I may never read another Neil Stephenson book.

Arthur decides to tell his mom and his sister (“Dot”) about his new “Lifestyle Choice.” They decide he’s crazy, and slap him in a nuthatch run by a guy named “Peacock,” who attempts to cure people of their predilection for Superheroism. It quickly turns out that Mr. Peacock is, himself, a latent superhero, and spends all night in his office trying on his patients’ confiscated costumes. Arthur discovers this, and is thrown into solitary.

Yes, yes, I know, I know, it’s Monday, not Saturday. We’ve been all through this already: This is about the kinds of movies I used to *watch* on a Saturday afternoon, that doesn’t mean I can only talk about ‘em on a Saturday. So let’s just free our minds of our strictly literal interpretations of things that are, frankly, beneath our notice anyway. I mean, it’s not like the movies I’m reviewing in this feature are any good, right?

That said: We haven’t done one of these in a long while, but when I came across a Japanese space movie I’d never seen before, I just knew I had to cover it.

A decade ago, there were a bunch of Babylon 5 tie-in novels and short stories published. The novels are still fairly easy to find on the internet, the short stories are real tough to dig up, though: They were published only in various magazines, never reprinted, never collected, and they’re unlikely to be. I can’t reprint the stories, but I *can* at least review ‘em and let you know what you’re missing. Which I’m doing here:

PLAY BY PLAY