The Quantum Connection by Travis S. Taylor

This book is the even more action packed sequel to Warp Speed.  While it is a sequel it stands alone quite well.  I actually read it first and was not confused at all.  The book picks different characters to focus on and at the beginning they do not even know about the crew from the first book.  The book is a fun read if you want a classic style science fiction story where the good guy wins, and the bad guys are left in the dust by the hero's mighty intellect and wise tactical or technological decisions.

This book's strength is also its weakness because the bad guys don't really have much of a chance despite having an initial advantage.  This is really a geek, techno-fantasy, superhero style story with some real science at its heart.

The book is the story of how Steven Montana(the hero) saves the world.  At the start of the book Steven is a gamer geek and college student studying computers when the warp war from the first book breaks out.  In the fighting his entire home town with everyone he knows is wiped out and he is told it was because of a meteor.  He slides into a spiral of depression and only begins to come back out of it when a chance encounter gets him a job working on reverse engineering a strange circuit that turns out to be a quantum supercomputer.  When a background check fails due to him having no-one to vouch for him he has a major relapse and heads into the desert after taking all of his "happy pills".  At this point the book takes a bit of a turn because he is abducted by aliens that have been experimenting on him for years and were the ultimate cause of his depression.  Because of the pills he took he is able to wake up from their sedation and take over the ship. The research ship turns out to be run by a quantum supercomputer, the very thing Steven was just studying.  Using the supercomputer and the nanotechnology on board the research vessel he enhances himself and a female fellow captive, and together they take off to save the world.  Soon they meet up with the crew from warp speed, and god help anything that threatens earth from that point on.

This book will appeal to classic science fiction, and comic book fans.  To be honest the writing reminds me of some of Heinlein's stories.  The action in the book never stops, and there is not a lot of time spent on introspection.  This book also has a little bit less explanation of the science behind whats going on than warp speed so it may not appeal to hard science fiction fans as much.

This book can be found at www.amazon.com as an e-book or in print.

The Faculty Movie Review

This science fiction movie is a story about an alien invasion that is more like a disease.  The main character Casey Connor, played by Elijah Wood, finds a strange creature at school one day, and takes it to his science teacher.  They do some brief studies and find out that the creature is very strange, and Casey leaves with his science teacher promising to send the creature off for study.  After that things start to get a little crazy as the faculty and students start to have drastic personality changes overnight.  Knowing about the strange creature Casey correctly jumps to the conclusion that the two things are related

Being an unpopular photography geek Casey finds it difficult to get people to believe him, but in the end he manages to get several fellow misfits, as well as some isolated popular students on his side as things go from bad to worse in their town.  As the crew of misfits, and screw-ups seeks help it becomes clear that all the adults and many of the popular kids in town have been converted.  The only people left untouched are socially isolated for one reason or another.

In the end it becomes clear that if this is not stopped soon then it will spread to the whole world.  At this point the converted people begin to target the misfits, and it is made clear that what they have on their hands is a collective alien intelligence that has been targeting those with the most power first.  The misfits have a secret weapon however.  Zeke the school bad boy has been making an selling a synthetic drug at school that the alien organism's cannot tolerate, and Casey manages to garner his help to save the town and the world.

In the end it comes down to a battle between Casey and the alien collective.  Casey must also battle his own inner demons as the queen of the collective offers him what he has always wanted, A chance to belong.  All he must give up is his pesky humanity.  In the end he overcomes this temptation, and prevails.  This has the effect of raising his status, and his new self confidence allows him to get the things he wants out of life.

I really enjoyed this movie because the enemy doesn't come in guns blazing with starships filling the sky, but rather chooses to take over the planet one person at a time functioning much like an epidemic.

This movie is available on disk or streaming at www.amazon.com , and prime members can watch it streaming for free.