Star Trek: Exodus Book One of the Vulcan’s Soul trilogy
by Josepha Sherman & Susan Schwartz
Get it from Amazon.

Fans of Star Trek have always wondered exactly what it was like when a significant number of Vulcans packed up their belongings like so much Delsey luggage, and moved away to eventually become Romulans. In this trilogy, we find out.

It’s a story that runs in two timelines at once. The first takes place in the days of Surak, and shows us the acts that led up to and caused the Sundering, and the second shows us Spock, Saavik, Uhura, and Chekov rushing off with cooperation from modern Romulans to face down a little known enemy called the Watraii, who are as obscure as they are dangerous.

Both story lines have a mix of action sequences and character sections, which allow us not only to catch up the the characters we know, but also grow to like the original characters we meet.

A further review will be posted when I finish reading the trilogy.

Goes well with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and ice cold milk.

By: Kenneth Johnson
Published by: Tor
Publication date: February, 2008

I was twelve or thirteen when the original V miniseries was broadcast, and a bit older when V: the Final Battle came out. At first, I wasn’t interested, but my step-brother got me into the show, and, because I gravitated toward underdogs even then, I’ll confess that I had a bit of a crush on Willie (played by Robert Englund). This was before I’d seen A Nightmare on Elm Street, of course.

When we were at the bookstore the other night, looking for a diet book I eventually chose not to purchase, Fuzzy’s eye was caught by the trade paperback version of V: the Second Generation, and knowing that I like the series, and have ALL the tie-in books upstairs in a box, he grabbed it for me.

I read it on Friday night.

There was no helpful subtitling, but I have been sort of following news of Kenneth Johnson’s career (also I was in high school with his niece), so I knew he had dropped out of being involved with the second miniseries, and had refused to be part of the short-lived weekly series, and that this book would ret-con most of that.

I was expecting it to be awful.

It was actually a pretty good story. In this version, which picks up twenty years after the original mini-series, which ended with Juliet Parrish and Elias sending a message in the general vicinity of enemies of the alien Visitors, the reptiles are controlling most of earth, 50% of the water has been taken into their mother ships (there’s a five-page description of the Pacific Desert and an image of the Golden Gate Bridge stretching across dry sand), scientists, called Scis, are living in ghettos reminiscent of the Jewish ghettos from Nazi Germany, and the Resistance is nearly dead.

As well, there are a bunch of alien-human hybrid children (all under the age of twenty), referred to as Dregs, who are caught between the human and alien cultures.

We are introduced to several new characters - Ruby, a hybrid 12-year-old adopted by Julie, Nathan, a member of the Visitor Friends (now called Teammates) youth group who was befriended by a fifth columnist, Jon, a brilliant hybrid living on the mother ship and working as a janitor, and Ted, the troubled teenaged son of Willy (which is how Johnson consistently spells Willie’s name, and which drove me nuts) and Harmony (the caterer/waitress from the movie).

Old characters are back as well, Julie, Robert Maxwell (but not his daughters), Willy and Harmony (who didn’t die, because Johnson ignores the second movie), and Martin (again, not dead) the fifth columnist. Mike is presumed dead.

And then there are the Zedti, an alien race who got the transmission and came to help…sort of.

If the novel felt more like a padded film script, well, it’s no secret that Johnson, who was the creative mind behind not only V, but also The Bionic Woman (the original), The Incredible Hulk, and Alien Nation is a great television writer, but not a novelist.

Still, with politics preventing SciFi from working with Warner Brothers to produce a movie version of this story, the book is better than nothing, and was a fun read that kept me occupied for an evening.

Also, there are some great Easter eggs in the text, such as Willy giving Jon a copy of Tenctonese Biogeometrics (the Tenctonese are the aliens in Alien Nation.

Goes well with: 80’s pop hits and a peanut butter sandwich.

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

The thing about Star Trek novels, for me, is that they’re sort of like caribbean cruises: you get a taste of the exotic, but you do so from a safe, comfortable environment.

Keith R. A. DeCandido’s Q & A, his latest addition to the Star Trek: the Next Generation collection is no exception. In fact, it’s like the part of the cruise that involves fruity drinks with cute umbrellas and dancing into the night, and that, really, is how it should be.

In this novel, we see a different side of Q, the part that actually has a purpose, and a motivation beyond just having fun - though fun is never ignored if it comes up - but we also get to have some emotional closure for the loss of Data in Nemesis, as Geordi warms to the woman who has his friend’s old job, and some story swapping and healthy reminiscing goes on. We have Picard and Beverly Crusher in an actual, healthy relationship, and we have the usual saving the universe story, and all that is wonderful.

But then DeCandido transcends wonderful, by mixing in references not just to every single appearance by Q in the television canon - EVER - but also by relating the plot to key moments from the show that many of us would never have expected.

If you’re any kind of fan, you’ll appreciate the in-jokes. If you’re not, you’ll still enjoy the story. Either way, for a good time, read Star Trek the Next Generation: Q & A as soon as you can.

by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury is one of the icons of Science Fiction, which shouldn’t be surprising since he’s published something like 500 works, so when I added The Martian Chronicles to my list for the decades challenge, I did it in honor of his contribution to the field, as well as because I vaguely remember reading part of it as a child, and not really appreciating it.

Re-reading it was sort of disappointing. I’d forgotten about the sexism and racism - products of the time - that were in the various short stories, and that colored my appreciation of Bradbury’s version of Mars. On his Mars the canals actually hold water and the atmosphere is breathable. In addition, there are actual Martians, though, as in another iconic work of science fiction War of the Worlds a mundane human disease destroys the entire population quite accidentally.

Dated notions of society aside, I enjoyed revisiting this version of the Red Planet, especially because of the last tale in the book, in which a picnicking family boats down a canal, and their son asks where the Martians are, only to be told to look over the edge. What he sees is his own reflection.