The nationwide chain of Borders bookstores officially went down in flames last month. Which sucks; I know a lot of folks were cheerleading their demise, due to the fact that Borders and others muscled out many independent bookstores in the 1980s and 1990s, but the loss of the chain is not a good thing. Our local Borders closed months ago, and now all we have in my area is one massive bookseller, Barnes & Noble. (And if you live in a town that doesn’t have a Barnes & Noble, you’re shit out of luck.)

Without any competition, Barnes & Noble has no incentive to offer the kinds of deals that Borders had, or even to stock varying products. There’s been countless times where I’ve searched for something that was normally stocked at Borders, but come up empty at Barnes & Noble.

This whole debacle got me growing more depressed about the impending death of print as a medium.

Since so much material is online nowadays, quality periodicals are becoming harder to come by. Aside from publications going out of business, many that are still in print are outdated by the time they hit shelves. The only magazine I read is Decibel, and the material in there isn’t duplicated, such as interviews and album reviews. I understand that you can find album reviews all over the ‘net, but Decibel‘s writers are some of the very few that I trust. But how much longer does the mag have in this day and age? To the best of my knowledge, it’s stable, but even niche publications like Decibel aren’t safe.

Then there’s books. Sales of e-books are starting to outpace their printed counterparts, and it’s a lot cheaper for a publisher to send out a file than print and ship a stack of books. Dedicated e-readers are cheap, and more advanced tablet computers like the iPad are perfect for reading digital books, magazines, comics…you name it.

Print’s slow death saddens me, as I vastly prefer physical media over a random collection of zeroes and ones. It’s a shame that we’re throwing away a longstanding tradition in favor of simple convenience.

This fall is the 45th anniversary of Star Trek. It’s hard to believe that television’s most influential science fiction program is that goddamned old, but those are the facts. Things are also gearing up for the next Star Trek film, due to be released next summer.

That last bit is the fly in the ointment. As everyone knows, the last Star Trek film took place in an alternate timeline, often dubbed the “Abramsverse” after director J. J. Abrams. Love it or hate it, this was a sensible decision, as it brought in new fans to the Star Trek saga without burdening them with all that had come before.

However, the “prime” universe, where all of the other Star Trek series and movies took place, has taken a back seat. Merchandise and books are quite literally the only thing keeping the prime universe alive (fan productions nonwithstanding). As far as any new canon material is concerned…forget it.

It’s a shame, because as we all know, the prime universe stories far outclass the new film. Even if the next few Abramsverse films are mindblowing pieces of cinematic science fiction, they still can’t hold a candle to the powerful storytelling of the past four-plus decades.

The only official continuity coming down the line is Abramsverse stuff, and I bet that’ll extend to any new television productions as well. C’mon, we all know that Star Trek will make its triumphant return to television soon enough; it’s where the franchise began, and that’s where it’s always been at its best. My guess is that a new series will hit in the fall of 2016; the third Abramsverse film is sure to hit in 2015 (making it a neatly-wrapped trilogy), and the following year will be the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. That’s perfect timing, any way you want to slice it.

I still believe that the series would take place in the Abramsverse, albeit with a new ship and crew. Longtime Star Trek fans alone won’t be enough to keep a television series afloat, so the producers will need to draw in newcomers. There’s no easier way to do that than to tie it to the recent film continuity.

I mentioned that books are the only source of officially licensed stories taking place in the prime universe, even though they are not canon. In a bizarre reversal, a set of books based on the Abramsverse was cancelled, though some young adult novels were released. (Thankfully, they were free of vampires and werewolves.)

It would make my damned day if we got some new official prime universe stories, but I’m more likely to join the Q Continuum before that happens. The Abramsverse is here to stay…before the next inevitable reboot. I guess one can dream. How about another animated series? It’s been working well for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and even a Star Trek Web series would be pretty awesome.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the term “cloud computing” by now. It’s a fancy way of saying that books, music, videos, and other media will all be stored on a third party server, while your computer or other device accesses them from any location. This naturally makes things incredibly convenient for the end user. Forget your iPod? No worries, just stream your music instead to your phone instead.

Make no mistake; this is the way media is moving forward, and we are powerless to stop it. Unfortunately, it also really sucks. You know me; I’m a fervent proponent of physical ownership over intangible licensing. But the cloud model actually takes things an ominous step further.

With most digital distribution models, you pay to download the content, which may or may not have usage restrictions via DRM. If whoever you purchased it from decides not to offer that content anymore, or worse, closes up shop, you at least have your downloaded copy to enjoy.

Not so with the cloud model. Now, you’re not even paying for the content itself; you’re just paying for access to that content. Which means that whoever’s hosting your library can remove content at their whim. And if they go out of business? Your media is now gone, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

A split between the two models would be best; Amazon’s recently-launched Cloud Player works this way. You can stream stuff all day and night, but it lets you upload your own files and download files purchased through Amazon. Now you can have backups of all of your stuff, and still enjoy it on the go from any Internet-enabled device. (Apple will be launching something similar as part of iTunes.) That kind of setup I don’t have a problem with, and I can only hope it becomes the standard. The only downside is that you have to pay a lot more if you’ve got a large media library, and many of us do.

