Another fan fiction video, using Grand Admiral Thrawn and Xanatos, who was the primary antagonist in the 1990s Disney animated series "Gargoyles," as reference points for a discussion about power, ambition and why both need to be tempered with wisdom.

A fan fiction video in which the Grand Admiral discusses with Captain Pellaeon how the deadly climate of the Chiss homeworld affected his people's culture.

Fan fiction video in which, after his return at the end of Ahsoka series one, and having put a new imperial fleet together, Grand Admiral Thrawn briefs his captains.  

HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney were the only Roya Navy battleships to mount 16-inch guns. They were nicknamed the "Cherry tree" class - e.g. cut down by Washington - after their size and configuration was dramatically altered as a result of the Washington naval treaty. HMS Rodney was on her way to America when HMS Hood went down in the Denmark straight and the admiralty sent out the order to all ships, "Sink the Bismarck." It is possible - though it was never confirmed - that Rodney hit Bismarck with a torpedo. She had them, she fired them, Rodney's officers thought they got a hit. If so this was the only instance in the whole existence of dreadnaught battleships that one battleship hit another with a torpedo. What is not in doubt, however, is that Rodney's nine sixteen-inch guns quickly turned the Bismarck, one of the most formidable battleships in the world, into a blazing wreck. Here is her story.

Reposting the fan fiction film in which Grand Admiral Thrawn, Pellaeon, and Colonel Tor Phennir dissect the failures of Imperial starfighter doctrine — and the starfighter that could have changed the entire Galactic Civil War, the Tie Defender which Morgan Elspeth designed and Thrawn was putting into production.

In which the Grand Admiral speaks about his own people, the Chiss Ascendancy. This is a fan video, but draws heavily on the novels of Timothy Zahn.

It seems extraordinary now but back in the days of World War II, Radar was comparatively new, and not all of even the most modern and powerful warships carried it. This video tells the story of a night action between a powerful modern fleet with a battleship and eight heavy and light cruisers against a force of mostly much older ships with just three key advantages - unlike the Italians, the British had an aircraft carrier in their force, and HMS Valiant, one of the three elderly British battleships present, all laid down before World War one, had radar. The third key advantage was that the Italians were using the German "Enigma" system for their most secret transmissions, and a few days before the battle, Bletchley Park broke the Italian codes and warned the Royal Navy commander, Admiral Andrew Brown Cunningham (ABC) that the Italian fleet had sailed. To protect the biggest secret of the war, that Britain had broken the Enigma codes, the British sent a reconnaissance plane t...

A fan fiction video of a discussion between Grand Admiral Thrawn, Captain Pellaeon, and General Covell on the nature of command.

The Star Wars parody brigade have cottoned on to the extraordinary election going on in Clacton, UK and some of them have produced this song. The people who put this together did so in jest, it is not affiliated to the Count Binface or Reform UK campaign and it is intended as a joke, not an attempt to influence the election. 

" Memoirs of an Invisible man " by H.F. Saint, published in 1987, is a worthy successor to H.G. Wells' classic " The Invisible Man. " It paints a gripping and plausible a picture of what a modern society might do to a man who was accidentally rendered invisible by a nuclear accident, which is as unforgettable as Wells' iconic novel.   This is a really really good book, to an extent which was not remotely captured by the mildly entertaining comedy film it inspired starring Chevy Chase and Darryl Hannah and with the late Sam Neill doing a brilliant job of capturing some of the menace of the villain from the book, which is the character he plays, while fitting in with the light comedy of the film version. The central character and first-person narrator, Nick Halliwell, is a New York securities analyst, who had never done anything terribly remarkable before the fateful day he accepts an invitation to a press conference at which a brilliant scientist is going to ...

We are sorry to learn that the great actor Sam Neill has died. He had great roles in so many movies - an unforgettable villain in some, for example his role as the captain who turns out to be an android in the first "Alien" film, a brilliant and very real hero in others such as his role in the Jurassic Park franchise, where his reaction to the dinosaurs made them seem so much more real. It has been suggested that for naval audiences, Neill will be remembered for his role as Captain Second Rank Vasily Borodin, the steadfast executive officer aboard the Soviet submarine Red October in The Hunt for Red October (1990). His portrayal of Borodin's professionalism, loyalty to his captain Marco Ramius (played by Sean Connery) and quiet courage helped make the film one of the most respected naval thrillers ever brought to the screen and his fate and final words were particularly poignant. Unlike the book " Memoirs of an Invisible Man, " by H. F. Saint, the film version w...

