Ishmael by Barbara Hambly (Star Trek #23, 1985)
At Starbase 12, the docked Klingon ore freighter looks very suspicious. It has a larger crew than normal, and the power readings the Enterprise gets from it are much higher than can be explained. Spock slips aboard with a Starbase maintainence crew to investigate. He doesn't report in at the scheduled time, then the freighter leaves port and heads away. Spock sends two cryptic messages before the freighter vanishes without a trace. Kirk and the Starbase commander much figure out what has happened to the Klingon ship, while Spock ends up in 1868 Earth without his memory due to the Klingon mind-sifter while the Klingons try to change history. Spock is found unconcious by a crusty mill owner in Seattle, and passed off as the man's nephew once his hair grows enough to hide those Vulcan ears. Mill owner Aaron Stemple introduces "Ishmael" to the people of Seattle, not realizing that aliens from another world seek to kill him!
Of all the TV shows to cross over together, it would be hard to select a more unlikely match than Star Trek and Here Come the Brides. The two series were rough contemporaries, Trek running 1967-69 and Brides from 1968-70. But the settings and the moods were very different. Here Come the Brides was based loosely on the stage musical and 1954 movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, which itself was loosely based on Steven Vincent Benet's story "The Sobbin' Women." The connection was that Aaron Stemple was played by actor Mark Lenard, who also played Spock's father Sarek in the episode "Journey to Babel." In fact, Hambly writes so that Stemple becomes an ancestor of Spock's mother Amanda, so that Spock's "father" becomes a forebear of his mother.
This may be the most offbeat of Star Trek novels. Most of the action is set in the 1868 world, following Spock interacting with characters from another show, trapped in a time where he fully expects to be stranded for the rest of his life. The story itself is pretty good, Hambly being a now well-established sf and fantasy author. She was first published in 1982, and has written her own fiction as well as in the Beauty and the Beast and Star Wars series, plus three Trek novels. She also wrote #53, Ghost-Walker, and #71, Crossroad. She writes historical fiction too, which no doubt helps with the Seattle scenes.
Many readers probably did not recognize the references to the Brides series, notable for starring teen idol Bobby Sherman as the youngest brother as well as David Soul as the middle brother. I did, as a local station had run the syndicated reruns a few years earlier. The book provides a nice tie-up to the Brides series, a plus for fans of closure like myself. It also puts a nice statement on time-travel storylines, as the Klingons end up causing the very problem they go to Earth's past to end. I think time travel, if it is ever achieved, will end up being like that. Hambly also puts a nice turn on the Klingon empire by introducing the Karsids, which had conquered the Klingon race some years before, then been defeated. It's a neat concept.
It's a pretty good book, if an odd duck for the series.
Reviews and discussions of Star Trek novels and related publications.
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
Sunday, November 30, 2003
Shadow Lord by Laurence Yep (Star Trek #22, 1985)
A prince from a medieval-type society is returning to his home world after an education in Federation schools, and he will be accompanied by a party that will work on modernizing his home world's astronomical charts--a touchy subject since the society puts great stock in astrology. Spock and Sulu are chosen to accompany Prince Vikram to Angira, and wind up in the midst of a civil war with the Enterprise off on another mission and weeks away. Vikram, formerly ninth in line to the throne, is now the only surviving member of the royal family, and very much in danger. Now, the question becomes, can they live long enough for the cavalry to arrive?
Author Laurence Yep was already an established writer of young people's fiction by the time he wrote this novel. His first novel was published in 1973, and he won a Newbery Medal in 1975. He is often found in children's schoolbooks. Yep is a Chinese-American, although for quite some time his family lived in an African-American neighborhood. Yep writes a Star Trek novel here which is perhaps more aimed at a young audience, more in line with the animated shows than the live-action Trek. It is still an interesting story.
This book also starts a grouping of Trek novels essentially set in other genres. The TV show often dipped into other genres, and several novels about this time did the same. "Shadow Lord" is at its heart a samurai story, using the obvious character Sulu with Spock along for the ride. A Sulu-Chekov pairing might have been more apt, but this works. The novel has a framing sequence of prologue-epilogue, with the other main Enterprise characters, but the bulk of the novel is set on Angira with only Spock and Sulu among the familiar characters.
