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I am on a Star Trek kick, which means not only am I watching the original series for the first time (I’ve made attempts in the past but never got very far-the first episode I ever saw was Spock’s Brain; can you blame me?), I am reading some of the tie-ins, particularly the old skool ones from the seventies and eighties. I figured with the hundreds of novels written, there must be like five that are excellent.
THESE REVIEWS CONTAIN SPOILERS
Spock’s World
Premise: Vulcan is holding a vote to secede from the Federation.
This one was mostly filler, but entertaining. More than half the book are moments from Vulcan’s past, which means you get like twenty pages of swirling astronomic dust forming the planetary disk. If this were a fanfic, the whole book would be fifty pages, tops, cause fanfic authors don’t have to make page count. The premise was a bit more interesting than the book turned out to be. Though there was some discussion of Vulcan xenophobia and prejudice, it turned out, of course, that the whole thing was driven by corruption (with a side of evil!T’Pring), so the revelation of corruption of course means that Vulcan doesn’t secede. The book also assumed that secession was the same thing as isolationism-ie, the cutting of all ties to the Federation, and I felt like there were more nuanced things that could be done here, too. Duane comes up with a good number of rather interesting things about Vulcan culture, most of which got tossed out by later continuities. So an solid read, if not as compelling as it could have been.
Planet Judgment
Premise: Standard Enterprise encounters an anomalous planet/red shirts die type of plot.
I picked up this one because it was written by Joe Haldeman, author of the Forever War. And this book is kind of like random bits of the Forever War with Kirk and Spock stuck in them. Each scene is compelling enough, but as a whole, the plot is gibberish.
At the start of the book, much time is setting up a love triangle between two crew members and an older professor the Enterprise is transporting who was the female crew member’s mentor. Then the Enterprise encounters a planet being orbited by a black hole, and sends down a shuttle to investigate. The shuttle is completely cut off, so Spock sends down a few more shuttles, thereby stranding a whole bunch more people, including the entire command crew and the love triangle.
The first hundred pages is Planet Hell, with red shirts dying in horrific ways, and the crew trying to survive, including carnivorous plants, Jurassic type beasties, and natives shooting hails of arrows. Then we find out the natives are “beings of thought and energy” who have near infinite power, and have disabled the crew’s shuttles cause the buzz annoys them. And the hail of arrows was…teenagers. And the beasts and the blackhole are not in any way explained. Then these beings say they are in a psychic war with beings from another galaxy, and require the crew’s hallucinogenic dream sequences to fight them. So then we get dream sequences? And then they defeat the extra-galactic aliens or something? The end. No mention, I should say, of the love triangle. It was like he was given a premise to write, and started writing that, then decided he was bored with it and wrote something else instead but without reconciling the two ideas. And given the fact that this is only 150 pages long, that’s a lot of dissonance.
Haldeman retains his ability to portray death as both commonplace and horrific, which he deployed to such disturbing effect in the Forever War that I almost didn’t finish the book. That book was his opus. This book is a paycheck.
I’m now reading Spock Must Die, another 100-pager from the early days. Here are a few things I’m amused by:
- All these authors are obsessed with Spock’s sexuality. Obsessed. They are constantly trying to psychoanalyze why he’s so hot and why Christine Chapel is all over him. They seem to agree, though, they he’s celibate except for every seven years (thus taking the opposite tack of fandom).
- They all introduce Uhura as “the Bantu woman.” I was confused by this until I realized oooooh. She’s black. They’re trying to say “she’s the black one” without actually having to say it.
- Some of them actually explain things like Vulcan is the planet Spock is from and things like that, with the assumption that though you are reading this book, you have not seen the show.
- Spock’s World went out of its way to talk (at excruciating length) about the number of non-human and non-humanoid crewmembers. Planet Judgment explicitly says there are only six non-humans on the Enterprise. Given that in the show, Spock’s the only non-human on the crew, I find these different interpretations interesting.
- The early books have footnotes. For real. Any time they refer to the events of an episode, there is a little footnote telling you what episode it’s from, and what compilation the novelization of that episode can be found. This makes me profoundly sad for fans in the days before VCRs.
