaten the town and sometimes all life on Earth.

 

Firefly - Jane, Malcolm and Zoe

 

Firefly - Best for last! Nathan Fillion heads a wonderful cast as Captain of the smuggling spaceship Serenity. Captain Reynolds is a survivor of the losing side of a war with the despotic corporate government of a system of terraformed planets where humanity took refuge after Earth became uninhabitable. The series posits American and Chinese cultures as a blended dominant culture. Everyone curses in Chinese which makes censors jobs easier. These being largely pioneer worlds, the series is kind of a space Western - cowboys in space so to speak. The series was canceled early, but it earned a fanatical following and spun off a feature length movie "Serenity" which gave closure to the series' militant fan base.

BRITISH/CANADIAN/AUSTRALIAN BAKER'S DOZEN:

Foyle's War - DI Christopher Foyle and Samantha Stewart

 

Foyle's War -  British detective inspector solves crimes in WWII southern England. Absorbing look at England's law enforcement during the war. 

Sherlock - Benedict Cummerbach (Dr. Strange) and Martin Freeman (The Hobbit) are Holmes and Watson in one of the best versions of Conan-Doyle's ground-breaking detective.

All Creatures Great and Small - Wonderful series based on the James Herriot novels about his life as a country vet in the Yorkshire Dales. Stars Christopher Timothy and Robert Hardy.

Father Brown (both iterations) - There are two versions of GK Chesterton's priest/detective Father Brown. The earliest starred veteran British actor Kenneth More and the second with Mark Williams (Mr. Weasley in Harry Potter). Local detectives resent his meddling in their cases, especially because he always solves them.

Rosemary & Thyme - Felicity Kendall and Pam Ferris star as gardeners who every time they take a landscaping job, somebody gets murdered. Lots of fun.

Good Neighbors/The Good Life - Tom and Barbara Good (Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall) abandon corporate life to pursue self-sufficiency in their suburban home in Surbiton, London to the dismay of their high toned neighbors (Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington)
 
Miss Fischer's Murder Mysteries - Phryney Fischer, an independent, thoroughly modern lady sleuth cuts a swath across Melbourne's society in the late 1920s, fighting injustice, armed with a pearl-handled pistol, keen eye and razor-sharp wit.

Murdoch Mysteries - Yannick Bisson stars as the handsome Toronto detective William Murdoch in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Very Canadian as the series takes credit for having invented key American technologies and police procedures well ahead of their American cousins. Murdoch, a devout Catholic raised by nuns, brings his rigid sense of right and wrong to the messy business of law enforcement.

Horatio Hornblower

Horatio Hornblower - A series of A&E movies about CS Forester's British Sea Captain. They never finished the series although the 1950s Gregory Peck version does take up where A&E left off. Welch actor Ioan Gruffud stars and takes us from green seasick ensign to inventive captain who is based on famed British Captain Thomas Cochran, considered by many to be the most brilliant tactician in the British Navy during the age of sail. Hornblower notably never fights Americans directly which saves him for American audiences.

 

Fawlty Towers - John Cleese and Prunella Scales star as Torquay inn-keepers. Cleese delivers his frenetic style to the role as Basil Fawlty. Scales plays the perfect foil for the over-stuffed Basil as his wife, Sybil. The series didn't last nearly long enough but worth every second. "Basil the Rat" is my favorite episode.

Dr Who - The new series with new Dr. Who's rises above it's campy roots, although the Daleks do retain their toilet plunger appendages. I understand the new season trots out a female Dr. Who. Well why not? The series is hardly to be taken seriously. If you can't loosen up enough to enjoy it, the Dalek's will happily  "EXTERMINATE!"

Anne of Green Gables

Anne of Green Gables (not Anne with an E) - This is the 1985 series, not the dismal "woke" Netflix version that I stopped watching when every other character turned out to be gay. The PBS Wonderworks mini-series about Lucy Maud Montgomery's heroine was faithful to the original and Megan Follows as Anne is the perfect Anne. Colleen Dewhurst as Marilla and Richard Farnsworth as Matthew were inspired casting. Montgomery was a preacher's wife and likely would have been horrified with what Netflix has done to her Anne. My kids and I used to binge watch Anne on weekends and get all misty and dampen some hankies. I listed it here because it was filmed on Prince Edward Island, Canada.

NOTE:

I started out with the first 13 American series, then added another dozen from our fellow English-speaking countries, because I like the often-lovely stuff they put out. There are a couple of shows that are an acquired taste on either list, but for the most part these on this list are easy to like. You may have to hunt them down online, but they're well worth a nice binge. I'd pack a lunch. Nachos would be perfect.

© 2021 by Tom King

My Top Thirty Two Christmas Movies

Christmas movies are our annual anti-humbug holiday treat for my wife and I. We also have Halloween movies, 4th of July movies and St. Patrick's Day movies.  Here's the list for Christmas. It started out as a top ten list but then it grew to 20 then 25 and now 32. I can't help it, they keep making new ones. So, in no particular order.

1. It's A Wonderful Life (Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed sleeper hit with Lionel Barrymore and the delightful Henry Travers)
   
2. White Christmas:(Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. Perfect!)
3. Scrooge (Albert Finney)
4. Scrooged (Bill Murray)
5. The Christmas Lodge (With Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG1 and Erin Karpluk) 
6. November Christmas (Hallmark I think - it's a shameless tear jerker but sweet)
   
7. Christmas Vacation (Chevy Chase classic)
8. Home Alone 1 and 2 (Kevin manages to have not one but 2 engaging Christmas Adventures)
9. Silent Night (Linda Hamilton as a German mom in WWII who entertains soldiers from both sides at Christmas)
10. Christmas With The Kranks (Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dan Ackroyd, Cheech Marin) A Steven King story if you can believe it - very funny though.
    