This was also the time when noted fantasy artist Boris Vallejo was doing the cover paintings for the books, which were usually spectacular. This outing, which is apparently unsigned but is copyrighted inside the book to Vallejo, is far below his usual standards. Perhaps an apprentice in his studio turned out this one. The Angirans, described in the book as roughly 7-foot tall lemurs, as depicted as tall humanoids on the cover. Also, Sulu's appearence is off, and he wears a blue uniform rather than gold. The creatures the three cover characters face are also not as described in the book, and that scene is fairly short. Disregarding the inconsistencies, the cover is well-rendered as usual. It just doesn't live up to Vallejo's usual attention to detail.
Yep has written a solid story here, not a great one but a readable version. He is one of the few Star Trek novel writers more famous for other works than his Star Trek work.
A prince from a medieval-type society is returning to his home world after an education in Federation schools, and he will be accompanied by a party that will work on modernizing his home world's astronomical charts--a touchy subject since the society puts great stock in astrology. Spock and Sulu are chosen to accompany Prince Vikram to Angira, and wind up in the midst of a civil war with the Enterprise off on another mission and weeks away. Vikram, formerly ninth in line to the throne, is now the only surviving member of the royal family, and very much in danger. Now, the question becomes, can they live long enough for the cavalry to arrive?
Author Laurence Yep was already an established writer of young people's fiction by the time he wrote this novel. His first novel was published in 1973, and he won a Newbery Medal in 1975. He is often found in children's schoolbooks. Yep is a Chinese-American, although for quite some time his family lived in an African-American neighborhood. Yep writes a Star Trek novel here which is perhaps more aimed at a young audience, more in line with the animated shows than the live-action Trek. It is still an interesting story.
This book also starts a grouping of Trek novels essentially set in other genres. The TV show often dipped into other genres, and several novels about this time did the same. "Shadow Lord" is at its heart a samurai story, using the obvious character Sulu with Spock along for the ride. A Sulu-Chekov pairing might have been more apt, but this works. The novel has a framing sequence of prologue-epilogue, with the other main Enterprise characters, but the bulk of the novel is set on Angira with only Spock and Sulu among the familiar characters.
This was also the time when noted fantasy artist Boris Vallejo was doing the cover paintings for the books, which were usually spectacular. This outing, which is apparently unsigned but is copyrighted inside the book to Vallejo, is far below his usual standards. Perhaps an apprentice in his studio turned out this one. The Angirans, described in the book as roughly 7-foot tall lemurs, as depicted as tall humanoids on the cover. Also, Sulu's appearence is off, and he wears a blue uniform rather than gold. The creatures the three cover characters face are also not as described in the book, and that scene is fairly short. Disregarding the inconsistencies, the cover is well-rendered as usual. It just doesn't live up to Vallejo's usual attention to detail.
Yep has written a solid story here, not a great one but a readable version. He is one of the few Star Trek novel writers more famous for other works than his Star Trek work.
Uhura's Song by Janet Hagan (Star Trek #21, 1985)
The Enterprise is in orbit around the planet Eeiauo, where Dr. McCoy is on the surface battling a native plague. The disease is debilitating, leading to a slow degeneration of the body's organs until a vegetative state is reached. Then the disease begins infecting humans as well, quickly leading to death. Uhura has befriended on of the natives, and finds a clue in some of the traditional songs she has learned. The race of bipedal felines has migrated to Eeiauo from another planet, which may have a cure for the terrible disease. First, Spock and Uhura must decipher the clues to find the planet of origin, then a landing party including Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Chekov must make first contact with the natives and find the cure, if possible.
This is author Kagan's first and only Star Trek novel, she has also written other sf books such as "Hellspark" and "Mirabile." She has a personal web page at . She has also written a number of short stories published in Asimov's. This book was her first published story, something common and wonderful at the time in Star Trek fiction. It is also the fifth consecutive ST novel published with a woman author. The numbers of women among ST fandom are the greatest strength of Star Trek, and a big part of the reason for the long-lasting nature and great fervor of the group.
