Star Trek--TOS #31 Battlestations! (Carey, Diane)

Rating: 2/5
Year: 1986
Genre: Sci-Fi/Star Trek
Read again? Nope.

Hot on the heels of "Dreadnought" comes its sequel, with Diane Carey reprising her starring role in her own book!

It's only been a few weeks since the end of "Dreadnought!"; Piper--now a Lieutenant Commander--is sailing the Caribbean aboard James Kirk's sailboat, the Edith Keeler (really? Ugh.). Bones and Scotty are along as crew. They're boarded by Security types. Someone has stolen transwarp technology! Kirk and Scotty are beamed away to be questioned. Piper bravely hides below decks until she can engineer a brilliant escape from the remaining guards.

She gets the ship to either Haiti or the Bahamas--doesn't really matter, but Carey muddled things here--and finds the ship Kirk told her would be her first command. See, Kirk knew Something Was Up, just like in the first book, and he wants Piper as his ace in the hole because she's so damn brilliant and stuff.

Her ship is a Space Tug--and two of her adventure-mates are back: Scanner, the rumpled redneck tech genius and Mereta the med tech. Oh, and Bones McCoy comes along.

The mission: go to Argelius to find the transwarp thieves (conveniently disguised as mad scientists from Central Casting), meet up with Kirk and Spock, and save the Universe.

Carey's weak on the math and science stuff, but it's her clumsy narrative and dialogue that really make me wonder how she got more work after these two dogs.

I'll be reading a few of the later books, because she did get better.

Star Trek--TOS 29: Dreadnought! (Carey, Diane)

Rating: 2
Year: 1986
Genre: Sci-Fi/Star Trek
Read again? Oh, no.

This was a painful read, coming on the heels of Roger Zelazny's "Amber" books and J.M. Dillard's "Star Trek: The Lost Years." Those were all good books.

This one wasn't.


"Dreadnought!" is Diane Carey's first Trek novel. At first I thought the clumsy sentence construction, strange word choices ["fifteen hundred hours in the afternoon"], and bad dialog were intentional, given the book's first person narrative. But the deeper I went, the more it felt like a piece of ego-trip fan fiction starring Diane Carey as the heroine, right down to Boris Vallejo's cover art on the book: a James Bond-ish couple who are supposedly Carey and husband/collaborator Greg Brodeur.

It seems that many others feel the same way; there's even a term for such a character: "Mary Sue."

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the author or reader. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly. The author may seem to push how exceptional and wonderful the "Mary Sue" character is on his or her audience, sometimes leading the audience to dislike or even resent the character fairly quickly; such a character could be described as an "author's pet".

The main character could certainly be called an "author's pet." We're given Lieutenant Piper of Proxima Centauri. As the story opens, she's in the center seat of the USS Liberty, taking the Kobayshi Maru simulation, and she very nearly beats the no-win scenario. Captain James Kirk is watching and gets her assigned to the Enterprise.

Piper--just Piper--gets aboard and soon finds out that Enterprise is shipping out to investigate the theft of a dreadnought-class battleship prototype, the Star Empire. The Space Terrorists who took the ship left a message requesting that Piper be present at an arranged rendezvous with the stolen ship. Her bio-readings will be the key to talking to the thieves.

No, there's no big investigation. No, she's not immediately named a Person of Interest and implicated in the theft. Hell, LIEUTENANT Piper's not even required to wear a proper uniform! That outfit on the Farah Fawcett-haired chick on the cover is what Piper wears for the entire story. Author's pet.

Characterization is spare. Spock is mysterious, perks his eyebrow, and argues with McCoy; Kirk is sexy, commanding; McCoy is a wiseass who argues with the Vulcan. There's little military bearing or professionalism in any Starfleet officer we encounter. Too casual and familiar.

As the plot limps along, we find that Vice Admiral Vaughn Rittenhouse was the head of the Dreadnought project and that he commissioned the ship with nefarious intent: to subjugate the Federation's enemies (and its own people if need be) and force everyone to live happily together (hence the clever name of the ship). He's installed lackeys at many levels of Starfleet, from ship captains to high-level officials, intent on pulling a military coup.

The people who stole the ship did so to block Rittenhouse and bring attention to the crisis. Kirk seems to have figured out that something was up; he wanted Piper as a tool for digging into things because he recognized her obvious abilities, I suppose--but Piper's played as naiive, damn near ignorant of starship or Fleet operations...makes me wonder why she went to the Academy if she couldn't remember any of that stuff.

