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A lot of people like to add “traditional” super hero comic books to the category of science fiction.  On its face, that seems reasonable, since there’s a strong speculative science aspect to much of comics heritage: Superman is an alien, Spider-man is a teen genius scientist, etc.

I tend not to conflate the two.  The science fiction in comic books is often a convenient storytelling trope that is not essential to the narrative.  Thus, by my definition, it does not qualify as true SF.

However, today I will suspend my strictness and write a bit about comic books.  This is mostly because I’ve spent the last month inhaling a score of Ultimate X-Men comic books.  And I’m a longtime Avengers geek.

So this post is all about who I consider to be the best villains in the mainstream comic book universe.  I say “mainstream” because, frankly, the comic book world is a deep and complex labyrinth with many nooks of extreme and arcane nerdliness.  If I were to include some of the less well known titles, like Spawn and Hellboy, then the devil himself would qualify as a villain, and we can’t be having that.

What do I consider to be a good villain?  I think there’s something to be said for a classical approach, wherein a villain is a tragic figure, someone who could have been a hero if it were not for a tragic flaw or an unfortunate circumstance.  Indeed, one of the truly terrifying aspects of a villain is how much he (or she) dwells within in each of us.  A hero is often an unattainable ideal, but a villain is Everyman pushed a little too far.

I particularly like villains who, if viewed a tad askew, are in fact the heroes.  The demise of a great villain should be a reason for both celebration and a touch of sadness and regret, for appreciation for what could have been.

With that, let’s get to my list.

3. Lex Luthor

When the hero (Superman) is essentially a god, indestructible, perfectly honourable and virtuous, who shall his foil be?  A mad man intent on world domination?  A super-powered miscreant?  A dumb brute focused on destruction?  Or, more subtly, a businessman with a complicated agenda?

Most depictions of Luthor are of course the latter.  What I like about Luthor is, firstly, that he has no special powers.  He is just a man, though a brilliant one, unencumbered by the burden of morality.  More importantly, at a certain level, Luthor is right.

Superman, as much as we love him, is a fascistic figure.  He could crush us or rule us at his pleasure.  To his credit, he chooses instead to enforce our own laws on our behalf.  But the prospect and potential for his tyranny is real.  In the real world, we would each pray for the rise of a Lex Luthor, a mere mortal who holds the key to keeping the unfettered godling at bay.

2. The Joker

Where to begin?  Joker’s motivations are mysterious.  He doesn’t care about money or power or any of the traditional factors that compel a villain.  We don’t understand him.  He seems to seek only chaos.  He has no super powers, no advanced technology, just a bizarre personality, an unimpeachable will and a frustrating incomprehensibility.  To heroes, all of whom are seated in order and understanding, the prospect of chaos truly is horrifying.

To me, the scene in The Dark Knight Returns, in which Joker breaks his own neck to frame Batman, is emblematic of the character.   Unpredictable, violent, remorseless, without ego or emotional vulnerability, Joker is the ultimate untouchable terror.

1. Magneto

And here is the king.  Since earliest childhood, Magneto has been my favourite comic character, heroic or villainous.  A survivor of the Nazi holocaust, a troubled soul seeking only justice for “his people”, Magneto is a misguided yet charismatic man of both great power and great honour.  His anger and villainy arise from righteous pain.

We cannot hate him outright, for the injustices he has endured, and for the truth of his campaign.  His foes, the heroes, the X-men, are the naive ones who blindly try to forge a peace between we meek humans and the undeniably superior mutant race.  The thoughtful reader knows, at a certain level, that Magneto is correct, that men and mutants must eventually come into conflict.

Yet he is the villain, for he opposes us.

His tragic history, his awesome power, his cult of personality, and the manner in which we must hesitatingly admit to the righteousness of his campaign, all make Magneto the greatest and best of the comic book villains.

(This article was originally a blog post.)

The nominees for the 2010 Hugo Awards were announced this week. If you don’t know, the Hugos are the premier science fiction awards, the Pulitzer for the nerd set, if you will. I won’t mention the novels or short stories, since few of you have heard of them. Rather, let’s look at the dramatic entries, bot long and short form.

Nominees for the long form (i.e., movies) include Avatar, Moon, District 9, Star Trek and Up.

I reviewed Star Trek here. It’s a fine action movie. But it’s neither science fiction nor clever. If it wins, I am through with the Hugos.