11. The Santa Clause (Tim Allen - all three)
    
12. Joyeux Noel (The WWI Christmas miracle)
    
13. A Christmas Story (Ralphie angles for an official Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock)
    
14. The Polar Express (Based on Chris Van Allsburg's ethereal picture book)
    
15. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Jim Carey)
16. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Boris Karloff)
17. A Charlie Brown Christmas (It's a TV cartoon but then so is the Grinch with Karloff)
    
18. Miracle on 34th Street (Natalie Woods is precious)
    
19. A Christmas Carol (Jim Carey - animated lunacy from Disney)
20. The Christmas Card  (Great romantic Hallmark flick)
    
21. Fallen Angel  (Gary Sinise - not what you'd expect)
    
22. Die Hard (Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia, Alexander Gudenov) It's not Christmas until Hans Gruber falls off the Nakatomi Towers.
    
23. Mixed Nuts (Steve Martin, Madeleine Kahn, Robert Klein, Rob Reiner) Almost forgotten Steve Martin flick that's fun to watch
24. Holiday Inn (Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire compete for the girl)
25. The Holiday (Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz, Jude Law and Jack Black) 
26. The Christmas Ornament (Jewel Staits, Kellie Martin, Cameron Matheson)
27. The Christmas Train (Dermot Mulroney, Danny Glover, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Joan Cusack)
28. Mrs. Miracle James Van der Beek, Erin Karpluk, Doris Roberts) and the lovely sequel Call Me Mrs. Miracle (Doris Roberts, Jewel Staite, Eric Johnson, Loren Holly)
29. Love Actually (Bill Nighy, Colin Firth, Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Martin Freeman, Keira Knightly and a host of others) Warning with this one. If you can find a version that tones down the language and brief nudity great, otherwise send the kids to bed.
    
30. 12 Dates of Christmas (Amy Smart, Mark-Paul Gosselaar)
31. Christmas in the Smokies (Sarah Lancaster, Barry Corbin, Alan Powell) 
32. Crazy for Christmas: ( Andrea Roth, Howard Hesseman, Jason Spevack, Yannick Bisson ) Shannon, a single mother, is forced to chauffeur a wealthy eccentric around town on Christmas Eve while he gives away cash to complete strangers. When a reporter pursues the story, a new romance blossoms.

There you go. There are some that are peripheral Christmas movies like Trading Places and Lethal Weapon that I left off the list, even though I included the first Die Hard which was by no means a strictly Christmas movie. I also hesitated to include Mel Gibson's deeply strange Fat Man which though the missus likes it (she has a thing about Mel) It might be a kind of disturbing approach to the Santa Claus myth. Any, you've been warned.

 

I would include links but these things move around so much and sometimes a selfish TV channel or streaming channel grabs one of them and hogs it up for themselves. So Google these and watch them where you can. Youtube has a bunch of them so you might go there first. Tubi and Crackle have some of them every year. In the subscription services, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, Friendly TV and such will have various assortments. Sometimes you can find the rare ones on the Pirate Bay, just make sure you are careful and respect the copyrights involved before you download. ;-)

Merry comin' up on Christmas!

© 2020, 21, 22, 23 by Tom King

Sci-Fi Series Gone Too Soon

Why doesn't more good sci-fi survive on TV?

TV networks suck at managing science fiction shows. There is a reason. They keep hiring "professional" television writers to write SF shows for one thing. They need to hire good sci-fi writers, otherwise the product winds up looking like "CSI Goes to Space" or "The Goldmans on the Moon".  That said, there were some really good attempts at solid, magic free science fiction in the past 10 or 20 years. Some succeeded, but a surprising number of really good efforts failed miserably or succeeded right up until they were canceled by a surprisingly thick-headed gang of network execs.


1. Firefly - 'nuff said.
2. Journeyman - I liked the direction that "Journeyman" was going with a poor guy inadvertently traveling in time and trying to figure out what in the world was going on.
3. Crusoe with Sean Bean in the title role wasn't science fiction, but captured some of the "stranger in a strange land" flavor of really good SF.
4. Terra Nova - I was just getting into the dinosaurs and time travel series and boom!  Canceled.
5. Flash Forward - by this time I should have smelled a rat, but nope. Turned on the TV one night and it was gone right in the middle of the story.
6. Invasion - Really should have seen the end coming with that one.
7. Defying Gravity was pretty interesting. So, of course - poof and gone!
8. New Amsterdam - about an immortal New Yorker was fascinating and the kinda sorta got to end it, but it ended way too soon.
9. Forever, which explored a similar theme of an immortal in New York was even more interesting and I've loved Ioan Gruffud ever since Hornblower. Either Forever or New Amsterdam was better than "Highlander" which got two movies and a series more than it deserved.
10. Jericho, the post-apocalyptic series set in a small Midwest town, died far too soon too despite a fan revolt. Part of the campaign was to deliver massive quantities of nuts to the CBS studios - an homage to the line Gerald McRaney delivered, borrowing from General Macauliffe at Bastogne. The fans made a mistake having nuts delivered to CBS in protest. They should have brought slingshots and pelted the execs when they tried to get to their cars in the evening.

Network television doesn't do great stories anymore - at least not with any consistency, though sometimes they do accidentally. Grimm was a good show in a bad time spot and now it's gone too soon. This year saw the end of more than one series I liked in favor of some "Twerking with the Stars" or "Let's Make You a Star", or "Lie, Cheat and Betray Your Way to Big Money" kind of unreality show. Cheap to produce and appeal heavily to the sub 100 IQ crowd. 

The problem with intelligent sci-fi is that it only appeals to about 20% or less of the TV watching demographic - those who possess an IQ somewhat better than even money. They are expensive to produce and until the arrival of the cheap-but-great special effects George Lucas and Steven Spielberg promised us would come our way soon, they'll likely not rise much above the Star Trek level if that far. They even canceled the very interesting "Enterprise" after a relatively short run. There were complaints that it was too cerebral for Trekkies.