The story had some potential; in a seasoned writer's hands this could have been a much better story--especially if we lost the ego tripping.

Star Trek--TOS: The Lost Years (Dillard, JM)

Rating: 5
Year: 1989
Genre: Sci-Fi/Star Trek
Read again? Yes

It's been more than 10 years since my last time through this one. It's about as good as I remembered. Good to see my memory working properly for once.

It's the end of the USS Enterprise's five-year mission [somewhere between the end of the original series and The Motionless Picture] The ship's going into an 18-month refit, her crew going on to other assignments.

James Kirk, now 35, is offered a promotion he doesn't want, from Captain to Rear Admiral, from starship to "troubleshooting" diplomatic situations and being a public face for Starfleet, which is still stinging after an attempted coup by Vice Admiral Vaughn Rittenhouse. After fighting it for six months and threatening to resign, he gives in. Kirk is assigned to work with Vice Admiral Lori Ciana--and their first "troubleshooting" assignment drives the rest of the book.

Spock has his choice of several teaching job offers--Starfleet Academy and the Vulcan Academy being the most noteworthy. When he learns that Kirk has taken the promotion, Spock chooses to stay on Vulcan.

Leonard McCoy leaves to do research on the Fabrini--and to rekindle a romance with Natira, but is heartbroken to find that she's gotten married. He hooks up with Dr. Keridwen ("Dwen") Llewellen and does a short lecture tour, sharing his research on advanced Fabrini medical technology. They end up at Vulcan, where they hang out briefly with Spock and his fiancee'.

The first 118 pages are the First Act, getting everyone into place.

There's a dispute between two populations of Space Cows, the Djanai and the Inari. The Djanai are kind of like Amish Space Cows--their religion requires them to shun technology, live simply. The Inari are technocrats and are the ruling minority of Djana--and they've desecrated holy land with their factories and technology. It's assumed that the Romulans are stirring up trouble, since Djana is in a strategic location for both the Romulans and the Federation.

Kirk and Ciana attend a reception where the Space Cow ambassador and key Federation Council members will try working things out. Things go wrong: Ambassador Sarek (Spock's father) and Uhura are taken hostage, beamed out of the conference center by Space Cows who want to sabotage the peace talks.

So now Kirk and Ciana have to go to Djana to try getting the hostages back AND to get the Space Cows moo-ing to each other again.

McCoy gets himself kidnapped by a Vulcan carrying the spirit of a long-dead Vulcan Mind Lord bent on training Romulans (they used to be Vulcans, y'know) to use his fearsome powers.


"Lost Years" isn't a great Star Trek novel, but it's definitely not the worst. It's cleanly-written, a fun read with strong characters and a good grasp of the "feel" of "Star Trek". Though Dillard takes 118 pages to spin up the plots, there's no dragging.

Amber 05: The Courts of Chaos (Zelazny)

Rating: 5/5
Year: 1978
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Yes

The closing book in Zelazny's first "Amber" series.

At the end of "The Hand of Oberon," Corwin and his brother Benedict had recovered the Jewel of Judgement from their power-hungry brother Brand--and King Oberon (long thought missing and possibly dead) showed himself.

Now Oberon intends to repair the damage Brand did to the Pattern--and the attempt will kill him, whether he succeeds or not.

He also intends Corwin to be his successor. But with the death of his hated brother Eric, briefly King of Amber, Corwin has realized that he is unfit to rule, and that he only wanted the Throne because Eric had it.

Oberon gives him a mission: Ride. Leave Amber and ride as far and as quickly as he can. Oberon will transport the Jewel to him when his work with the Pattern is done. Then Corwin is to take the Jewel to the Courts of Chaos, to join the rest of the family in a preemptive attack.

Brand is still out there, somewhere--and he still wants the Jewel, to remake things in his own image.

Good finish! I thought for several reasons that this book was going to drag (I seem to remember the ending taking forever), but it doesn't. In the end, our kind-of dark prince realizes that he loves his family, the realm has a new King, and Corwin finds out that he has a son, Merlin.

It's a good bittersweet ending, leaving me wanting more. That's how you do it.

Amber 04: The Hand of Oberon (Zelazny)

Rating: 5/5
Year: 1976
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Yes

At the end of "Sign of the Unicorn," Corwin, Random and Ganelon found themselves looking upon the Primal Pattern. Now, a new puzzle piece has been added to the mystery: there's a dark blot running from the center of the Pattern outward, like a cloudy spoke on a wheel. The blot runs to the south, in the same direction as the black road Corwin found cutting through Shadow.