I reviewed Avatar here. It’s genuine science fiction, though heavily derivative and hardly worthy of an award that celebrates originality. If it wins, I won’t be through with the Hugos, but I will lose a hefty amount of respect for them.

Up is an excellent, moving and entertaining little film. But is it science fiction? I really don’t think so.

That leaves Moon and District 9. I must admit to not having seen Moon. I hear it’s quite good. But from what little I know of its plot, I question whether it’s actually science fiction. An astronaut on the moon is not particularly far-fetched. That leaves the sole option for winner being District 9.

Now, on to the short form, The nominees are an episode of Dollhouse, and episode of FlashForward and three episodes of Doctor Who. All are very good choices, though we can all wonder how Lost or Fringe didn’t make the list.

More baffling, however, is how this past year’s true masterpiece of TV science fiction failed to make the Hugo short list. I’m talking about Torchwood: Children of Earth, which I reviewed here.

I don’t use the word “masterpiece” lightly. It’s a difficult accomplishment to manage in a general public prime-time TV format, especially within the confines of an existing TV show with existing characters and relationships. But Children of Earth is that good, it really is. Not only is it pure science fiction –something the actual nominees dance around– but it’s poignant, heartbreaking, terrifying and exhilirating.

A big raspberry to the Hugo people for omitting Children of Earth. As compensation, let’s inaugurate the first annual Skiffy.ca TV award for the best science fiction dramatic short form. I hereby award it, without hesitation, to Russell Davies for his –wait for it– masterpiece in Torchwood: Children of Earth.

It’s 10pm Dec 31st, 2008, and I’m a little tipsy on a shot of whiskey, but stuck in bed, sick with a tummy ache.  Since I’m not able to attend any New Years Eve parties, why not invest a moment in reflecting on the past year in science fiction?

The following list of events is not exhaustive and is based only on what’s at the forefront of my thoughts at this particular moment.  If you have any additions to make to my list, please feel free to add them in the comments section.

Books

The single biggest news in the world of science fiction books was death of the final old school Grand Master of SF, Sir Arthur C. Clarke.  Along with Asimov and Heinlein, Clarke was one of the pioneers of skiffy in the so-called golden age of the 1950s.  Clarke was not just a leader in this genre, but also a societal thought leader.  He is credited by many as the philosophical inventor of the communications satellite, and certainly was a driving inspiration in the development of Project Spaceguard, a programme for the detection of near-Earth asteroids that could prove possibly dangerous to our planet.

Clarke’s biggest contribution to popular culture was, of course, his penning of the screenplay for the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was in turn based on his short story, “The Sentinel.”

Clarke’s additional masterpieces included Rendezvous With Rama and the various sequels to 2001.  I was particularly pleased that Clarke was able to give us a trilogy of so-called “orthoquels” to 2001 before he died: Time’s Eye, Sunstorm and Firstborn, all part of a series he called “A Time Odyssey.”

Sunstorm in particular was a fitting conclusion to Clarke’s career, as it told a very exciting and believable –and inspirational– tale of mankind preparing itself for a storm of Apocalyptic solar flares.

My personal Clarke favourite remains Songs of Distant Earth.  I recommend that all true skiffy fans find a moment to peruse it spages.

Movies

It was not a particularly exciting year for skiffy in movies.  No, I do not include The Dark Knight as a science fiction title, though the audiences for both comic books and science fiction products often overlap. Thus, Ironman also does not qualify.

Possibly the best skiffy title this year was Hellboy II: The Golden Army.  I’m hesitant to include it, since it’s more fantasy than science fiction

While I hated the movie, I must admit that the latest M. Night Shyamalan, The Happening, presented an interesting science fiction premise: that plants could be made so “upset” by ecological degradation that they would emit a substance that reduces animals’ inhibition against self-harm.

Television

It was in television that the skiffy genre really flew this year.  I am a fan of Heroes, but its science is laughable.  Lost, the finest show on network American television, finally revealed itself to be a pure science fiction show with the addition of time travel.  And the champion of the space operas continued to be Battlestar Galactica, whose climax this coming year will be the reveal of the so-called “final cylon.”  I’m willing to put money on that cylon being Felix Gaeta.

Other big news included the cancellation of Stargate: Atlantis and the successful transfer of Stargate:SG1 from TV to dvd movies.  But the big triumph in TV skiffy this year was the further maturation of the modern incarnation of Britain’s Doctor Who.

