Doctor Who has I think fallen desperately into this trap - particularly since the 2005 revival it has often been obsessed with the Doctor, and the stories around him are threadbare. All of time and space, and it all seemingly revolves around this character.

Dredd stories have always been wonderfully varied - serious, comic, realistic, absurd, and dipping into every other genre under the sun - because Dredd himself is a means to an end, not an end in himself.

I think the pitfall with these long-running characters is stories that focus excessively on them, instead of using them as a means to explore something else. In a sense, Mega-City One is what Dredd is actually about.

I've always been a bit mixed on D'Israeli's d'epiction of people, but he has an absolute ball with bizarre alien machines, and fleets of interplanetary war-craft - not to mention a ton of visual gags and references.

Scarlet Traces could easily have gone in a jingoistic direction, but these stories complicate the action with thoughtful commentary on prejudice, imperialism, "collateral damage", and the lengths the various factions will go to for survival.

I expect I'll get to both, but will likely read The Muller-Fokker Effect first.

Thank you! I have The Complete Roderick on hand, and will get to that, but decided I needed to read something earlier first.

The first new Transmission for a while went out yesterday, featuring recent articles plus capsule reviews of To Conquer Chaos (1964) by John Brunner, and A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994) by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Covers for various editions of The Reproductive System (1968) by Leo and Diane Dillon, Chris Foss, Jack Gaughan, and Mark Wilson.

No, I don't plan to write about this one. I've had a bit of a hiatus, but this week's episode will be on The Snow Queen (1980) by Joan D. Vinge.

These are all as worthy, thought-provoking and admirable as Le Guin always is, but rarely fun or exciting (again, as you would expect). The two humourous stories I found instantly forgettable. This is my 19th Le Guin, and mainly one for completists, I think.

There's an element of summation in these Hainish stories, which reference various peoples and planets from earlier tales from as far back as the 1960s. They also form a loose trilogy, dealing with "churten theory" (essentially interstellar teleportation).

Thank you!

The former is a twisty alien invasion tale, a spy story in SF clothes. "Segregation" is more interesting, a biology-centred story about an effort to explain a confusing alien ecosystem, with aspects of parasitism and extreme sexual dimorphism.