However, this book also suffers the failing of many new authors: a heavy-handed inclusion of a character based on the author into the book. In this case, with McCoy fighting the plague, the Enterprise picks up a temporary chief medical officer, one Dr. Evan Wilson. A short, feisty woman, the character is obviously the entry of the not-quite-five-feet-tall Kagan into the book. And while the regular Star Trek characters are true to themselves in general, although Kirk (as is often the case) is not captured well, the character of Dr. Wilson dominates the book to the detriment of the story and plot. Some editing here would have helped, as the book is overlong at 350 pages, and would have been much better by concentrating on the main story and cutting out the "Wilson" parts to get to about 250 pages. Especially since for a book titled "Uhura's Song," Uhura plays a fairly small part in it, nowhere near as large as in the recent "The Tears of the Singers."
The main story itself, of a split society and the conditions that made it came about, is quite compelling. The feline's prehensile and apparently very long tails bothered me a bit, but that's a minor quibble. The problem is the author's conceit of character. Wilson plays in the book like dumping a Sherlock Holmes into a story, or a superhero. The character becomes by nature the focus of the book, and makes it more difficult to tell a story unless you are telling the story of that character. And that got in the way of a very good story.
Even the twist at the end only serves to complete the dominance of the Wilson character in the story. This is the sort of thing best suited for fan fiction, or the vanity press, and not a widely published novel. Certainly writers inject themselves into their stories all the time, but this was going too far.
The Enterprise is in orbit around the planet Eeiauo, where Dr. McCoy is on the surface battling a native plague. The disease is debilitating, leading to a slow degeneration of the body's organs until a vegetative state is reached. Then the disease begins infecting humans as well, quickly leading to death. Uhura has befriended on of the natives, and finds a clue in some of the traditional songs she has learned. The race of bipedal felines has migrated to Eeiauo from another planet, which may have a cure for the terrible disease. First, Spock and Uhura must decipher the clues to find the planet of origin, then a landing party including Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Chekov must make first contact with the natives and find the cure, if possible.
This is author Kagan's first and only Star Trek novel, she has also written other sf books such as "Hellspark" and "Mirabile." She has a personal web page at . She has also written a number of short stories published in Asimov's. This book was her first published story, something common and wonderful at the time in Star Trek fiction. It is also the fifth consecutive ST novel published with a woman author. The numbers of women among ST fandom are the greatest strength of Star Trek, and a big part of the reason for the long-lasting nature and great fervor of the group.
However, this book also suffers the failing of many new authors: a heavy-handed inclusion of a character based on the author into the book. In this case, with McCoy fighting the plague, the Enterprise picks up a temporary chief medical officer, one Dr. Evan Wilson. A short, feisty woman, the character is obviously the entry of the not-quite-five-feet-tall Kagan into the book. And while the regular Star Trek characters are true to themselves in general, although Kirk (as is often the case) is not captured well, the character of Dr. Wilson dominates the book to the detriment of the story and plot. Some editing here would have helped, as the book is overlong at 350 pages, and would have been much better by concentrating on the main story and cutting out the "Wilson" parts to get to about 250 pages. Especially since for a book titled "Uhura's Song," Uhura plays a fairly small part in it, nowhere near as large as in the recent "The Tears of the Singers."
The main story itself, of a split society and the conditions that made it came about, is quite compelling. The feline's prehensile and apparently very long tails bothered me a bit, but that's a minor quibble. The problem is the author's conceit of character. Wilson plays in the book like dumping a Sherlock Holmes into a story, or a superhero. The character becomes by nature the focus of the book, and makes it more difficult to tell a story unless you are telling the story of that character. And that got in the way of a very good story.
Even the twist at the end only serves to complete the dominance of the Wilson character in the story. This is the sort of thing best suited for fan fiction, or the vanity press, and not a widely published novel. Certainly writers inject themselves into their stories all the time, but this was going too far.
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