Posted inFiction Television

“The Harvest of Time” by Alastair Reynolds (2013) — Doctor Who

Synopsis

Mys­te­ri­ous events involv­ing dis­ap­pear­ing oil rigs and a secret Defense Min­istry project attract UNIT’s atten­tion, espe­cial­ly when the Mas­ter’s involve­ment becomes appar­ent. The Mas­ter is being used as a con­sul­tant by a Min­istry of Defense com­mu­ni­ca­tions project but in real­i­ty he is using them to broad­cast a tachy­on res­cue sig­nal to his past and future selves. How­ev­er, the rapa­cious alien race of the Sild inter­cept the sig­nal and use it to pluck var­i­ous incar­na­tions of the Mas­ter out of time, start­ing to erase him from exis­tence. Then the alien inva­sion begins, whose object is to cap­ture the Mas­ter him­self as the Mas­ter Stroke of their Mas­ter Plan of cre­at­ing the Mas­ter Com­put­er, built of all the incar­na­tions of the Mas­ter they were col­lect­ing. 1 They don’t find him, thanks to the inter­fer­ence of the Doc­tor who came to res­cue him, which only leads to the aliens cap­tur­ing him any­way in the far-flung future. But that is exact­ly what the Mas­ter wants, because the Mas­ter is in con­trol of the com­put­er, not the Sild, as they discover.

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Posted inFiction

“Trance” by Linda Gerber (2010)

It begins as a sub­tle vibra­tion, a tingling.

There is time to take only one breath.

The trance begins.

When it is through, Ash­lyn is cer­tain of two things …

Some­one she knows is about to die, and …

She is pow­er­less to stop it.

Cap­sule Descrip­tion: Ash­lyn has a gift, one that she can’t con­trol, one that she can’t under­stand. If she could have under­stood it, her moth­er might still be alive. As it is, she’s all alone, and her gift is telling her that some­one else is about to die, but who and how is still a mystery.

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“Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone” by Ian McDonald

As a bril­liant graph­ic arts stu­dent, Ethan Ring stum­bled on a secret so awe­some that its exis­tence could not remain hid­den. The com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed images he helped cre­ate con­tained infi­nite pow­ers: the pow­er to heal, erase mem­o­ries, bring ecsta­sy. kill sav­age­ly. Locked into a dev­il’s bar­gain with the mono­lith­ic Euro­pean gov­ern­ment, Ethan now sees his one change to escape the dark forces of destruc­tion that have enslaved his soul. He will brave the treach­er­ous ter­rain, the law­less bands of aki­ra, and the pow­er-armored secu­ri­ty forces to under­take a thou­sand-mile pil­grim­age. But the dan­ger Ethan fears most comes from with­in. It is the seduc­tive lure of his own gift, a pow­er whose cost may be his own damnation.

Pri­mal man­dalas, pried loose from the deep­est parts of the brain, capa­ble of affect­ing any­one who sees them. One caus­es reli­gious ecsta­sy. One engen­ders heal­ing. One caus­es men­tal blind spots and anoth­er men­tal blank­ness. One eras­es memories.

One caus­es obe­di­ence in who­ev­er sees it.

And one kills.

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“Secret of the Wolf” by Susan Krinard

[amtap book:isbn=0425181995]

Amid the lush vine­yards and majes­tic hills of Napa Val­ley, hyp­no­tist [Doc­tor] Johan­na Schell has found­ed Der Haven — a sanc­tu­ary for those who know the pain of being “dif­fer­ent”. For des­per­ate, fright­ened peo­ple whose souls are lost to grief. For lone­ly tor­tured men like Quentin Foster …

Fright­en­ing spells of amne­sia have plagued Quentin for years, and Johan­na wants noth­ing more than to ease his unspeak­able pain–and find out if his claim to were­wolf blood is just a delu­sion. But she is hor­ri­fied to dis­cov­er that, under hyp­no­sis, this ten­der, thought­ful man becomes vio­lent, venge­ful …evil. And now–caught in the bal­ance between real­i­ty and illu­sion, truth and decep­tion, sim­ple desire and absolute destruction–she must find the courage to trust him. To love him. To save him…

Can a tor­tured man like Quentin Fos­ter find peace? Can a ded­i­cat­ed heal­er like Johan­na Schell find love? Can they togeth­er defeat the ene­mies with and with­out and find their desires together?

Well, this is a romance nov­el, so, yes, they will do all every­thing list­ed above. But it won’t be easy, even less easy than the aver­age romance nov­el. That’s what hap­pens when the para­nor­mal is added to the mix.

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