David Tennant is, for my money, the finest Doctor ever.  Yes, the show is still cheesy at times, and doesn’t engender the same gravitas as American offerings of the same genre.  But remember that the Doctor saves the galaxy every week without ever wielding a weapon or uttering a foul word; he’s a timeless hero.

The brilliance of the Who writing this year was in the realization that the show is called Doctor WHO.  Who is this man?  Why do we care?  Transforming the decades old vehicle from a campy kids show into a character drama was brilliance.

I don’t know what to expect from 2009, but I’m pretty sure there will be plenty of skiffy for us all.

The Andromeda Strain (2008)

Released as a miniseries by A&E in the spring of 2008, The Andromeda Strain is based on Michael Crichton’s classic 1969 science fiction novel of the same name.  TAS-08 is written by Robert Schenkken (who played David Deaver in the 1990 film Pump up the Volume), and is directed by Denmark’s Mikael Salomon, more famously known as the cinematographer on several Oscar winning films (Far and Away, Back Draft, Arachnophobia).

The narrative opens with a botched recovery of a NASA satellite that has unexpectedly fallen from orbit and crashed to earth near Piedmont, Utah in the present day United States.  Curious Piedmontians discover the satellite before the arrival of a US Army recovery team and decide to look inside; releasing a toxin of unknown origin on unsuspecting townsfolk.   While moving quickly to quarantine Piedmont, the Department of BioDefence scrambles Wildfire – an elite team of scientists providing the evidence in The President’s evidence-based decisions on biological crises  (talk about your science fiction…).  Operating under the indirect supervision of General George W. Mancheck (Andre Braugher); Dr. Jeremy Stone (Benjamin Bratt), Dr. Angela Noyce (Christa Miller), Dr. Tsi Chou (Daniel Dae Kim), Dr. Charlene Barton (Viola Davis) and Major Bill Keane MD (Rick Schroder) retrieve data from the contaminated area and are seconded to a top secret, underground government laboratory.  On the outside, all this secret/not-so-secret activity draws the attention of journalist Jack Nash (Eric McCormack) who tries to figure out what is really going on.

As the first of a two disk release, disk one is almost completely context; introducing characters, new technology, and describing the cultural and political environment the plot unfolds in.  The story is portrayed using five different perspectives – the scientific team sequestered in the underground lab, the decision-maker president and his white house staff who while being decisive have to run everything through the “how-will-this-play-out-in-the-election” filter, the US Army, the ultra-secretive National Security Agency (NSA), and (of course) the media.

Schenkken taps into real world events and popular culture by drawing repeatedly from the endless list of individual and institutional failures that lead to the war in Iraq – primarily the dysfunction surrounding the US Military, intelligence agencies and the Oval Office – with a sideways reference to rogue nations, economic greed, the environment and “Area-51.”  All of this is presented through the use of short vignettes that introduce characters, outline personal relationships and establish institutional dynamics; effectively creating a patchwork of information that may or may not allow the viewer to grasp what is going on.

Some of the reviews I have read have been critical of the cast, the story and the interpretation of the novel.  As I am reviewing this in a bubble so to speak – having not seen the first theatrical release, nor having read the book – I’m inclined to disagree with this criticism in a state of blissful ignorance.  The cast comes across as reasonably real – I found the performances to be authentic.  No one steals the show, and at no point did any of the actors’ performances remind me of a previous role.

The story has a very current feel to it – contentious ideologies, hot-button issues, public cynicism for those in charge.  At its heart is the portrayal of competing bureaucratic entities in the face of a serious crisis – can these bodies be trusted to set aside their partisan nature when decisions need to be made; or will they be constantly distracted from the real issues while playing an obtuse game of perception manipulation?

Technically, the special effects are well done and used relatively sparingly.  I did find the medical computer in the Wildfire lab to be a little far-fetched for a story that is supposed to be contemporary.  I’m all for voice-directed, diagnostic tools that can provide real-time patient data (right down to hematology results) in addition to performing all kinds of medical tests at the verbal request of a doctor – I’m just not sure if it exists yet!

One thing I wished the writers had done is explain the animosity between some of the main characters.  This history is referred to abstractly in dialogue, but has an impact on the plot development.  Perhaps more will be revealed in part 2.

Taking part one of The Andromeda Strain at face value, and not comparing it to the original or other interpretations – I recommend it.  Nothing exists in a vacuum however, so once having seen part 2, reading Crichton’s original and checking out the 1971 movie this opinion could change.