I don't expect any long run sci-fi to make it on TV, even on the Sci-fi channel, which used to do some really great shows. I was a Stargate-SG1 junkie for better than a decade, what with reruns and all. The later iterations took themselves far too seriously though, lost the irreverent tone that the Deluise brothers and Richard Dean Anderson brought to the original and each post SG-1 outing had a progressively shorter run. 

If I were Bill Gates kind of rich, I'd create a network and buy up all those canceled shows and run new seasons of them along with the old. Firefly would be my first purchase, of course. There would be no wrestling or reality shows.  Just great stories. The one new series I'd do right away would be the Poul Anderson stories of space robber baron Nicholas Van Rinj - trader to the stars. What a terrific character and what a dense pile of rich stories to work from.

In the meantime, I haven't read nearly enough books yet, which is where TV should be mining for stories. Every time a "professional" television writer tries to write science fiction, somewhere a puppy dies.

© 2017 by Tom King

How Many of These Movie Quotes Can You Identify?

We really don't have any idea how many movies we've stuffed away in our already over-crowded brains. It would probably astound you the number of hours you've spent in front of a screen watching films.  Don't believe me?  How many of these movies can you identify just from a quick quote from the movie. Caution: this quiz will be graded. You'll need paper and pencil or a blank word processor document to record your answers. This is not multiple choice (I am an English teacher).

1.  Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
2.  Go ahead. Make my day. 
3.  My Mama always said, 'Life was like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get.'
4. Where we're going we don't need roads...
5.  “But without my voice, how can I…”
   “You’ll have your looks, your pretty face… and don’t underestimate the importance of body language.”
6.  “I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, I must first change myself. Fish are friends, not food."
7.  Hey, I know a joke! A squirrel walks up to a tree and says, “I forgot to store acorns for the winter and now I am dead.” Ha! It is funny because the squirrel gets dead.
8.  “Uh-uh! Don’t you think about running off doing no daring-do. We’ve been planning this dinner for two months!”
   “The public is in danger!”
   “My evening’s in danger!”
   “You tell me where my suit is, woman! We are talking about the greater good!”
   “‘Greater good’? I am your wife! I’m the greatest good you are ever gonna get!”
9.  "Aw, you're an action figure! You are a child's plaything!"
   "You are a sad little man and you have my pity."
10. "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
11.  Attaboy, Clarence.!
12.  It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage.
13.  I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
14. "We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!”
15.  "I'll have what she's having."
16.  "Are you crying? There's no crying! There's no crying in baseball!"
17.   I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.
18.   Here's looking at you, kid.
19.  After all, tomorrow is another day!
20.  Houston, we have a problem.
21.   Hasta la vista, baby.
22. "So, no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave." 
23.  I feel the need - the need for speed!
24.   Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.
25.  "Surely you can't be serious." - "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.

Groundhog Day - Bill Murray

Did you get them all? Check your answers below and give yourself four points for every one you got correct. 

1. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
2. Sudden Impact
3. Forrest Gump
4. Back to the Future
5. Little Mermaid
6. Finding Nemo

7. Up!
8. The Incredibles
9. Toy Story
10. The Wizard of Oz
11. It's a Wonderful Life
12. Raiders of the Lost Ark
13. Star Wars
14. Treasure of the Sierra Madres
15. When Harry Met Sally
16.  A League of Their Own
17. The Godfather
18. Casablanca
19. Gone With the Wind
20. Apollo XIII
21. Terminator 2
22. Serenity
23. Top Gun
24. Dead Poet's Society
25. Airplane

Score:  Multiply the number you got right by 4

0-59:    F (You are a person who has an actual life)
60-60:  D (You read books)
70-79:  C (You watch a lot of sports)
80-89:  B (You probably have kids and have some of the Disney flicks memorized)
90-100: A (You really need to get out in the fresh air and get some sun)

* I'm not saying how many of those I would have gotten. I'm supposed to have a degree in English and we English majors find movies beneath us. We're supposed to sit by fires, smoke pipes and read 3000 year-old heroic poetry for fun.

© 2017 by Tom King

John Williams Says His Tunes Aren't Memorable

There have been a spate of articles recently complaining that movie scores are not very memorable anymore. Even the mighty John Williams has called his own Star Wars Score "not very memorable". One wonders if these guys just have seen too many movies or at least aren't looking at the ones that John Williams wrote the score for.  Here's a sampling of John's movie tunes. Most of these you'd likely recognize right off the bat. Others you'll swear you've heard it somewhere before and will only need slight prompting to remember.

Here are some links to samples from John Williams' movies. See if these tunes are memorable.

The Rare Breed - James Stewart, Maureen O'Hara

Jaws - Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss

Star Wars - Mark Hamel, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Alec Guinness

Close Encounters of the Third Kind - Richard Dreyfuss, Terri Garr

Superman - Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder

Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen

E.T. The Extraterrestrial: Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore

Hook: Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman

Far and Away: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman

Home Alone: Macauley Culkin, Joe Pesci

Harry Potter: Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson

Saving Private Ryan: Tom Hanks, Matt Damon

As you can see, John's tunes are, in fact, kind of memorable. And I left off several dozen other familiar movie themes and his Olympic Games Themes.  When you hear the songs, you remember them. That's what I call memorable. So lighten up with the humility, John. You're good at what you do. I figure you're probably going to be right up there with Mozart and Bach given the depth of your work.

