WW84: The Junior Novel by Calliope Glass (2020)

I know that some of you will accuse me of having junior humour, and you’re not exactly wrong!  But this was the ONLY adaptation of the WW84 film, and curiosity got me.  I don’t know how long the linked review will stay on the internet, but it goes into detail about what is “wrong” with the adaptation. Basically, the story leaves out a lot.

I will disagree on one point. Steve Trevor’s ‘resurrection’ always felt really foolish and verging on the edge of “mind rape,” so this adaptation glossing over it actually makes the story seem better!

As a 149-page retelling this has no addition detail from the film and very frustratingly stops before the film (and story) climax!  Maybe they had a hard stop at 150 pages but that doesn’t explain why there are 5 blank pages at the end, then!

No one needs to look this one up unless you are a hardcore WW collector, in which case you already have it.

Douglas Adams: The Ends of the Earth edited by Arvind Ethan David (2025)

I saw this as a Kickstarter last year and backed it, though not as an earlybird to get every bonus. I did get bonus audio. It came out in June 2025 and I got around to listening to it from the end of September until today.

I admit I had the wrong idea about this audiobook and was initially disappointed, as I looked at the surface for the “from the Adams Archives,” and not the “discussions about topics Adams felt strongly about”.  The main audiobook is about 5 hours with almost the same in the bonus material (which is not available with the public release).

The star of this are the excerpts from Douglas’ speeches. He was an engaging speaker and the bits from the horses’ mouth are the best part.  There are many readings and ‘dramatizations’ of excerpts from all of Adams’ work, which are good to hear. I could have done without most of the sound effects that were added to readings as they were distracting. For a book that wants you to focus on the meanings, it’s a bad choice.

The editor/author of this collection was an intern at Douglas’ company Digital Village and has long been adapting and presenting Adams’ work. His reverence for Douglas borders on fawning at times–we get it, we’re listening already.  As I have found with some other interviewers, they bring a little too much of their own biography into the interviews, which gets repeated since there are multiple interviews collected (essentially one interview per topic).

The collection centers around several topics, which break the book into easy chapters:  Creativity & Writing, Animal Conservation, Tech/Internet/AI, Politics & Capitalism, and Atheism.  David has enlisted a good range of interview subjects, some who knew Adams well.  Stephen Fry was the best of the interviews, although all were interesting.  My perk of bonus audio gave me the full keynote from one of Adams’ conference talks plus the unedited interviews of three of the participants in the book.

A interesting strategy for this audiobook is that it’s being released through podcast app services–you can’t buy it directly as a download (unless you were a kickstarter backer).  You can find out more about it at the link.

I’m glad I got this audiobook as I’ve collected most of what has been written by or published about Douglas Adams. It ranks with  Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing… as something that a completist will want but that the casual fan will probably skip.

Fair Trade by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (2022)

Through my involvement in The Heinlein Society I have become a regular attendee at Balticon, the Baltimore Science Fiction Society’s annual SF convention.  BSFS and THS award the “Heinlein Award” and the 2025 winner was Sharon Lee.  Before the con I had only read one of Sharon’s books and was vaguely aware of the Liaden Universe that her and her husband & cowriter created and populated.

At the con, I picked up Fair  Trade to be able to have Sharon inscribe it.  I read it this week and it’s an intriguing story with two main plot threads.  I didn’t realize it was the third book of an arc, but I was able to pick up the gist of earlier pertinent action.

I enjoyed the similarity of the Loopers/Traders/Liaden to some of the customs in Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy. What I did not enjoy was finishing the book with several dangling plot threads and finding out there was not a “next book in the arc” yet published.  Steve Miller died in 2024, so it’s not really clear on what stories will be told in the Liaden Universe henceforth.

I’m glad I read this to get a better sense of Sharon & Steve’s writing, and a signed copy from Sharon is a nice memory of meeting her, but I would caution to read other parts of the Liaden Universe instead of this one for now.