Edited by Althea May Atherton Hello, dear readers! My apologies for the long absence. There’s a longer note at the end of this newsletter about what’s up and what’s next. In the meantime, I’m presenting my chapter from “Strategy Strikes Back: How Star Wars Explains Modern Military Conflict.” The book was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2018, and contains a host of writers talking about science fiction and strategy.
One of my favorite parts of my weekly routine is my early Wednesday morning barre class. I don’t love the 4:30 am alarm, but there’s a certain quiet and calm that comes only in the hours just before the sun rises. As a lawyer and mom of two young daughters, I normally welcome the solitude in my drive to the studio. But this week, instead of a peacefulness in my solitude, an unsettling and unwelcome isolation crept in.
Colin here. I re-watched Top Gun on a flight recently with some pretty good headphones. For the first time, I paid close attention to the anthemic theme song that kicks off the credits and then quickly blasts into another track (Danger Zone), once the catapult propels the F-14 Tomcat off of the flight deck. It was fun to listen to the composition intently: it’s an interesting piece of music; there’s some dubby echos on the TR-808 drum track, dark synth bells (Yamaha DX7 synth presets!
The early part of the college football offseason is devoted to looking back at the recently finished season and pondering what could have been if certain things went in another direction. Football has a good bit of variance baked into it, so perhaps a fumble bouncing a different direction or a tipped interception falling incomplete could change the course of a game or even season for some teams. Maybe you even play prevent defense on the last play of the game so you don’t lose to a FCS team for the first time in program history (Go Noles!
It wasn’t too long ago that Coventry City found themselves staring down the barrel of a penalty shoot-out in May of 2023. After a grueling Championship campaign, Coventry had battled their way to an impressive fifth place finish, guaranteeing them a playoff position with aspirations of the Premier League on the other side. This was an incredible feat in its own right, as Mark Robins took to the helm as manager of Coventry City and steadily steered Coventry towards the upper echelons of League One and the Championship, a position that Coventry fans had been hoping for amongst years of mediocrity and uncertainty as they were relegated to League Two under previous boss Tony Mowbray.