© 2017 by Tom King

Top Seven Sci-Fi TV Series for People Who Don't Take Sci-Fi So Seriously

A lot of Sci-Fi TV series take themselves very very seriously. It's great if you just need to be serious all the time. Me, I like my science fiction with a touch of humor. So here's my list of the greatest TV science fiction series that didn't take themselves too seriously. If you have some others you'd like to add, let me know. So here's the list in no particular order:

1. Firefly - Okay, there is at least one series I put in order. Joss Whedon's epic sci-fi series was canceled far too soon. It was quirky, funny and the characters were wonderful. It puzzled some people who were expecting Star Trek's tidy socialist federation and fuzzy collectivist economy. Instead, Firefly creates an interplanetary Wild West frontier in conflict with a powerful collectivist government and follows a band of smugglers making a dubious living out among the frontier planets.
2. Star Trek the Original Series - What I liked about the original Star Trek vs the later versions
   
   was Shatner's lighter touch as captain. He never took things as seriously as the other captains. And he was a little bit randy too, which made him more interesting.
3.  Stargate SG1 - Colonel Jack O'Neill and his merry band didlots of serious stuff, but Jack had a cock-eyed view of everything and quick, dry sense of humor. The series was a favorite early effort by the SyFy channel back when it was still the Sci-Fi channel. Dom Deluise's boys were heavily involved and Dom himself made an appearance. One of my favorite episodes was the one where the alien was hired as a consultant for a TV show called "Wormhole Extreme" which was a parody of SG1. Really funny. It gave the show a human quality and gave us more than a few laughs.
4. Eureka - Another Sci-Fi channel original about a town full of geniuses doing work for the Department of Defense and the sheriff who tries to hold things together as the town's denizen's variously try to blow themselves up one day after another. The show is funny, poignant and smart and I was sorry to see it come to an end.
5. Warehouse 13 - An interesting Sci-Fi channel series about a secret warehouse where all the magical and cursed items of the world were kept. Again, the team that took care of the artifacts were funny and serious and grumpy and chirpy and got into the most bizarre situations you could imagine. The show was fun and fantasy and yet overlapped on occasion with the hard science fiction world of Eureka. I loved the strange world they inhabited. 
6. Chuck - While not exactly science fiction, this spy out ofwater series had a lot of science fictional elements to it and also had that sense of light humor and likeable characters that earned it the same kind of fiercely devoted fans the rest of the series in this list earned. 
7. Red Dwarf - A blatantly sarcastic sci-fi series as only theBrits can manages. They seem to have the market cornered on making open fun of science fiction. I didn't include any of the other sci-fi comedy TV series the British do as this list is only about light-heartedly serious science fiction. My daughter and I used to watch Red Dwarf on Saturday nights. It's kind of a sentimental favorite of mine.

What are your favorites? I know I left out a lot of people's favorite SF, but this was a very personal list and so I limited it to the ones that made me smile. Did I forget anything because I like to have lists of ten or twelve, so I have room to add more.  Just make your case in the comment section below.


© 2016 by Tom King

My Top Ten Favorite Funny Songs

When you sing like I do, you go for funny. No one wants to hear a love song from a voice that sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.  I therefore borrowed the Richard Harris talk-singing technique, the only thing that worked for people with raggedy voices before we got those sound systems that automatically correct your pitch if you get lost along the way.  I just love those things, but it does seem like cheating somehow.  So I've always kept an assortment of funny songs in my song bag, though, just in case I was playing guitar and someone mistook me for a singer. 

So, here, in no particular order, are my top ten favorite funny or novelty songs (with links to examples of redentions of same) designed to make you a wildly popular entertainer with children and drunks.

1. The Boa Constrictor Song - Shel Silverstein's masterful combination of horror, humor and general grossitude. Extremely popular at summer camps, day care centers and old folks homes. Shel also wrote two other popular novelty tunes - "A Boy Named Sue" and "Cover of the Rolling Stone" - as well as a string of popular childrens' poem books beginning with "Where the Sidewalk Ends" which won an award or two. The version here is by Shel Silverstein himself  and includes several of his other kids songs as well.
2. Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road - Loudan Wainright III's paean to noxious road kill always gets a sing-along started. I'm not sure why, but children and drunks seem to like singing the world stinkin' very loudly for some reason. Here the inimitable Mr. Wainright sings his classic song live in concert.
3. That's How the Yodel was Born - Riders in the Sky's Ranger Doug demonstrates the high and lonesome sound made by an unfortunate cowboy who landed a bit far forward on the saddle of his bucking bronc on this painful song. In this instance, yodeling will really make you cringe once you hear how it came about.
4. Apeman - The Kinks did some really interesting and fun songs during their erratic career. This one was my favorite. It's not screamingly hilarious, but it is a lot of fun to sing. This version is an in-concert recording.
5. Boomer Johnson - I first heard this cowboy poem about a murderous range cook on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio show. I have a tape around here somewhere and got the words and music from that. I found mostly recitations. This version uses a slightly different tune than I do, but you get the idea. Stick around through all the verses for the most satisfying ending I ever heard for a song about a bad man.
6. When I Was a Dinosaur - This fun song is by the duo, Trout Fishing in America. Keith Grimwood the short and substantial standup bass player and Ezra Idlet, the tall lanky guitar player play eclectic folk/rock hits to audiences of all ages. They're one of the few night club acts that can get away with playing Teddy Bear's Picnic at 2am to a bunch of drunks and get a wild round of applause. This song is always a hit with 5 year olds. 
7. Waltzing With Bears - My daughter and I used to sing this song together. It's a classic kids song and went immediately to folk status and collected several dozen new verses along the way and the beauty is that there is always room for new and ever more scurrilous verses if you care to add some.
8. Mad Dogs and Englishmen - This classic bit of parlor humor was written by the inimitable Noel Coward. The faster you sing it the more effective this tongue tangler is.  The link shows Noel singing a lightning round version that takes the breath away.
9. All I Want is a Proper Cup of Coffee - This version is by my favorite duo, Eric and Keith of Trout Fishing in America. This is another one of those that gets faster and faster and challenges you to keep your tongue untangled.
10. I'm My Own Grandpa - This horrible old song is the chronicle of backwoods marriage run amuck. It's appropriate to end this list with a version of this song performed in riotous fashion by the Muppets.  Keep in mind that circumstances laid out in this song could actually happen all quite legally and given the current run of May/December weddings out there, it could happen again.

 There are a whole lot of other songs out there that could be added to this list. This is just my personal top ten - the ones I've learned how to play. If you have some favorites of your own, please add them to the comments section below.

