J's Pages

I had this ancient tome sitting in my "too be read" section of the bookshelf. In this case it's a book I've had since high school. (The cover's missing, so it must be an illicit copy I picked up from the late Page One Bookstore in Roselle.)(In case you don't know, instead of paying to ship back boxes of unsold books, bookstores can rip off the front cover and return those for a refund from the publisher. The bookstore is supposed to discard the rest of the book, but Page One put them in a rack at a sidewalk sale and sold some of them to unsuspecting me.) Years ago I started rereading all my SF paperbacks to see which ones I wanted to keep. I'm down to a handful, and finishing this book brings me one step closer to the end. Unfortunately, I still have too many keepers and need to get more shelf space. But I digress. Spock, Messiah! is one of the earliest Star Trek novels to come out since the demise of that beloved series. In fact, besides the novelization of the series episodes, there's only two other Trek books advertised at the end of this one. Compare that to the back pages of any Star Trek novel on the shelves today. Anyway, the story is fairly straightforward Trek: The Enterprise crew is discreetly surveying a backwater planet using newly devised implants that allow crewmembers to telepathically tap into the brains of the natives. The technology screws up and problems ensue. In this case, Spock, who was hooked up with a religious fanatic, goes nutso and uses his vast intellect and skills to bring about the native's messianic ambitions. He manages to thwart the obvious solutions--beam him off planet, zap him with a phaser, etc.--and in so doing also prevents the ship from escaping an oncoming cosmic storm. So Kirk has a limited time to stop Spock and repair the ship before the storm irradiates the ship and strands the crew on planet. It's a fairly enjoyable tale, although it does show it's age. The crew trusts the technology implicitly and never once questions the ethics of psychic eavesdropping. Two of the main male characters give a female ensign a "friendly pat", with nary a charge of sexual harassment. Also in one scene, when the computer describes this native as "a paranoid" who believes he is chosen by God, it calmly makes a parallel with Mohammed. Not something you'd see in a current Trek novel. Anyway, it was hardly great literature, but I enjoyed the book. Definitely an entertaining bit of waiting room material.  

LibraryThing link

Labels: StarTrek, WaitingRoomMaterial

// posted by John @ 3:42 PM