Official Movie Poster

Fan-made movies/installments/episodes of any show are the ultimate expression of both love and hardcore geekery.  And no franchise in the history of science fiction has inspired more such productions than Star Trek; not just any version of Star Trek, either, but the mothership– James Kirk’s original vehicle.  There’s something about that pioneering show that continues to inspire enormous dedication and passion from thousands of fans, nearly five decades later.

Prime among such fan efforts is the New Voyages series, which in many ways was a philosophical precursor to the upcoming new “official” Star Trek movie, in that both visions have re-imagined the original iconic characters with new actors, something unthinkable a few years ago.  But New Voyages, despite its admirable efforts, good stories and impressive special effects, was always an amateurish fan production.  Simply put, the acting sucks and the dialogue and direction are highschoolish.  I still heartily recommend all the New Voyages episodes to anyone who adores the orginal Shatner/Nimoy series, but beware that this is just well funded fan fiction.

Enter something called Star Trek: Of Gods and Men.  It’s a genuine fan-made full-length Star Trek motion picture, supported by the New Voyages cast and crew, but driven by hardened industry professionals, including actors from all four official Trek series: Star Trek, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise.  It’s even directed by Tim Russ, who played the Vulcan Tuvok in Star Trek: Voyager.

My understanding of the legalities of such production is limited.  But I believe that Paramount lets fans get away with making these video love letters so long as no one tries to disrespect the core material or, more importantly, make any money off of the effort.  Therefore, both the New Voyages episodes and this epic Of Gods and Men movie are completely free of charge.  To view the latter, just visit the production’s official website, download a bittorrent, or watch the streaming content on Youtube.  I recommend the latter.  You can begin here:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=wEl0vq0CCLU

Now, I am very pleased to report that the movie is good.  In fact, I found it more enjoyable that the last couple of official Paramount Star Trek movies (Nemesis and Insurrection)… That is, if you keep reminding yourself that this is a free production put out by mostly amateurs in their free time.  Be prepared to forgive some sloppy writing, cheap special effects, sometimes problematic acting and odd pacing and you will be presently surprised by the quality of your overall viewing experience.

The story is set 12 years after Captain Kirk has presumably been killed on the Enterprise B (see Star Trek: Generations), even though we all know he was actually sucked into the Nexus, and would not be killed until Malcolm Mcdowell gets his hands on him 80 years into the future.  Suddenly there arrives a mysterious man from the past, a man with strange godlike powers, who is looking menacingly for Kirk.  It’s not too much of a spoiler to reveal that this man is the now sexagenarian Charlie Evans from the original series episode Charlie X, in a role played by William Wellman, Jr., who looks eerily like a grown-up Robert Walker, Jr, the original actor who filled Charlie’s shoes.

Charlie lures Uhura, Chekhov and Captain John Harriman (Allan Ruck from Star Trek: Generations) to the planet where still stands the Guardian on the Edge of Forever, that weird time-travelling structure that first wowed us in the best ever Star Trek episode, City on the Edge of Forever.  There, Charlie goes back 70 years into the past and murders James Kirk’s pregnant mother, thus preventing the birth of our hero.

Fans of science fiction know what happens next.  One pivotal individual, if removed from the soup of factors that establishes causality, can be the difference between the Utopia of the Federation and the nightmare tyranny of the so-called “Galactic Order”, an evil empire led by a mysterious, godlike being whose identity will please and thrill hardcore fans of the original series.

Garret Wang as a tough guy

The movie is driven by a handful of main characters: All Ruck (Harriman), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), Walter Koenig (Chekhov), Gary Graham (from Enterprise) and to a lesser extent Tim Russ.  Also contributing important scenes are Garret Wang (Harry Kim from Star Trek: Voyager), the babe-tastic Chase Masterson (Leeta from Deep Space Nine) and J.G. Hertzler (also from DS9). For the dedicated fanboy, there is literally an armada of cameos from other Trek actors, and part of the fun of this movie is trying to identify the various random aged faces.

Nichols and Koenig are famous not only for their iconic roles, but also for never having been given starring vehicles.  Nichols’s timing is a bit off in some of the dialogue, but she does an admirable job nonetheless, and it’s great to see a strong, older, black woman be given something meaty to do on screen, as well as a complete back story.  But the real standouts are Koenig and Ruck.  These two could, in my opinion, carry their own big budget, cerebral action movie.  As Of Gods and Men shows us, you don’t need to be young and spry to be an action star.  Both Nichols and Koenig are in their 70s, while Ruck is just under 60.  Their dynamic is believable and sometimes even touching.