© 2013 by Tom King

The Best Television Series Ever - There's Only One in This List

Someone over on Hubpages asked: 
If you could revive (or extend) any TV series of the past 50 years, which would it be, and why?

It took me about 1 second to come up with an answer.

"Firefly". 

No question about it. If I were asked to name the best TV series ever, my choice would be the same.

Retired after just 13 episodes, this Joss Whedon sci-fi gem, was badly handled by Fox, largely because Fox didn't understand its audience. Firefly only ran 13 episodes and Fox bounced it around the schedule so much nobody was really able to find it. Those that did were hooked on it. After Fox managed to mishandle the movie version, they pretty much buried it so it could never be revived.

Too bad. Firefly had the potential to draw a lot of sci-fi viewers that had long ago been turned off by Star Trek's inexplicable pie-in-the-stars smooshy liberalism after Captain James Tiberius Kirk retired.

Firefly was a gritty look at humans once again on the frontier; the space western motif was perfect and made sense to hard sci-fi fans. The lack of encounters with big-headed rubber aliens cleared out most of the horror movie sci-fi fans. Firefly was thinking man's science fiction and had more people had time to find it and watch a few episodes, they'd have been hooked. Many who have watched the series on the Syfy Channel or one of the Science Channel marathons or borrowed some Firefly groupie's DVD set have become hard core fans.

Firefly fans are more fanatic than Ron Paul supporters. The cast was perfect and every one of them has said they'd do the series again in a heartbeat. Nathan Fillion, Firefly's Captain Malcolm Reynolds, still manages to scatter a few Firefly references into his new series, Castle. He and the rest of the crew do appearances at conventions and to a person call the Firefly series one of the best, if not THE best acting work they've ever done.

If you have not seen it, jump onto a Sci channel marathon some weekend when they run the whole series and the movie back to back in one day.

You will not regret the day wasted unless you're an ignorant boob and then, don't worry. Fox still has plenty of reality TV shows where they eat worms and stuff. You'll be alright.

Tom

Who's Your Favorite Conservative Science Fiction Author?

As a conservative, I find it almost impossible to stomach some of the leftist nonsense that comes out of the science fiction genre.  I grew up on sci-fi as a kid, but was lucky to have found a wide range of political ideology in what I read.  Some rang true to what I had learned in history and sociology (often in spite of my history and sociology teachers).  Some did not.  I remember being drawn to elements in science fiction that seem to be a recurring theme - even in the works of writers who probably see themselves as ardent progressives. Liberty and freedom of the individual is one of these themes and the only way to pit liberty and freedom against an adversary is to pit it against a believable one.

What you get are sorely confused people writing about the heroic, rugged individualist fighting against the evil corporate dominated governments, insect hive minded aliens, brutal tyrants and evil forces bent on world domination. And yet, how many of them go out and vote for political parties that would increase the size power and intrusiveness of government? Sci-fi writers flirt constantly with the idea of a government by the wise (and let's face it most sci-fi writers consider themselves among the "wise"). Such a government, if managed by the proper folk, the pure nobles, the great wizards or wise men or sorceresses, would manage everything so all the regular people would be fat and happy and satisfied with their lot in life.

But it never really works that way does it? 

We never can quite get away from the obvious defects of such a system. You'd have had to be blind not to have seen the horrors of unfettered communism once the Iron Curtain collapsed in the late 80s.  Turns out communism was far worse than we ever knew.  Even the Chinese have realized the problems with communism and are moving away from it, retaining the authoritarian bits, of course. The Chinese always preferred their governments authoritarian for some reason.  I suspect preserving an authoritarian government machinery has always been the point of progressivism, socialism and communism anyway. Many SF authors point out this problem that authority has in co-existing with freedom in their novels, movies and stories - sometimes unwittingly. That's why you get leftist writers writing the most damning things about big governments.

My top ten favorite SF authors whose works ring true for me include:

1. Poul Anderson:  Anderson is not only a scientist, but a student of history as well. His future cultures recognize the problems with bureaucracies, corporate or government and his stories deal with the impact of such repressive societies on men and women with brains, creativity and a love of freedom. The man almost preaches sometimes. He produced a steady stream of characters like notorious trader to the stars, Nicholas Van Rinjh, Dominic Flandry, David Falkyn and a host of others provide an almost endless stream of reading - the man was a voracious writer. If you're a conservative/libertarian like me, you'll find yourself nodding in agreement as you read his finely crafted stories that weave history, anthropology, sociology and science into a seamless whole. 
2. Orson Scott Card: Orson sits on the outside of mainstream science
   fiction. A Mormon like Glenn Beck, Card is not shy about his political opinions. His masterpiece, "Ender's Game" is on the commandant of the Marine Corps' recommended reading list for Marine officers. While, I'm not particularly a fan of his fantasy work, his hard science fiction is a delight and I hope he never runs out of Ender sequels.
3. Dr. Jerry Pournelle:  You probably know this very intelligent man from his work with Larry Niven, but he has quite a few novels of his own. He, like Poul Anderson, believes that space exploration is the royal road to freedom for man and has long promoted the idea that if we focus on the stars, it will reduce the problems we have here. He opposed the Gulf Wars saying that if we spent the money developing nuclear and other energy technologies we could tell the Arabs to go drink their own oil and not have to meddle with them.  His SF work will not make you cringe.

