Probe, nee' Music of the Spheres, by Margaret Wander Bonanno (and J.M. Dillard, and Gene DeWeese), 1992.

The powerful probe that threatened the Earth in Star Trek IV is back, and it is again up to the Enterprise to fend it off. All this, just when it seemed the Romulan Empire was ready to negotiate peace, after the death of the Praetor led to a leadership shakeup. A meeting in the Neutral Zone coupled with a joint archaeological venture at the same site had raised hopes, but obstinancy by the Romulan diplomat had seemed to scuttle all hopes, even before the probe returned. And now, that power threatens everyone.

This is one of the most star-crossed books ever published in the Star Trek universe. It started life as "Music of the Spheres," a novel written by Margaret Wander Bonanno that was to be another hardcover book in the Star Trek line. Bonanno wrote a novel that incorporated the probe from the then-recent movie, music in the Star Trek universe, a Romulan peace initiative, and her characters from an earlier novel, "Dwellers in the Crucible," which was an attempt to examine a Kirk-Spock relationship between two female characters. Cleante al-Faisal and T'Shael, the stars of the earlier book, were main characters here: al-Faisal as an archaelogist leading the Federation team, and T'Shael as a translator for the negotiations.

By this time, however, Paramount and Pocket books had decided that the little industry of ST books must stay beholden to the video franchise, and not use much in the way of non-canonical characters, and definitely never reuse characters from novel to novel. Certainly such characters should not be used in lead roles.

According to Bonanno, there were also objections raised to the length of her title (essentially the same as that of her earlier best-seller) and other things. The former kibosh on identifying things as sequels, however, no longer seemed to be a concern, as her book was billed from the beginning as a sequel to ST IV. Bonanno attempted rewrites, but could never come up with a version acceptable to officials. The manuscript was passed in time to writer Jeanne Dillard for rewrites, then finally to Gene DeWeese for the same purpose. Bonanno estimates that of her original, seven per cent remained. Cleante and T'Shael were combined into one new female character (which was a bit unwieldy) and situations and some character names were changed.

The resulting novel is still a pretty good book, but the execution is clumsy. There are changes in writing style, sometimes from page to page. The plot, which essentially survives, flows reasonably well but goes by fits and starts. The book as published has a poor flow. Bonanno offered to do a final rewrite, but the book had already been delayed twice and a decision was made to publish it as it stood. Another rewrite by the original author may have helped, or may have just made it even more jumbled.

Thankfully, we can read how the book was originally written. Bonanno has posted a link to a zip file of the original manuscript on her website: http://www.margaretwanderbonanno.com/bio.htm

You can download the book from there, and read for yourself.