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In case you don't get the reference, "make it so" is one of Captain Picard's catch phrases, along with his regular replicator order "tea, earl grey, hot," from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Stargate has always been pretty self-aware. Reminds me of the first season when they were on Showtime, and they found some kind of ancient alien communication devise and Richard Dean Anderson wonders aloud if it gets Showtime.

This was written over a quarter century ago. I don't know when 'soon' will be but, and this may be my privilege talking, it can't come soon enough.

I really liked the story of the Red King, the 2nd book in the '00s Star Trek: Titan series. Captain Will Riker's ship the U.S.S. Titan attempts to help the Romulans look for a fleet that disappeared near the bloom in space caused by Shinzon's weapon at the end of the movie Nemesis. Only to get sucked in along with the Romulans and a Klingon ship that was potroling the area due to their alliance with the newly indpendent Reamans, to the Small Magellanic Cloud past the edge of our galaxy. There they find a group of pilgrims of an indigeouns religion seeking a god whose wakening from slumbar will destroy their colonists worlds, and them too.

Its the first Star Trek book I recall reading that introduced new (to me) scientific theories including protounivereses and emerging space.

I liked how they brought together the scientific theory, the pilgrims' religious view of an omnipotent sleeper awakening and the Red King's dream of Alice in Wonderland.

I didn't like some of the writing. Namely I disliked the way the treated Counselor Troi as being far more telepathic than on TNG, including knowing peoples motives. I also found I had a hard time keeping track of so many new characters, most of which are also new species. I kept having to flip back to earlier chapters to recall who in the world this was who was talking.

With the good and the bad that gives me 3 stars.

I had really mixed feelings about this book. One the one hand it was incredibly well documented and spoke to where so many Christians are, including those currently or recently migrating. On the other hand whilst reading it was the first time I ever recall reading several pages and then realized I was thinking about something else completely the whole time I read it. I'm not sure how that's actually possible. It also has the same problem I see about many Christian works, even left leaning ones, that it just doesn't feel radical enough.

Carrol is a professor of Old Testament studies at a Christian university and it shows in his writing. Something like 3/4 of the book was the chapter on what the Old Testament says. That's unusual for a Christian book, but then again the Old Testament is 3/4 of the Bible.He shows all the people that were forced to migrate both within a country and across borders. The reasons they moved were the same reasons people do today. All through the Bible God shows that his people are the ones on the move, and in the promised land they are supposed to care for those that are traveling or reside about you that are different. He does a good job arguing against the right-wing talking points, particularly those based on Romans 13.

I did have a hard time accepting some things, like how whilst a Christian can fight for 100% open borders, he doesn't have to. In particular I found frightening his statement in the intro that if you do identify the horrible treatment of immigrants in the U.S. Americans should still love their country, particularly as he doesn't expand on that in the rest of the book.

I identify that a lot of the problems I see here may well be problems with me and not with Mr. Carrol.

I

It took me like 8 months to finish this, not because it was long, less than 200 pages, nor because it was difficult, it is written with intention to be a homeschool text book. But for me it was extremely challenging. I've been an old earth creationist pretty much my whole life. I bought this thinking I would get more firepower to back up the earth is billions of years old, but only existed thousands of years. When i started it looked kike it to be just another "see Catholics can by evolutionists" . But i found was something forcing me to question some pretty strongly held belief. While I was all for the poking fun at young earth creationists and their "Dude, The Flood" answer for everything. But when she started pulling out the stops on the existence of a worldwide flood at all, and the problems of small evolutionary changes by accident.

I also appreciated her honesty related to the Church's treatment of Galileo and the secular world's overblow of what

She did, however, continue to fail on the one point all Evolutionary Catholics do, if there wasn't a literal garden of eaden, how do we account for original sin.

She may have been hinting at it with the idea of asexual chromosomal evolution and large lateral changes maybe being the creation of Adam and Eve, but she didn't actually call it out.

I really liked it. It's the third fictional work on the Russian Revolution I have read in the last year or so. In some ways it is what I had wished The Time Traveler's Wife would have been.

A 1980s historian's ex-girlfriend walks in on his Russian history class. Afterward she strikes up the old romance. He keeps having very lucid dreams about being in the Russian Revolution himself. Later the dreams get more real, with mud on his shoes, dirty hair, etc.

Just as the gf is getting back with him, he shifts into the past for long term. Along the way he meets historical figures, his own father, goes through psychological torture, etc.

I like how Appel tells a story in several different time periods in a still linear pattern.

Like Blood Red Snow White this one was in the children's section of the library. It is even less appropriate for kids than that was. Quite possibly the most sex in a book I have ever read.