4. C.S. Lewis:  A surprising number of people don't know that Lewis wrote a science fantasy trilogy. The books are "Out of the Silent Planet", "Perelandra" and "That Hideous Strength". His fantasy series "The Chronicles of Narnia" have been made into a series of movies. Lewis was a firm opponent of socialism and wrote several fiery condemnations of the creeping "nanny state" in Britain. His SF work, while implausible scientifically given what we now know about Mars and Venus, is a wonderful philosophical treatise on the consequences of the lust for power.  His very funny "Screwtape Letters" is a brilliant take on demons and the devil. 
5. Michael Flynn:  I got into Flynn after stumbling on his first book, "Firestar". Firestar depicts an independent woman, a corporate magnate, who has a childhood fear of an asteroid striking the Earth and wants to see a system put in place to protect the planet. Tired of waiting for a foot-dragging government to do things, she starts her own school system that trains up kids to be astronauts and scientists in her own privately funded space program. In this, Flynn anticipated the power of private commercial space companies to innovate their way to space out in front of plodding government sponsored space efforts.  The series definitely leans conservative in its disdain for bureaucracies. Whatever political views Flynn may espouse privately, he gets me as a reader for that.
6. 
   J.R.R. Tolkien:  While more strictly a fantasy than a science fiction writer, I include him on the principle that if the Syfy Channel can show horror movies and wrestling matches, I can include Tolkien in this list. I like that, while his novels are full of kings and nobles, its the small fry that count. Big powerful forces in his novel, when they are doing as they should be doing, serve to support the meek who are the ones who really make the difference in the end.
7. Michael Crichton:  If you're looking for a smart writer, pick one that finished med school and chose to become a science fiction author. His brilliant "State of Fear" is a scathing indictment of the global warming scam that has upset more than a few of his Hollywood colleagues. We will miss his intelligent observations about science medicine and technology. I bet he had some doozies left to write.

8. Daniel da Cruz:  Daniel didn't write a whole lot of books and he's not well know, but worth discovering. He spent most of his career as a journalist and general man about the world. In the 80s, however, he wrote one of my favorite sci-fi series of all time.  The first entitled, "The Ayes of Texas" takes place during the Carter years when the US is being sold piecemeal to the Soviets. A charismatic Texas governor and billionaire inventor join forces to lead Texas out of the union and re-establish the Republic of Texas, prompting a war with Russia. In a classic shootout, the upgraded Battleship Texas dukes it out with a Russian Fleet that attacks Houston and finishes it off in convincing Texas Navy fashion. In the second book, "Texas on the Rocks" the inventor's son brings an iceberg to Corpus Christi and supplies water to a drought-stricken US Midwest and fights off assorted villains that want to bring down the fledgling Republic of Texas. In the last book, Texas Triumphant", our hero drills a tunnel from Texas to Moscow and sets off an unusual and non-lethal bomb that destroys the Soviet Union once and for all. The solution that wins the war is one of the most original weapons of war I've ever heard of. If da Cruz had written nothing else, these books set him as one of my favorites in the SF genre.  Every Texan should own the set.
9. 
   Robert A. Heinlein:   It's fascinating to me that one of the most hard-shell conservative sci-fi writers of all time is also responsible for the science fiction book that was embraced most warmly by the hippie counter-culture of the 60's - "Stranger in a Strange Land".  One of the "Big Three" of science fiction along with Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov, Heinlein was one of the first to push the genre into the mainstream.  Heinlein's work addressed the themes of individual liberty, self reliance and the obligation individuals owe their societies.  He also wrote controversial works that examined the influence of organized religion on culture and government and the repression of nonconformist thought by governments and societies.  Because he touched on so many themes, it was difficult to pin down exactly what his views were politically sometimes.  His very conservative 1959 book "Starship Troopers" examines an interstellar military at war. Troopers infuriated the left when it was written. The leftists finally took a little revenge in 1997's movie version of the book.  The movie converted Heinlein's more likeable and humane Earth government into a white-people-only cartoonish Facist state; something it never was in the books.   
   
10. Frank Herbert -  Best known for his seminal series "Dune", Frank Herbert viewed his
    
    troubling future universe through definitely conservative eyes. His heroes battle the system and it's collection of nobles, managers, emperors and unions with a surprisingly altruistic disdain for inherited titles and blood rights. Herbert shows us a universe governed by hereditary insiders and challenged by a series of messianic heroes, who mange to give the governing elites more than one black eye in the process. He's not the first sci-fi author to challenge the kind of unrealistic progressive pipe dream universes those dreamed up by the later Star Trek guys. By the way, has anyone ever figured out how The Federation pays its Star Fleet personnel and do they all make the same amount or does everybody just use that machine that makes coffee to make anything they want.  Herbert had it right. It takes a messiah to break up a hegemony of "leaders" intent on managing everyone's lives for their own fun and profit. He had it exactly right!

Now it's your turn. Leave a comment below telling us a sci-fi author that warmed the cockles of your conservative heart. I'm looking for new reading material.

Tom King

If You Love Series Fiction - 12 Great Reads

My Dozen Favorite Book Series

(c) 2011 by Tom King

If you've come to the end of the Harry Potter books and you need another book to read, but you want one that will be with you for the long haul, what you want is a book series.  Have I got some winners for you. These books take you deep into the lives of some characters you will love. If you're a voracious reader, you've probably read most of these. If you're new to series fiction, however, then you are in for a treat.  To wit - my top ten book series............es. Oh, to heck with the grammar.  On with the story......

1. "The Chronicles of Narnia" by CS Lewis.  I discovered this gem in college in a children's literature class I took for my teaching certificate.  We were supposed to read "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by Friday.  I read all seven in chronological order (not the order of writing which I recommend by the way) and was finished to my regret by Thursday night. Lewis' highly readable and engaging Christian allegory chronicles the dealings between eight English schoolchildren, Digory, Polly, Peter, Susan, Edmund, Lucy, Eustace and Jill and a powerful lion king called Aslan in the land of Narnia from the Lamp Post to Cair Paravel. Narnia keeps summoning the kids to itself via magic items like horns,wardrobes, rings and pictures from train stations, back bedrooms and holes in walls. The books carry you on to the end of the world itself where Narnia and Earth become one. It is a lovely trip The books in logical order are:

• The Magician's Nephew
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• The Horse and His Boy
• Prince Caspian
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
• The Silver Chair
• The Last Battle

