nuHmey wISov*! Your first officer Mac, here. While your away team continues their march through the Final Frontier (listen here, and subscribe wherever fine podcasts are streamed or downloaded), I’ve taken it upon myself to start a The Holodeck is Broken blog! We’ll have Trek-related stuff here, usually on the weeks the podcast is off. Check this space in the weeks to come for my breakdown of both the third season of The Original Series and The Animated Series (which we skipped in our re-watch), but in the meantime, let’s get started with what I hope is the first entry of an ongoing feature.
Every month Amazon puts an array of Star Trek tie-in books on sale for the dirt-cheap price of $0.99. If you’re anything like me, you’ll buy nearly anything Trek-related if it’s less than a dollar, but you may also find yourself wondering which books are on sale this month. Never fear! Here are each of the books on sale in August!
To Lose The Earth (Star Trek: Voyager) by Kirsten Beyer
During our Medical Emergency series last year, Captain Lora and I came clean and admitted the saga of the NCC-74656 was not our favorite of the various series, but I must say this volume has me intrigued. With her duties on Picard, Beyer has proven herself more than equal of carrying the 24th century torch into new territory. Also, as the timeline for the novels post-Nemesis has largely been negated by that new series, Pocket Books has done the only decent thing and allowed those various relaunch series to reach their natural end.
Here, we see the Voyager and parts of her crew truly ride off into the sunset! I’ve enjoyed what little I’ve read of the post-Endgame novels, if for no other reason than Harry Kim finally got that promotion.
The Eyes of The Beholders (Star Trek: The Next Generation Book 13)
From that golden-age of Trek books where all you needed was a number, a Keith Birdsong painting, and five bucks burning a hole in your pocket. Episodic in the extreme, it was hard to have a bad time with any of these books. A.C. Crispin was a great writer (her work in the Star Wars universe scratched particular itches long before the movies bothered to show us When Han Met Chewie) so I’m looking forward to this one as well. Hell, there’s an Andorian on TNG! And a geode is getting ready to kill everybody! What could be be better?
Triangle (Star Trek: The Original Series Book 9) by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
Not to be confused with Peter David’s oddly-titled sequel to Imzadi.
From the TOS-line of numbered novels, this one is a bit of a head-scratcher. Kirk and Spock are clearly wearing their uniforms from The Motion Picture, but the Enterprise appears to be the pre-refit version from the series…
Other than that, there’s not a lot to go on… Ah, hell. At $0.99, I can’t/won’t/shan’t say no.
Articles of the Federation by Keith R.A. DeCandido
The only book this month I’m not buying. Why? Because I had bought it originally came out fifteen years ago.
This one saw me coming a mile away. Merging Trek-lore and the aesthetic of The West Wing, we spend some time with Federation President Bacco and her staff as they deal with—among other things—a shipload of Reman refugees about to cross the Romulan border into Federation space. It’s a shame that the Bacco Administration didn’t get a series of books on their own, but she and her staff show-up throughout the interconnected post-Nemesis books, and are always a welcome addition to the growing universe.
If you’re a fellow West Wing-ite like myself, or looking for a good gateway into this timeline, I couldn’t recommend this book more.
Federation by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
This book comes direct from some of the most-celebrated Trek authors to ever play in Roddenberry’s backyard. They wrote, for my money, the most fun, most epic Deep Space Nine story—outside of the television series itself—with their Millenium trilogy. When Enterprise needed some heavy-hitters for their fourth season, they called the Reeves-Stevenses. When William Shatner needed someone to ghost-write (and it’s clear they did the lion’s share of the work) his novels detailing the resurrected Kirk’s adventures in the 24th century, he called the Reeves-Stevenses. They’re simply the best.
This book might suffer a bit from being rendered canonically inert after the events of Star Trek: First Contact, but I’m hard pressed to pass up a book from them. If you can keep the various versions of Zefram Cochrane sorted in your head, you’ll do just fine. It’s a steal at twice, nay ten times the price.
Star Trek: Enterprise: The Rise of the Federation** (Books 2-5)
Tower of Babel by Christopher L. Bennett
Uncertain Logic by Christopher L. Bennett
Live By The Code by Christopher L. Bennett
Patterns of Interference by Christopher L. Bennett
Pocket Books makes a point of reducing the price on a mini-series each month, and here they are paying some long-overdue attention to the fifth live-action series, quite possibly for its forthcoming 20th anniversary. On an unrelated note, how did we all get so old all of a sudden? Like… “Broken Bow” was just a few years ago, right?
For those Trekkies among us who had Faith of the Heart that the NX-01 would make it to seven seasons and beyond, the post-finale books for Archer and company take the opportunity of the under-loved series and run with it. The death of Trip was retconned fairly effectively in the early goings, so they are free to fulfill their promise of fighting with the Romulans and finally, thankfully (if the title of the series is to be believed) give birth to the Federation we all know and love.
That’s it for this month’s books. Be sure to check back here next month, check in on us at the podcast, and if you’re not excited about the second season premiere of Lower Decks… Keep it to yourself, will you? We’re all trying to have a good time here.
*Roughly translated from Klingon, “Welcome, bibliophiles.” “Welcome” is probably a bit of a stretch, but anyone who thought the children of Kahless wouldn’t have a word for “bibliophile” has clearly not read Shakespeare in the original text.
**I’m sensing a pattern here…