Mission to Horatius has been billed as been a “Young Adult” novel, and as for the descriptions and text narrative, it does seem very superficial, almost stereotypical of the characters. McCoy is grumpy, Scotty has engine problems and the ship desperately need R&R. So what else is new? Well, Sulu has a pet rat, it seems there needed to be a pet somewhere…

There has been a distress call received from Horatius and the ship was sent to investigate. The mission was divided into investigating three planets, the first two of which were absolutely boring: the first still in the stone age (called “Neolithia”, unimaginatively taken from the geologic age “Neolithic”). The second one, called Mythra (guess from which word it’s derived), is a place of rampant religious beliefs; and the third planet is “Bavarya” (full of barbarians?), tends to raid it’s neighbors continously, is apparently the source of the problem.

Oh, and the ship’s crew is affected by a space sickness called “cafard” (in the long tradition of having the ship affected by a disease), so everyone is pressed for time.

This might as well have been a western and a ship at sea, when writers focus more on the adventure than on the science fiction. It barely passes as an adventure tale, and it reads very shallow at points, like everybody is just doing their job dispassionately, as there is no big emotional involvement. It’s nice to read a bit with familiar characters, looking into strange worlds, but it’s executed badly.

Also, rare on Star Trek books, there are line-drawn illustrations, which are very basic, like the minimum for a “young adult” novel.

Reynolds does not seem to have put much of an effort, just toiling out another story for a then yet inexistent market. It really does not engage much the reader, although it does not lose you (a big problem on later novels).

I would recommend it only to know the first original novel, but the “youngification” makes it lose a lot of it’s appeal. Space opera had gone out of style, but this type of novels fall easily into it.

February 6th, 2008
Categories: Novels . Author: sergio . Comments: No Comments

Blish seems to be getting the hang of translating the scripts action into a bit more descriptive texts… for example on the classic Arena episode:

There was a sharp hiss, and then the clear sound of the Gorn’s claws, coming at a run up the gully. Kirk had mis-calculated. The creature was closer than he had thought–and faster. Frantically he struggled to align the clumsy bamboo tube.

The Gorn leapt into view, its obsidian knife raised. Kirk slapped the burning piece of clothes against the touchhole, and the makeshift cannon went off with a splintering roar. The concussion knocked Kirk down; the semicave was filled with acrid smoke.

He groped to his feet again. As the smoke cleared, he saw the Gorn, slumped against the other wall of the gully. The diamond egg had smashed its right shoulder; but it was bleeding from half a dozen other places too, where diamond chips had flown out of the cannon instead of igniting.

Even so, the stories continue to be rushed, reduced to the simplest terms of the story, something that won’t be fixed in any of the Blish novels.

For a quick Star Trek fix, or to refresh what happened on the episodes, this novelizations might help. But a lot is lost in this novelizations.

The stories in this volume are:

- Arena:
Quick Gorn description:

“It was a biped, a reptile, a lizard that walked like a man. It stood about six feet four, with tremendous musculature, dully gleaming skin, a ridge of hard plate running down its back, and a strong, thick tail. The tail did not look prehensile; rather, it seemed to be a balancing organ, suggesting that the creature could run very fast indeed if it wished. The head was equipped with two tiny earholes and a wide mouth full of sharp teeth.”

… and that’s it… Kinda kills the whole ‘menacing alien’ thing…

- A Taste of Armageddon

“Kirk fired. The key computer burst. A string of minor explosions seemed to run from it along the main computer bank-and then they were no longer minor. Hast-ily, Kirk herded everyone out into the corridor. They huddled against the wall, while the floor shook, and bil-lows of smoke surged out of the door of the Council room.
It took a long time. At last, Kirk said, “Well–that’s it”

And with that, Kirk solves a 500 year war.

- Tomorrow is Yesterday
The whole beam down, hide from military action is suppressed… Finishes the story much faster and easier.

- Errand of Mercy
A full treaty in about 3 sentences, keep it moving people…

- Court Martial
Characterizations are also done fast, no time for lot of descriptions. It’s quite a shame, considering the Cogley character:

It was on her advice that Kirk had retained Samuel T. Cogley, a spry old eccentric who put his trust not in computers, but in books. He did not inspire much confidence, though Kirk was convinced that Areel had meant well.

- Operation–Annihilate
Another dialogue heavy episode, most was transcripted, but I do not remember enough to tell how much.

- The City on the Edge of Forever
I think it sacrilege to take any other script other than Ellison’s original… or let Harlan expand it to a full novel… This fails miserably to justify the scripts potential… let’s just leave it at that.

- Space Seed
I’m sorry, I have Montalban’s acting so deeply ingrained, I do not know what I’m reading here, but it’s certainly a bare shadow of the episode.

Don’t even bother with this one…

February 5th, 2008
Categories: Novels . Author: sergio . Comments: No Comments

“Learn how to romance women all over the Galaxy with Kirk’s Guide to Women.”

“Captain Kirk’s Guide to Women is the first book to answer this question by probing deeply into Kirk’s character, charisma, and seductive techniques, making it possible for any man to model himself after the Casanova of the Cosmos. It is also the only warp-powered romance manual written with enough wit, charm, and humor to help the female of the species make first contact.”

Looks as a spoof book, touching fun of Kirk’s reputation. I guess it is a very light read, but no doubt a very enjoyable one.

Here’s another I.K.S. Gorkon Novel, tying deep into the characters of the Klingons.

There’s an excerpt here.

It starts with an intense action battle sequence, flows into a description of a transplanted limb, and drops into a typical Star Trek ship malfunction. The text then goes on to describe all types of political, personal, and ship-wide situations.