2.  "Horatio Hornblower" by CS Forester.  It is a complete and total accident that my two favorite series are by authors with the initials CS. The C and S both stand for different names altogether, but that doesn't matter. I stumbled on these after watching a Gregory Peck movie on the late show one night. I didn't know that Captain Horatio Hornblower was the subject of a series of books. The novels trace the career of an awkward young commoner midshipman, without advantage or patron who rises in the British Navy on brains, nerve and an innate understanding of just what it takes to be a captain. I'm told Gene Rodenberry studied Capt. Hornblower in designing all the captains in the Star Trek series. He could not have picked a better character study in leadership.  The books, again in chronological order, not the order in which they were written are:

• Mr. Midshipman Hornblower
• Lieutenant Hornblower
• Hornblower and the Hotspur
• Hornblower and the Atropos
• Hornblower During the Crisis
• Beat to Quarters
• Flying Colors
• A Ship of the Line
• Commodore Hornblower
• Lord Hornblower
• Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies

3. "The Polesotechnic League" by Poul Anderson.  

I discovered Poul Anderson early in my science fiction reading. Nicholas Van Rinjh, a recurrent character in the series is a fat Dutch trader who is wildly wealthy, a thorn in the side to the authoritarians in the League and a genius at horse-trading with alien cultures. His purpose in life seems to be to figure out how to get everyone to play nice so he (and they) can make a little money. Van Rinjh is the ultimate capitalist.  These are most of the books and story collections in the Polesotechnic Universe:

• War of the Wing-Men
• Trader to the Stars
• The Trouble Twisters
• Satan's World
• The Earth Book of Stormgate
• Mirkheim
• The People of the Wind 

 4. "The Time Patrol" by Poul Anderson.  I keep coming back to Anderson. His Time Patrol series is more of a psychological, sociological and historical study as it is impacted by future science. Manson Everard, an out of work ex-soldier/engineer answers a cryptic want ad and finds himself taking a job that sends him to the Cretaceous Era for basic training and up and down the time-line as an unattached agent and Time Patrolman, guarding the timeline against interference by future time travelers. The historical detail is breath-taking and the situations are mind-bending. I recommend buying the collections so you get all the stories in the series:

• Time Patrol
• Brave to be a King
• Gibralter Falls
• The Only Game in Town
• Delenda Est
• Ivory and Apes and Peacocks
• The Sorrow of Odin the Goth
• Star of the Sea
• The Year of the Ransom
• The Shield of Time
• Death and the Knight

The shorter novels above have been collected in "The Time Patrol" or "Annals of the Time Patrol". If you love history and science fiction, this series gives you both with a taciturn hero and great back stories.

5. Robots, Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov.  Asimov built these three series over decades of his science fiction career, then came back after a lengthy hiatus and wrote the ending in which he connected the three series into one long chain. Asimov explores the idea that robots and/or smart people can "take care" of the human race over long periods of time and keep the galaxy from going to hell in a handbasket. It's a progressive fantasy, but I have to give it to Asimov, he does point out the flaws in the concept quite nicely. Asimov is himself a scientist with four or five Ph.D.s and an exhaustive collection of dirty limericks. He takes a long look at the human race and how our creations may one day wind up our masters. While not as much fun as Anderson's rough and tumble capitalist universe, it's a fascinating look at the possibilities and dangers of scientistific meddling.  Hint - Asimov comes down on the side of science.  Here they are in roughly the order I'd read them:

• Robot Visions (Includes the original "I, Robot") with inventor Susan Calvin and introducing Elijah Bailey and his partner, R. Daneel Olivaw
• The Caves of Steel (Bailey and Olivaw)
• The Naked Sun (Bailey and Olivaw)
• The Robots of Dawn (Bailey and Olivaw)
• Robots and Empire (Last with Bailey and Olivaw)
• The Current of Space (first of the Empire Series)
• The Stars, Like Dust (Empire)
• Pebble in the Sky (Empire)
• Prelude to Foundation (Empire and Foundation - Hari Seldon)
• Forward the Foundation (Foundation - Hari Seldon)
• Foundations Fear (by Gregory Benford - Foundation, and Hari Seldon)
• Foundation and Chaos (by Greg Bear - Foundation, Hari Seldon, R. Olivaw)
• Foundation's Triumph (by David Brin - Foundation, Hari Seldon, R. Daneel Olivaw)
• Foundation (Foundation - Hari Seldon)
• Foundation and Empire (Foundation)
• Second Foundation (Foundation)
• Foundations Edge (Foundation)
• Foundation and Earth (Foundation and R. Daneel Olivaw)

The ending is a stunner. Save for the three editions not by Asimov himself, the series is tight, a smooth read and masterfully plotted. I've not read all the new stuff yet, but most of it and am collecting original editions to complete my set.  Isaac will be missed.

6.  The Ender Saga by Orson Scott Card is sixth because I'm more or less writing in order of discovery. Ender's Game is a stunning novel about the misuse of brilliant children. It leaves us with no clear answers about the morality of it, because, after all, the Earth is saved and the pupils soon become the masters in this brilliant series and it's take on how to effectively respond to bullying is disturbing, if effective. The book was so ahead of itself that it's taken 30 years for the movie industry to figure out the technology to make it into a film. Here's the more or less chronological list as it now stands:

• Ender's Game
• Ender's Shadow
• A War of Gifts
• Ender in Exile
• Shadow of the Hegemon
• Shadow Puppets
• Shadow of the Giant
• Shadows in Flight (soon to be published)
• Speaker for the Dead
• Xenocide
• Children of the Mind

7. "The Dragon Riders of Pern" by Anne McCaffrey.   McCaffrey is a relentless serial writer. It's like science fiction meets romance novel in some ways. Her female characters are strong and well drawn. She can be a little corny. The novels of Pern are an easy read, big fat books and a fun alternative to television and you're not likely to run out of reading material any time soon. Once every four years, the colony world of Pern is visited by a space born rain of fire called "thread". Genetically bread fire-breathing dragons and their riders burn the thread up in the sky to prevent wholesale destruction of the colonists below. Each 150 some odd year visitation is called a "pass". Here they are chronologically:

