Review: 1976 Spock, Messiah! by Theodore R. Cogswell
Many early novels put a lot of attention into the Vulcan character, as it was the most popular character then. The internal emotion/logic conflict also generated a lot of interest. On Spock, Messiah!, even though it was centered around Spock, it actually did not include him directly during most of the plot.
Here’s also a recurring plot device: the mind-altering bug/disease/poison/gadget that made a character to act in extreme ways. At the beginning of this book, it’s actually interesting to see how the mind-monitoring device went haywire with the science office, mashing his mind with an alien psychopath, making him a religious fanatic, but with all the abilities and capacities of the Vulcan mind.
The plot quickly spirals down into a western adventure in a alien planet. I quickly lost interest in the middle of it, and did not pay much attention to the details, just to the end where they ‘rescue’ Spock and everything returns to normal.
I would like to expand more about it, but there really is not much here.
At this point, there was a lot of demand for full Trek novels. This was not a very good try, it seems like just a quick write-up of a story to quickly fill a writing quota. I would not recommend it; skip it to other better written novels.
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