It’s difficult to put a finger on exactly why I found this admittedly cheap and sloppy production so engaging.  Maybe because it was cheap and sloppy?  You can only do so much with volunteer labour and private funding, with no expectation of profit or even of recouping your investment.  I think that a big part of the movie’s appeal is that it’s not trying to steal our cash; it doesn’t care about attracting viewers or sponsors.  There will be no one trying to hock models of the spaceships designed for the film.  There is no Burger King tie-in or on-screen product placement.  There are no superfluous characters who have been added in the background only because they “look cool” and thus can be marketed as an action figure.  There is no focus-group casting or test audience re-editing.  This is a pure, though flawed, artistic effort with a singular intent: to express love for the core material and to share that love with the fans.

If you need to see $10 million on the screen, you will not enjoy this film.  If you need your acting and dialogue to have been workshopped and test marketed, you will not enjoy this film.  If you’ve only seen a couple of the original Star Trek episodes, you will not enjoy this film.  But if you are over 25 years old (preferably over 40!) and have spent a goodly chunk of your life watching and re-watching the various incarnations of Roddenberry’s greatest brainchild, then I strongly suspect that Star Trek: Of Gods and Men will be an enjoyable experience for you, and may even bring you some closure for the lesser characters on whom the major motion pictures could not afford to waste valuable screen time.

I, for one, hope there’s a sequel.

I’m oficially sick of immortals. Really. They’re all over TV science fiction, and frankly it’s getting a bit stale.

Now, in literary science fiction, immortality has a proud and dignified history. My favourite contender in this sub-genre is This Immortal by Roger Zelazny. But in the medium of television, it’s all quite too much.

The most famous case, of course, is that of the Highlander and its various spin-offs (Highlander: The Raven, The Methos Chronicles, and even the freakin’ Animated Series.) A pale imitator and contemporary that was even worse than the worst of the Highlander offerings was Lorenzo Lamas’s The Immortal.

Then there’s the Vampire meme: Dark Shadows, Angel, Forever Knight, Moonlight, Blood Ties, and so on.

Currently, we have BBC’s big hit Torchwood, which features as its main character the mysterious Captain Jack Harkness, who ages but who cannot die. (This fact was strangely forgotten by the writers in the season 2 finale, in which Jack is buried alive for 2000 years, but emerges unscathed and un-aged, both mentally and physically.)  We also have New Amsterdam, about a (sigh) immortal detective living in New York.

And now, Zod save us, comes news that Sci Fi is about to launch Sanctuary, starring perennial American science fiction stalwart Amanda Tapping as –wait for it– an immortal.

As I explored earlier, I believe the source of literary fascination with immortality transcends that of our intrinsic fear of death. For a storyteller, the lure of the undying is not in the immortal’s ability to bypass that which awaits us all, but rather, firstly, as a plot device to ensure several lifetimes of conflict and characters; and secondly, as a recapitulation of the original motivations underlying all of Western fiction, the Greek myths.

The Greeks presented their gods has shallow, jealous and scheming immortals who nonetheless envy us weak and vulnerable humans, because we can be hurt and can die, and can therefore risk. And with risk comes heroism, and with heroism crisis and conflict.

The genius of this literary style is that the immortals must play in the background. It is the mortal men and women who become the centres of the tales. Perseus slew the Gorgon. Jason retrieved the Golden Fleece. Theseus mastered the labrynth and defeated the Minotaur. And even Hercules (Herakles), greatest of all the heroes of Greco-Roman lore, could not be allowed to be a full god; his human half provided his mortality, which was eventually literally burned away by fire, till all that remained was the divine bits.

Indeed, the tale of Hercules is a parable for all storytelling involving immortals. There is divinity and an immortal spark within each of us, which pushes us to great and heroic feats. Upon death, it is the mortal that dies, while the divine is granted a seat by the throne of Zeus. As hero to all heroes, Hercules showed that physical risk and sacrifice are dreadfully painful, but eventually drives us to oneness with the immortals.

But to be an immortal without the experience of risk and vulnerability is to be devoid of that drive, that spark. The gods are dot draped across the heavens in the form of constellations. No, only mortal heroes were granted that status: Orion, Andromeda, Cassiopeia, etc. For it is they, not the gods, who are heroes.

