Category: Meta Page 1 of 6

Deep Space Spines is migrating to BearBlog

On 26 August 2026

I started writing this post before I even fully committed to the idea in my head, but we’re going to do it.

Long story short: I’ve been fiddling with BearBlog for personal writing, and I like its simplicity so much that I think I’m going to migrate Deep Space Spines over to it. The writing has always been the main attraction, and BearBlog makes it easy to foreground that. I’m a little sad that I spent some of my summer revamping the archive into a lean mean image-based machine only to decide a month later to move to something more stripped-down, but I’m not exactly devastated.

It’s going to take a long time to do it. Every review has to be moved over manually, and with school in full swing, spare time is once again at a premium. But I think it’s a lot more worthwhile to pay $6 a month (or even the yearly rate) than the absolute gobs I’m currently paying to host it on a bespoke WordPress site. Also, I’ve been having some issues with site security over here that wouldn’t be a problem over there, and it’s made it hard to attract new readers.

~~New posts will still go up over here until I have it done.~~ (EDIT: Changed my mind about this. New reviews will go up over there, and I’ll link them over here until everything in the archive is migrated.)

If you want to see it as it gets built, here’s a link. Heck, you might even enjoy revisiting some of those old reviews. No time like the present for an archive binge.

Let’s get the hell out of here.

By jess

On 22 March 2026

In Meta

Hello Readers,

As it has been nearly three months without a review at this point, I feel I must at least justify the lack of new writing. School has been an absolute back-breaker this semester; I have not been in a very good headspace as a result of stress from all directions; and I’m having a lot of trouble writing about the particular book I’m on right now because I keep going back and forth on certain feelings about it. But you should know that I have no intention of discontinuing the site’s mission. It’s just that I’m having a very hard time devoting mental and emotional resources to it. The aforementioned review is about 50 percent done, if not more, and if I can just get one night where nothing else is going on, no demands are being made of my time and psychic energy, and I can clear my mind, I can get it done.

Thanks as always for being here and enjoying the site. Live long and prosper.

RIP Peter David

By jess

On 25 May 2025

In Meta

Peter David, a writer beloved for his literary takes on dozens of popular franchise characters across a variety of media, died on May 24, 2025. He suffered a number of health issues in the final decade-plus of his life, including, in 2022 alone, multiple strokes, kidney failure, and a heart attack. He was 68 years old.

David was extremely prolific in the world of Star Trek novels, writing almost fifty between 1989 and 2011, nearly half of which belonged to the New Frontier series, his biggest and most ambitious footprint on the franchise, a sandbox all his own that successfully melded the cowboy sensibilities of the original series with the more strait-laced bureaucracy of the 90s shows and allowed him to indulge some of the more risqué and dangerous elements that were considered anathema by some of the less adventurous stewards of the TV arm of the franchise. Under the command of Mackenzie Calhoun, who was once the young leader of a revolution on his home world of Xenex and is still unpacking a lot of the trauma from those years, the Ambassador-class starship Excalibur holds it down in the Beta Quadrant while the Dominion War rages on elsewhere, its crew standing up to adversity with an ample supply of David’s trademark humor and humanity at every turn.

Some of David’s other Trek novels, like Q-in-Law, Imzadi, and I, Q (which I’m personally looking very forward to getting to as we approach the books of 1999), remain fan-favorite takes on their main characters to this day.

He was also a big name in comics, being lauded by fans for his similarly pensive takes on Aquaman and the Hulk in the 1990s.

David didn’t always hit the mark—his earlier Trek works were sometimes derailed by gratuitous puerility—but he always wrote with an inimitable style and could never be accused of merely taking the paycheck. He had a knack for naturalistic dialogue that many writers spend their whole lives reaching for and never get close to grasping. His own voice was a rare one in the world of Trek, one that strove to bring a different, more modern sense of humor to the franchise while still aspiring to its original ideals—and, more often than not, succeeded. He will be dearly missed.

Star Trek Book Club article

By jess

On 2 April 2025

In Meta

Fellow Trekkie and friend of the site Adam Selvidge runs an excellent website called Star Trek Book Club, which compiles the latest and greatest in Trek lit news and reviews. Recently, he reached out with an opportunity I was more than happy to pounce on: he asked me if I’d like to write a piece for a fledgling feature on the site called TrekLit Connection, in which figures in the world of Star Trek lit-crit recount some of their histories with Trek writing and literature and talk about the events and ideas that led up to their current projects. I did just that, and he posted it a couple days ago. Go check it out posthaste! There are some parts of the origin story that I’m not sure I’ve ever talked about on here, so even long-time readers are liable to learn something new. I’m incredibly honored to have been asked to do this, and revisiting the road that eventually culminated in Deep Space Spines brought me a lot of warm fuzzies.

Next review should be out very soon, by the way.

By jess

On 5 October 2024

In Meta

Well, it finally happened: September 2024 was the first month since this site started to have zero new reviews. I am so sorry, but just know I am still into this project and have no thoughts of abandoning it. In my defense, school is crazy-busy this year, and Pathways is incredibly long (for a Star Trek novel) and mostly boring. (Why would you lead off with the Chakotay akoocheemoya stuff? Why?)

Anyway, that’s that. Also, I’m 40 years old today! But that’s a whole other story.