First Pass

• Dragonsdawn
• The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall

Second Pass

• Dragonseye

Third Pass

• Dragons Kin
• Dragonsblood

Sixth Pass

• Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
• Nerilka's Story

Ninth Pass

• Dragonflight
• Dragonsong
• Dragonquest
• Dragonsinger
• The White Dragon
• Dragondrums
• Masterharper of Pern
• Renegades of Pern
• The Girl Who Heard Dragons
• All the Weyrs of Pern
• The Dolphins of Pern
• The Skies of Pern
• A Gift of Dragons (collected short stories)

8. The Aubrey/Maturin Series by Pat O'Brian.  This series brings me back to my love of swashbuckling sea captains. Also set during the Napoleonic Wars, Captain Jack Aubrey and his ship's physician, spy and naturalist Stephen Maturin would have been Horatio Hornblower's contemporaries. Truth be told, I don't like Captain Jack as well as I do Hornblower. Aubrey is a deeply flawed man and there are times I'd like to thrash him. His sins, for some reason, are, though common to sailors, less forgivable than are Hornblowers. That said, the series is a deeply detailed look at the lives of sailors and their captains and officers and O'Brien brings us another worthy study in the art of leadership. In chronoligical order, the books are:

• Master and Commander
• Post Captain
• HMS Surprise
• The Mauritius Command
• Desolatin Island
• The Fortune of War
• The Surgeon's Mate
• The Ionian Mission
• Treason's Harbour
• The Far Side of the World
• Reverse of the Medal
• The Letter of Marque
• The Thirteen Gun Salute
• The Nutmeg of Consolation
• Clarissa Oakes
• The Wine-Dark Sea
• The Commodore
• The Yellow Admiral
• The Hundred Days
• Blue at the Mizzen
• The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey

9.  "Rumpole of the Bailey" by John Mortimer. I am not a big fan of the mystery genre, but then Rumpole is not a detective. Rumpole is a pudgy, opinionated, small-cigar-smoking Old Bailey Hack - a lawyer of all things. I am not fond of lawyers, except for perhaps, this one. Rumpole lives his live between the Old Bailey, London Sessions and his Froxbury flat with his wife Hilda (SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED). They made a series out of the books that's as funny as the originals. It's more leisurely reading the books and wll worth your time. You'll feel you've made a friend of old Rumpole. I find him one of the most sympathetic barristers in all of literature, right down to the spattering of ash on his waistcoat.  The series, originally written for television, later became a book series and I prefer them that way. The books include novelizations and short stories from the series.:

• Rumpole of the Bailey
• The Trials of Rumpole
• Rumpoles Return
• Rumpole for the Defense
• Rumpole and the Golden Thread
• Rumpole's Last Case
• Rumpole and the Age of Miracles
• Rumpole a la Carte
• Rumpole on Trial
• Rumpole and the Angel of Death
• Rumpole Rests His Case
• Rumpole and the Primrose Path
• Rumpole and teh Penge Bungalow Murders
• Rumpole and the Reign of Terror
• The Anti-Social Behavior of Horace Rumpole
• Rumpole at Christmas

10. "The Lord of the Rings" by JRR Tolkien. Tolkien, also a member of the "Inklings", the famous group of English authors that also included CS Lewis, writes my very favorite fantasy series. It is my favorite sword and sorcery novel because of it is also a powerful and unashamed Christian allegory about the misuse of power and the power of ordinary people.  A huge body of work and one of the most remarkable pieces of world-building ever done by a novelist.  The series in order:

• The Silmarillion (a prequel consisting of Tolkien's massive collection of background notes for his Lord of the Rings series. He invents most of two or three languages and a complete mythology of Middle Earth).
• The Hobbit (the lightest of the three follows Bilbo Baggins on a quest for treasure)
• The Fellowship of the Ring
• The Two Towers
• The Return of the King

11. "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeline L'Engle.  A Newberry Award winner when it first came out, L'Engle tells the story of the highly intelligent children of two scientists. It begins by violating the first rule of novel writing (Never, ever begin a story with the sentence, "It was a dark and stormy night." L'Engle doesn't pay much attention to such rules, spending time describing home-cooking over a Bunsen Burner in Mom's home laboratory and sending children across the universe via tesseracts with extra-dimensional old ladies. The books are brilliantly written and do not talk down to kids, challenging them at every turn to think hard about what they believe. Before the series is over, every member of the family is tossed about in time and space and become, not only a visitor to the past, but a part of the future. The series in order is:

• A Wrinkle in Time
• A Wind in the Door
• A Swiftly Tilting Planet
• Many Waters
• An Acceptable Time

12. "Harry Potter" by JK Rowlings.  I came to Harry Potter late and with some reluctance. I was put off by the sorcery quite frankly. Though some of my favorite novels (Lewis and Tolkien, for instance), contain quite a bit of it, they manage to use it to good purpose and not to dabble in evil. I wasn't so sure about Rowlings. Then, on the recommendation of a Christian reviewer, I gave the series a go and to my surprise, found that Rowlings was more of a child of God than she gives herself credit for. The point of the whole book is that you should always do the right thing. When you choose yourself first, the consequences can be worse than if you chose to do the hard and unselfish thing. She also emphasizes that no person can take everything on their own shoulders - that we must depend on one another and hold each other up. Her magic is incantational and not invocational which makes me feel better. The protagonists do not summon up evil spirits (unless, of course, they are evil. In Lewis' and Tolkien's work it was the same. Evil people inevitably summon evil spirits and that is more true to life than most of us want to admit.  Here's the series in order:

• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkeban
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

 In conclusion...

My birthday is coming up in April and I am very partial to boxed hardcover sets and first editions, so.......now you never have to wonder what to get me. You have the list.