Friday, January 22, 2016

Review: Giant Dreams and Dragons by James Womack


Genre: Science Fiction/Young Adult/Short Story

Description:

Professor Buford Doss, never got the respect or credit he deserved. Such prestige went to what he insisted were inferior peers and even mentally dense graduate assistants. But Professor Doss had a plan to remedy all of that. A big plan. A miraculous plan. And he was anxious to set it in motion, even if it meant engaging in a bit of deceit. You may say he had no intention of 'dragon' his feet on the matter. No siree. Not Dr. Buford Doss.”

Author:

From James Womack’s author page on Amazon: “I'm a deaf person who likes to write stories. Actually, I prefer telling stories in American Sign Language (ASL) but not everyone understands it. For me, storytelling is storytelling so writing stories gives me much pleasure. My hope is readers get pleasure from what I've written. I'm not focused on any specific genre so my stories range from science fiction to religious based stories. I hold a bachelor degree from Gallaudet University and a Masters degree from California State University of Northridge. I used to teach Deaf high school students before teaching college students full time in the last two decades of my career. I'm married to a really cool woman who was also my Gallaudet University classmate during my time there. My non-writing activities include cooking, fishing, playing with my youngest grandkids, and experimenting with applying computer software to educational purposes.”

Appraisal:

I found the author’s voice in this tale absorbing and had no trouble engaging with Buford Doss. Buford worked in the bio-engineering field as a glorified lab assistant to insignificant people, who considered themselves scientists, with insignificant goals. All they did was waste grant money on research projects of little value to anyone other than themselves. Buford had big dreams though, outside of the box dreams. However, he was told repeatedly his ideas were preposterous and could not be done.

Buford Doss was a gifted ego-maniacal madman who, because he was good at his job, was able to manipulate the university’s system to get exactly what he needed using faculty discounts and the use of the university lab equipment for processing research findings in a field study. Well that is to say as close as he could get without actually getting a grant for his study and experiments.
The story is told through Dr. Doss’s eyes so it is easy to see why he was viewed by his peers as he was. He doesn’t hide his disdain for his colleagues from the reader. Since this is a short story things develop and move quickly. It is wondrous and exciting, too bad that Buford was so caught up in performing his miracle he neglected to thoroughly think it all through. I imagine anyone interested in science fiction will enjoy this story.

Buy now from:      Amazon US      Amazon UK

Format/Typo Issues:

I found nothing significant to mention.

Rating: **** Four stars

Reviewed by: ?wazithinkin

Approximate word count: 7-8,000 words

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