The Dreamwidth copy of this post has
comments. Comment there or here.
THESE REVIEWS CONTAIN SPOILERS
Spock’s World
Premise: Vulcan is holding a vote to secede from the Federation.
This one was mostly filler, but entertaining. More than half the book are moments from Vulcan’s past, which means you get like twenty pages of swirling astronomic dust forming the planetary disk. If this were a fanfic, the whole book would be fifty pages, tops, cause fanfic authors don’t have to make page count. The premise was a bit more interesting than the book turned out to be. Though there was some discussion of Vulcan xenophobia and prejudice, it turned out, of course, that the whole thing was driven by corruption (with a side of evil!T’Pring), so the revelation of corruption of course means that Vulcan doesn’t secede. The book also assumed that secession was the same thing as isolationism-ie, the cutting of all ties to the Federation, and I felt like there were more nuanced things that could be done here, too. Duane comes up with a good number of rather interesting things about Vulcan culture, most of which got tossed out by later continuities. So an solid read, if not as compelling as it could have been.
Planet Judgment
Premise: Standard Enterprise encounters an anomalous planet/red shirts die type of plot.
I picked up this one because it was written by Joe Haldeman, author of the Forever War. And this book is kind of like random bits of the Forever War with Kirk and Spock stuck in them. Each scene is compelling enough, but as a whole, the plot is gibberish.
At the start of the book, much time is setting up a love triangle between two crew members and an older professor the Enterprise is transporting who was the female crew member’s mentor. Then the Enterprise encounters a planet being orbited by a black hole, and sends down a shuttle to investigate. The shuttle is completely cut off, so Spock sends down a few more shuttles, thereby stranding a whole bunch more people, including the entire command crew and the love triangle.
The first hundred pages is Planet Hell, with red shirts dying in horrific ways, and the crew trying to survive, including carnivorous plants, Jurassic type beasties, and natives shooting hails of arrows. Then we find out the natives are “beings of thought and energy” who have near infinite power, and have disabled the crew’s shuttles cause the buzz annoys them. And the hail of arrows was…teenagers. And the beasts and the blackhole are not in any way explained. Then these beings say they are in a psychic war with beings from another galaxy, and require the crew’s hallucinogenic dream sequences to fight them. So then we get dream sequences? And then they defeat the extra-galactic aliens or something? The end. No mention, I should say, of the love triangle. It was like he was given a premise to write, and started writing that, then decided he was bored with it and wrote something else instead but without reconciling the two ideas. And given the fact that this is only 150 pages long, that’s a lot of dissonance.
Haldeman retains his ability to portray death as both commonplace and horrific, which he deployed to such disturbing effect in the Forever War that I almost didn’t finish the book. That book was his opus. This book is a paycheck.
I’m now reading Spock Must Die, another 100-pager from the early days. Here are a few things I’m amused by:
- All these authors are obsessed with Spock’s sexuality. Obsessed. They are constantly trying to psychoanalyze why he’s so hot and why Christine Chapel is all over him. They seem to agree, though, they he’s celibate except for every seven years (thus taking the opposite tack of fandom).
- They all introduce Uhura as “the Bantu woman.” I was confused by this until I realized oooooh. She’s black. They’re trying to say “she’s the black one” without actually having to say it.
- Some of them actually explain things like Vulcan is the planet Spock is from and things like that, with the assumption that though you are reading this book, you have not seen the show.
- Spock’s World went out of its way to talk (at excruciating length) about the number of non-human and non-humanoid crewmembers. Planet Judgment explicitly says there are only six non-humans on the Enterprise. Given that in the show, Spock’s the only non-human on the crew, I find these different interpretations interesting.
- The early books have footnotes. For real. Any time they refer to the events of an episode, there is a little footnote telling you what episode it’s from, and what compilation the novelization of that episode can be found. This makes me profoundly sad for fans in the days before VCRs.
The Dreamwidth copy of this post has
comments. Comment there or here.