In short, it’s a action-descriptive style, with typical Trek sci-fi maquinations, with a Klingon flavor.

Personally, I’m not that fond of Klingon stories, they tend to be a bit shallow, but this Gorkon novel seems to go much deeper than usual.

February 5th, 2008
Categories: New Novels . Author: sergio . Comments: No Comments

The Entropy Effect by Vonda N. McIntyre
Narrated by George Takei, with Leonard Nimoy

A nice audio book of the successfull book by Vonda McIntyre, is nicely narrated by the previous character’s actors.

The background music and special effects are actually quite nice, even if the action music does sound a bit campy.

Takei takes quite some efforts to narrate, putting lot of emphasis on doing a lot of the voices, including Kirk’s, Scotty’s and even Spock’s! Nimoy is not a big help here, he just narrates different parts, but does not bother’s to do Spock’s voice… quite weird. Nimoy sounds indifferent, but does not narrate lightly.

Takei is to be commendated for dooing some great work, while Nimoy should be shamed.

For a review on the story, I’ll post it later on a different post.

February 5th, 2008
Categories: Audio Books . Author: sergio . Comments: No Comments

On June 20 and 21, John de Lancie, and Robert Picardo will host two concerts of music in Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra will be playing select pieces from the movies and TV series. The event is called Star Trek: The Music and will be conducted by Erick Kunzel.

Pieces include Alexander Courage’s theme from the original TV series, Emmy Award-winner Jerry Goldsmith’s opening theme for Star Trek: Voyager, the Klingon battle theme and the opening music from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Other composers whose work will be heard include Cliff Eidelman (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country), Leonard Roseman (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home), Dennis McCarthy (Star Trek: The Next Generation) and James Horner (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan).

You can get tickets here.

More info in The Star.

February 5th, 2008
Categories: Music . Author: sergio . Comments: No Comments

Oh man, it starts really with mediocre writing. Actually, it’s quite not that bad, but only if you had not seen any of the TV episodes, or if you did not remember anything about the episodes written.

This novel, named only “Star Trek”, is the rewriting of 7 episodes:
- Charlie X
- Dagger of the Mind
- The Man Trap
- Balance of Terror
- The Naked Time
- Miri
- The Conscience of the King

There’s no point in explaining the plot of these, so I won’t even bother.

This is the first ever Star Trek novel to be put into print.

James Blish was chosen to write the scripts into these short stories, and it shows, as being crammed 7 of these into 136 pages will take out much of what was seen in the episode. As he was given the scripts way before the final episode was aired, there are some few, minor differences. Also, a novel is quite a different media than TV, so James takes some small liberties in describing the action. He takes a lot out, and leaves just enough to forward each story.

The stories feel quite rushed, as jumping to one scene to another. If they were by themselves, with no aired episode, they would actually be quite great. But that’s the problem of novelizations, it’s a redundant effort.

These could be enjoyable by fans, but it’s really a rehash of the same stuff. I did not enjoy them much, as there were no new elements offered. Unfortunately, there are much more of these to come…

The cover looks ’sci-fi’enlish, but it seems it was obvious to display the faces of the major characters to attract sales. All in all, it seems a very half-hearted effort to cash in something of a very unknown at the time TV series.

Curiously, this book was a huge success, especially in countries which did not receive the broadcasts. This fueled the publishing of further books of the same nature, and would later jump-start the Star Trek publishing market, but it will be a lot of years before any semi-decent story came out…

February 5th, 2008
Categories: Novels . Author: sergio . Comments: No Comments

Later on, I’ll post a complete linked list of the published Star Trek novels.

Incredibly, most of these are available on the Internet! Well, it suffices to say I have acquired an almost complete collection of all the published novels, not counting the ‘Young Adult’ ones. Maybe later I will purchase them.

But for now, I have quite a reading list! So, basing myself on the Star Trek Novel companion guide (Voyages of the Imagination), I ordered them by publishing dates and based my reading on that.

There are various ways of attacking such a task. One would be to take it in internal chronological order; in fact, in the companion guide there’s a very complete chronological order of each of the novels, and even on which chapters take place on which year.

I pondered hard on doing it that way, even read some parts of them (Naturally, Q jumping back and forth and to billions of years back is quite interesting), but I finally decided it would be better to see how the mythos expanded since the series, and how much of it was integrated, absorbed and fed back to the TV series. In fact, David Yound is doing just this, reading them in chronological order.

So a publishing chronological order seems best for this. This will avoid nasty spoilers, especially with all the time travelling (and there IS a lot in Star Trek). I have found it’s quite effective, as the novels progress, stories start with very conservatively sci-fi elements, and become wilder as each author explores different parts of Trek.

I’ll try to post a good look into each novel, and I hope my reviews are good… This seems it will be quite a Trek…

February 5th, 2008
Categories: Novels . Author: sergio . Comments: No Comments

Some time ago, I discovered the huge wealth of Star Trek novels… At that time, I saw it was overwhelming, they were more than a 1000 novels!

But the other day, I stumbled upon a speed reading course… and I thought it would be nice to practice with some fluff, pulp fiction stuff that should be easy reading.. so being a fan of the Star Trek TV series, it was only natural to pick up the novels for some leisure reading.

It turned to be easier than I thought. A fast count right now comes up approximately 30 novels I have read so far. Some are actually not very good, so I did really speed-read through great chunks of them; but I got the gist of the novel.

So now I guess would be a great way to start up a website, chronicling not just these novels, but also any other media I can get my hands on, including Comics, Audio books and Games. And as I’m currently keeping on top of Star Trek news, I’ll post any relevant tidbits here.

On the next post I’ll detail my reading strategy.

February 5th, 2008
Categories: General . Author: sergio . Comments: No Comments