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After two days of dental surgery, chiropractic, and pulmonary medical appointments, Amazon drivers taking a reserved parking space, and my front passenger tire going flat due to a tiny screw, I can finally start to relax and look forward to a few weeks of hopefully nice events and activities.

First off is this weekend’s opening for Fantastic Four: First Steps. I am quite happy with the trailers and the interesting approach to produce the film in a retro-futurism style that echoes the comic book’s 60’s origins. So far, there haven’t been any decent Fantastic Four movies, but this one is the first to be produced under the Marvels Studios’ guidance following that studio’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox.

Next on the things that are making me happy is the next 7-8 weeks of televised science-fiction with the third seasons of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Foundation. Full disclosure, while I have read a lot of classic SF, I never managed to get into Asimov’s Foundation series. His fiction often struck me as dry and with characters created to solve puzzles rather than experience emotional lives. So, I know that this show is deviating wildly from the source material, but it doesn’t bother me. Strange New Worlds is of course as I have previously written about is breaking ‘canon’ with Treklore, but it is doing so while giving us more realized and fleshed out characters so that’s a trade I am perfectly willing to make.

And finally, next month is the World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle, Washington. It has been a number of years since I have been able to make a WorldCon and this I hope will be the restorative vacation/holiday I need just before the really busy period at the day-job commences.