This youtube clip is a spoof, put out by James Cunliffe and not issued or endorsed by the Count Binface campaign for the Clacton by-election. It was issued as a joke and is linked to here on the same basis.

Ahead of the World Cup men's football match between England and Norway, this report on the publicity for an exhibition about the Vikings was shared today:

The Grand Admiral writes ... In the corner of the Galaxy Far Far Away which I came from, politics was a complete mess, run by a family-based oligarchy. Time and again, after pulling off victories which nobody else thought was possible to defend my people, the Chiss, I faced backbiting from treacherous politicians, including one or two in my own Mitth family, about how my military victories were political liabilities.  Any remaining respect I had for Chiss politicians was destroyed by their response after the Sunrise confrontation (which some people call "Senior Captain Thrawn's last stand.")  In that battle a hastily thrown-together alliance of Chiss and Allied forces saved the entire area which my people call " near space " and the rest of our galazy calls the " Unknown Regions " from being conquered by the Grysk, a group of evil and insidious mind-controlling aliens who make Sheev Palpatine, Lord Vader and Orson Krennic look like saints. What was the...

The song "I need a hero" has been posted many times, including here, with video of a hero from the galaxy far, far away such as Obi-wan Kenobi or, most often, Luke Skywalker carving his way through a platoon of almost invincible (to anyone else) killer robots to rescue the main characters in the season II finale of " The Mandalorian. " But today we am posting it as a tribute to, and with video of, the singer, Bonnie Tyler, who has sadly died at the age of 75. In a statement, Tyler's family and team confirmed she died "unexpectedly" on Wednesday evening in a hospital in Portugal due to the "illness that she was being treated for". In May, Tyler had been rushed to hospital in Faro, Portugal, for emergency intestinal surgery and placed in an induced coma to aid her recovery. After growing up in a council house in Skewen, south Wales, Tyler went on to sell millions of records, and top charts around the world - including in the US and UK - a...

" Startide Rising " by David Brin, which was first published in 1983, is the second in the "Uplift" series of science fiction novels and that very rare thing, a sequel to a great book which is even better. It deservedly won both Hugo and Nebula awards. Brin attempts and achieves something really challenging: the Earth starship "Streaker" which is at the centre of the story is commanded and mainly crewed by dolphins, with just seven humans and one uplifted chimpanzee as the other members of the crew. Brin uses dolphins, humans, the chimp and various members of the fleets of fanatical alien races who are trying to capture Streaker as his various viewpoint characters, and manages to make their voices believable. You don't question when reading the story that the non-human characters - e.g. most of the cast - are real people, be they dolphin, chimp or alien. Like the first book in the series, "Sundiver," this novel thinks big, asking huge questio...

 

"Mission of Honor" by David Weber is military SF novel which basically continues the story of Admiral Honor Harrington after the original "Ms Hornblower in Space" story arc was largely concluded in the previous novel, "At all costs." As the wars with Haven, which have lasted a generation and which Honor Harrington has been preparing for or fighting for her whole adult life, seem to be finally coming to an end, her nation, the Star Kingdom of Manticore (now the Star Empire) faces a new threat. The reader knows, though at the start of this book most of the characters do not, that there is a centuries old conspiracy to improve the human genome through genetic engineering. Now you may ask, what's so evil about that - and indeed, the people working for that aim genuinely believe they are working for the good of what they see as the human race, which makes them far more dangerous, as many of them will give their lives for that cause and they believe nothing ...

This is a piece of crossover fan fiction. It is a report, to Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine, from Admiral Thrawn, about the "Imperium of man." E.g. the society which provides the backstory for the human Space Marines and other Terran forces from the Warhammer 40k universe ... 

Another fan fiction video in which the Grand Admiral discusses how Sheev Palpatine rose to be Supreme Chancellor and then Emperor.