Killing Time by Della Van Hise (Star Trek #24, 1985)

Captain Kirk finds himself having odd dreams. He is a disaffected ensign with a chip on his shoulder, unhappy with his lot in life, while Spock is the ship's captain. Turns out, Spock is having the same dream, and he doesn't like it any more than Kirk does. Soon, reality shifts, and that becomes the state of affairs. The Romulans have discovered a way to travel back in time and change the past to alter the future. In this attempt, called Second History, they have secretly killed the men who laid the foundation for the Federation, and strengthened the Romulan Empire. But, it didn't work as well as they had hoped, because in stead of humans, Vulcans formed an Alliance a few years later, and staved off further Romulan advancement. But it gets worse: the universe is rejecting the revised state of affairs, and the strain on all involved is causing outbreaks of madness all across the galaxy. Captain Spock and Ensign Kirk must travel to Romulus, go back in time, and change history back to the way it was before.

Unfortunate that two time-travel themed books were released consecutively, and even worse that this one is a muddled mess. This outing is a contender for "Worst Star Trek Novel Ever Released." The heights reached in recent months were almost undone in one fell swoop here. The plot is confusing, the writing poor, and the characters hard to recognize. And to make it worse, Pocket Books initially released an earlier draft, rather than the rewritten version. At this time the books were undergoing very light editing, as seen in the last book's apparently unnoticed crossover that seems to have passed without lawsuit. In a couple of years, that would shift the other way as Paramount began demanding overediting. That is a bad thing overall, but this book could have used some more editing, or better yet outright cancellation.

Where "Ishmael" got time travel very right, this book gets it very wrong. Whether it is a philosophy issue or some other problem, it is difficult to understand the characters having memories of other alternate universes. Or how they could have dreams of other realities before they have happened. If the author wanted to invoke something like the tenets of String Theory, with the infinite number of possible universes, it is a difficult thing to credit the cross-memories through realities. This reads like a Marshak and Culbreath novel. Another resemblance to those writers is seen in the concentration on Spock and Kirk, plus two female Romulan characters, to the exclusion of others.

Also, the facts in the Second History are rather garbled and unsatisfactory. For an "Alliance" dominated by Vulcan, there seem to be few Vulcans in the service. For much of the book, Spock appears to be the only Vulcan on the ShiKahr, then there are Vulcan security guards. That makes little sense. Also, Chekov is the First Officer. Why? Because he is the Science Officer? He is the youngest of the originals. Much more sensible for Sulu or Uhura, or even Scotty to be second in command. Also there are a couple of too-pat situations, one that Spock enters pon farr, and must get help from the Romulan women, and second that the Romulan Praetor turns out to be the Romulan Commander from the episode "The Enterprise Incident." It's far too convenient.

Even more interesting is the original published version of the book. At the time, I was in college and buying the novels as soon as they appeared, so I got the soon-to-be-recalled version of the story. Author Van Hise was apparently interested in the K/S subculture, also known as the "slash" fans. This is a group that writes stories with Kirk and Spock as homosexual lovers. The odd thing about this group is that they tend to be women, rather than men writing out such fantasies. Especially in the recalled release, there are several aside references, to Kirk and Spock touching and such. There also seems to be an inordinate amount of Spock being shirtless in Kirk's presence, an incident of Spock laying on top of Kirk, a couple of mind melds, and lots of velvet and tight pants. All very odd and somewhat subliminally disturbing. The rewritten and revised version cuts out much of the more blatant excapades, but it is all still rather sordid.

A visit to the author's website also reveals some of her poetry, which is somewhat New Age-Feminist in nature. This is reflected to references to the Enterprise as "silver woman-goddess" in the book text. Van Hise has apparently also published or self-published one or two "homosexual vampire" books. I do not know if this author has any connection to James Van Hise, often credited as a writer on the unauthorized and usually very poor quality Star Trek books released by Hal Schuster under a variety of company imprints.

It's a lousy book. Don't waste your money or your time.