First Frontier by Diane Carey and Dr. James I. Kirkland (Star Trek #75, August 1995).

The Enterprise is testing new shielding technology which takes the energy used against it and channels it through the warp drive, displacing it in time and space. Cool idea, which proves quite effective in weapons tests. Then they try it by going very close to a blue giant star, the hottest stars known. While in the star's outer corona, the Enterprise encounters a gravitational well, that throws them off course deeper into the star, and a quick maneuver pulls them out, but the observing starships are gone. In fact, subspace is quiet. Protocol says that starships encountering these conditions should proceed to StarFleet Command on Earth to rendezvous with any other available personnel.

Earth, rather than teeming with people and the very heart of the Federation, has no human life at all. Lush flora, and copious animal species, mostly reptiles, but no humans or humanoids. No satellites, no signs of advanced spacefaring culture. An alternate future? A dimensional gap? Romulans and Klingons are found, and then Vulcans, but no humans at all. With only one option left, Captain Kirk orders a trip to the planet of the Guardian of Forever. Time travel to the time of the dinosaurs ensues.

Dr. James Kirkland is a dinosaur paleontologist, now the most famous one in the world. His ideas were used in the book and then movie series "Jurassic Park," and have revolutionized the way we think about dinosaurs. Kirkland has demonstrated that birds are descended from dinosaurs, changed how we look at various specious called "raptors," and in general caused a great upheaval and new interest in the giant reptiles. I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Kirkland a few years ago, and then the privilege of shaking his hand after his incredible lecture. This is a guy who knows his dinos.

Kirkland provided most of the plot flow, of how dinosaurs could develop in a world where there was no asteroid hit in the Yucatan to wipe out the species. Much of what is good in this novel is a direct result of Kirkland's input. This novel is thick in plot and rich in dinosaur elements.

The weaknesses come from the writing of Diane Carey. The book carries the usual Carey faults, like overreliance on writing of the inside of someone's head. Thankfully, she sticks with one point of view, in this case Captain Kirk. And the preponderence of plot helps to keep the usual bellybutton-gazing down. Whining and whiny characters plus contrivences of plot are still here, but easier to ignore.

To give the story a more immediate feel, Kirk is ill and Dr McCoy does not have enough medication to keep him going for more than a week. Kirk is awfully active for someone so close to death, but it is all a plot device to make the timeline more crucial. Of course, the meteor strike is all the deadline one really needs, but when the crew first arrives they have no idea when that will actually take place. So an artificial deadline is provided. It's unnecessary and distracting, so like a Carey novel.

Spock is used frequently and fairly well, and Dr. McCoy is important to the story. Scotty gets a little time, but Sulu, Chekov and Uhura are used a bit but not much. It is really a Kirk with Spock story. In that way it plays a lot like many TV episodes. Also, this is a long book at 383 pages. It moves along at a much better clip than most Carey books, so it doesn't feel any longer than most of her 300 page works.

I recommend it, if only for the pairing of Star Trek and dinosaurs, and the strong contribution of Dr. Kirkland (good name to be part of Star Trek) to the story which makes it paleontologically correct. I could have done without the improvised orbital vehicle though. That felt like plot padding.