I know physical media’s on its way out in favor of content providers having much greater control and telling you exactly what you can do with your media, but damn it, I’m going to hold out as long as I can. Hey, if vinyl LPs are still around, I think my CD collection will be safe for quite sometime.

For further reading on this topic, especially as it relates to music, check out the following two pieces by Vince Neilstein over at MetalSucks:

• Amazon Beats Apple and Google to the Cloud, Launches “Cloud Player” Music Streaming Service

• Amazon Cloud Player to Record Labels: “Fuck Off!”

I’d also suggest that you read the comments on those pieces. Aside from the usual Internet flamebait and trolling, there some interesting discussion happening there.

I spent a few weeks catching up on Doctor Who, and other than the usual good acting and stories mixed with the occasional gigantic plot holes, I’ve noticed something missing.

The Doctor needs new recurring antagonists that are morally ambiguous.

The bad guys on the show are almost always pure evil, with no shades of gray. Not only that, but the most popular villainous races — the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Sontarans, and so forth — have gotten incredibly silly. (I’m sick to death of the Daleks. They fucking suck, people. Get over it.) The Doctor’s malicious archenemy, the Master, has become a joke; he’s supposed to be out of regenerations, but he keeps coming back. Out of the new crop of villains, the Weeping Angels are great, but work best when used very sparingly. But even then, they’re simply malevolent.

So the Doctor clearly needs someone who will clash with him, but whose motives and morality will constantly remain unclear. They might even end up working towards a common goal more often than not, but still be shrouded in mystery and confusion. Shades of gray make for much more interesting storytelling than the simple “defeat the bad guys” trope.

My recommendation? Faction Paradox.

I know Faction creator Lawrence Miles would likely never permit this, but for the sake of argument, let’s pretend it’s possible.

In a nutshell, Faction Paradox was once one a powerful house of Time Lords that went rogue. Now, they muck about in time for their own purposes, using unique time travel methods, alternate universes, and bizarre rites. The Doctor’s faced plenty of nefarious time travelers before, but none quite like these guys. What the Faction is up to is never clear-cut, and if portrayed correctly, they wouldn’t always be the bad guys. They’d equally be good, bad, and anywhere in between. That’s the entire point of their existence.

Faction Paradox first appeared in many Doctor Who novels featuring the Eighth Doctor, but later spun off into their own series. The reason for this is that their “swan song” in the Doctor Who novel The Ancestor Cell was godawful, and Miles has stated that it most certainly does not count in continuity. (Miles did not write Cell; it was handled by Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole in order to close the Doctor Who Faction storyarc.)

Faction Paradox was explored much further in their own series, and their robust history, politics, and character would be a perfect fit for the current Doctor Who series. Their motives are never black and white, and while that may not be easy for the series’ younger viewers, the adults would certainly appreciate it. I beats one-dimensional baddies like the Daleks and friends any day of the week.

If nothing else, robed villains in skull masks would sell quite a few action figures.

“What? Do I have something on my face?”

Continuing my occasional series of posts dealing with my life’s many regrets, today I’m going to talk about creativity. More accurately, my failure to put said creativity to good, published use. Before we begin, let me make one thing very clear: this is not a monetary concern. I don’t feel the need to create only as a means to make money; in fact, I find that business model rather disgusting.

Now let’s get started. First order of business? Comics. In college, I was working on many projects related to the comic book industry. It was only natural that I eventually wanted to publish my own comics work; I wasn’t a good artist, but I had written up quite a few stories: a scifi/action series (Ground Zero), a scifi/horror series (Decon Squad), and a superhero series (Resurgence). I even produced an animated trailer for that last one!

I tried to get other artistically inclined folks on board. My efforts flopped, and in some cases, talented artists made no bones about telling me how awful my story ideas were. I ended up going the webcomic route a few years later, but real-world concerns shuttered that after three years (along with the fact that my art was crap).

From here, we can naturally segue into my piss-poor attempts at creative writing. I’ve had various science fiction and fantasy stories whirling about my head for over twenty years, but every time I’ve tried to commit them to text, I can never properly translate my ideas. Sure, I write blog entries here and there, and contribute to Musician Photo Journal, but that’s not the same. It’s also nonfiction, which I find considerably easier to write (as evidenced by what you’re reading right now).

Then there’s music. One of my biggest regrets was my failure to keep up on my guitar playing over the past decade. I lay the blame for this squarely at my own feet: I was lazy and easily distracted, and that’s all there is to it. I got my own guitar as a birthday present in the fall of 2000, which was my final semester in college. I played a hell of a lot in my dorm room, and my skills noticeably improved. (I’m also self-taught, so my definition of “improved” may vary compared to others.) Once I got out of school, I still played, but it fell by the wayside a bit once I got a full time job, moved out, et cetera. Even at my slow, self-taught pace, if I had kept at it over the past ten years, I’d be a hell of a lot better by now. I’ve been kicking myself a lot over this lately, and I deserve the self-flagellation. If I had stayed on target, I could’ve at least recorded an EP or something by now. (I don’t know any other musicians with similar tastes in extreme metal, but that’s what drum machines and GarageBand are for.)

Perhaps someday the creative impulses misfiring within my cranium might coalesce into something viable. But until that day comes, you’ll just have to suffer along with me as I write nothing but meandering blog entries.