And this is the bit that has somehow been missed by modern tellers of the immortals’ tales. For reasons of marketing, modern TV shows cast the immortal in the role of hero. But where is the heroism in not risking one’s life? The various protagonists of Highlander toyed with the idea of their tragedy being that they must witness the passing of their mortal loved ones. At least those particular overacting swordsmen ran the risk of literally losing their heads, so there is some heroism implicit in their risk-taking.

The vampires are a less defensible lot. Much has been written of the innate romanticism of an undead creature of the night who must suck blood to survive. This strikes me as a great perversion of even the most earnest stereotypes of the male ideal within the eye of the naive teenage girl. But it certainly explains why pale, emaciated, unsmiling rock stars are still seen as sex symbols.

Beyond obvious marketing concerns, there’s a reason that Captain Kirk, and not Mr Spock, was the star of Star Trek. Spock was smarter, stronger, had extreme longevity and mysterious powers. But Kirk was human and vulnerable, short-lived and short-tempered. In today’s lore, Kirk is dead and Spock lives on. But Kirk remains immortally heroic, for he bled and fought and risked, while his godlike first officer pontificated in divine recline.

Bring back the days of heroic vulnerability, and leave these immortals be.

This article is reprinted from an original post on The Podium, published back in Jan 8, 2000.

For some years now, Charles Pellegrino has been one of my favourite science-fiction writers. His lack of fame is not easily understood, but I would suggest that it has something to do with his ability to straddle too many worlds at once: he is too reality-based to rank among the SF masters (Niven, Clarke, Asimov), and too technically oriented to cross into the mainstream lists. His closest mainstream parallel is Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, etc.). But Pellegrino’s encyclopaedic knowledge of history and many sciences transcends Crichton’s medical specialization and Hollywood sensibility. Reading Pellegrino’s books is more of an educational experience than a literary one. His novels are textbooks disguised as entertainment.

My exposure to Pellegrino thus far has been via three novels: Flying To Valhalla, its sequel The Killing Star, and now Dust. It’s clear from this sample that the man has a morbid fascination with global catastrophes and the end of the world. Whether it be via alien invasion or ecological collapse, Pellegrino has the scientific clout to make Armageddon believable and terrifying.

I was first struck by Pellegrino’s pervasive, insidious and fatalistic rationality when, in The Killing Star, he provided a compelling counterargument to Carl Sagan’s famous premise of “any alien civilization we encounter will necessarily be peaceful since they will have solved their own domestic quarrels before venturing to the stars.” Pellegrino responded with three rules:

With that logic, Pellegrino argued that interstellar meetings will invariably become violent. It’s therefore in everyone’s best interest to destroy every alien space-faring civilization we encounter, ‘cause they’ll be doing the same. This, he suggested, explains why project SETI has heard no sign of interstellar intelligence: they’re all smart enough to stay quiet; the loud ones shouting “We’re here! We’re here!” were wiped out early on.

This sounds like paranoid fluff, I know. But the man’s inventive genius compels pause. He describes a doomsday device he calls a “relativistic missile” which physicists now concur can be built. He was the first to describe a recipe for cloning dinosaurs, long before Jurassic Park. He has designed a viable interstellar rocket drive, and was involved in the early 1970’s debates on whether a comet impact could have killed the dinosaurs. A genuine polymath, Pellegrino demands admiration.

Dust is by far Pellegrino’s most terrifying novel. In it, he suggests a mechanism for the periodic spates of global extinction (having occurred 33 million and 65 million years ago) having less to do with meteors than with a “genetic time bomb” built into insect species. With the sudden die- off of insects around the world, a chain reaction of ecological catastrophes ensues, culminating with nuclear war brought about by environmental insecurity.

As is his wont, Pellegrino has peppered Dust with fascinating scientific trivia: for example, the rapid evolution of a filter-speeding sponge into a predacious carnivore, the link between prion diseases and the origins of life, and the unexplained global spontaneous crystallization of almost all laboratory glycerin molecules in 1910.

Pellegrino is no literary master. His characters are not compelling creations who evolve through life journeys —mostly because his characters are his real-life scientist buddies! He does not pretend to explore the human condition as would a Rushdie, Conrad, Hemingway or Forster. But he provides hard supportable science, and surrounds it with plausible scenarios that cannot fail to compel greater thought.

Time spent reading Pellegrino is time well-spent indeed.