Another piece: They find a Trump in the Pattern's center, pierced by a dagger. Who is the man in the picture? Random realizes that it's his own son, Martin. But who drew his picture on the card? Was he killed by the stabbing? It's apparent that his blood caused the damage to the pattern and gave the enemies of Amber the black road upon which to travel.

They return to Amber; Random sets out to find his son. Corwin finds his way to the study of Dworkin, who created the Pattern--and Amber--and drew the Trumps. Dworkin recognizes Brand's style in the Trump drawing.

Why did Brand damage the Pattern? Doing so threatens not only Amber itself but all of Shadow--every other world (including ours) could come to an end. The only way to repair the damage is to use the Jewel of Judgement to re-draw the damaged parts of the Pattern--and Brand is after it as well, for it can also be used to destroy the Pattern.

Can Corwin find the Jewel before Brand does?

Corwin adds a few final pieces to the mystery of the car wreck that laid him up in the hospital. At first, he'd thought that his brother Eric was responsible. Then Brand told him that their brother Bleys had shot out his tire and caused the crash. Now Corwin learns that Brand was the shooter, and all the "rescue" stuff was just Brand trying to find out what Corwin knew, to determine his danger to his plans. Efter centuries of hating Eric enough to try killing him...Corwin realizes that his brother had acted for Corwin's good despite his own hatred.

Very complicated family. Zelazny was a master of making his characters complicated and coflicted, strong and wounded, and believeable.

I just thought of something: Out of all the books (single or series) I've read, Zelazny's "Amber" books are some of the only ones that haven't developed problems after repeated reading. Back in 1995, when I first started reading Lackey's ever-expanding "Valdemar" series, I devoured them, going through the entire set of what I had several times a year. Then apparently the "honeymoon" ended and I went to Valdemar less and less, finding more reading pleasure in greater variety. I even stopped reading the "Amber" books nearly as often. But where "Amber" remains a pleasure to read, the last several times through "Valdemar" grew more and more tedious. I've yet to finish the most-recent read-through (six books left), and I'm not inclined to do so just now.

Besides, I've got another quintet of "Amber" books and some short stories to enjoy before I bother thinking about that's next.

Amber 03: Sign of the Unicorn--full review (Zelazny)

Rating: 5/5
Year: 1975
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Yes

It's been a week since the battle at the end of "The Guns of Avalon." Corwin is nominally in charge, but he refuses to take the throne of Amber. His hated brother Eric died--and with him went Corwin's ambitions for ruling Amber. Besides, there are more important matters.

Caine--one of the remaining princes--is dead, his throat cut; Corwin returns to the palace with the body of his own prime suspect, a shadowy man like those who were chasing Random at the beginning of the series.

He gets the story from Random: he had been off losing himself in a Shadow that catered to his own interests. Gambling, women, smoky Jazz clubs to play drums in, great thermals for flying a glider...one night during a card game, one of the cards seemed to speak. It was Brand, chained in a tower a great distance away from Amber, and he begged Random for deliverance from his prison.

Random set out to try a rescue only to be thwarted, so he did the prudent thing and bailed out of there, chased by a bunch of shady men who did the impossible: they followed him through Shadow. He managed to reduce their numbers in several fights, but the six who survived followed him right to Flora's house in upstate New York, where the amnesiac Corwin was staying.

Corwin gathers the remaining family members and announces his plan to rescue Brand from that tower. It works, but someone stabs Brand--and then Corwin himself is knifed in his own bedroom.

Things only get more complicated from there; Corwin learns that Brand, Bleys and Fiona had formed a cabal with the intent of taking the throne of Amber away from their father, King Oberon. Eric, Julian and Caine formed their own cabal in opposition. Corwin is told that Bleys shot out his tire, causing the wreck that put him in the hospital where he awoke in the first book.

The chess game of Amber politics continues! Now there's a murder mystery, two attempted murders, a conspiracy against King Oberon (who's still missing), and Corwin's own back-story, all puzzles to be solved. He gets some new pieces to work with, but every time he seems to get some of them in their proper places, something happens to shift the entire thing again.

Amber 02: The Guns of Avalon (Zelazny)--Full review

Rating: 5
Year: 1972
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Yes

Prince Corwin makes his way to Avalon, intent on taking the throne of Amber away from his brother Eric. On the way, he finds himself in a land called Lorraine, where he helps to defeat some bad things that live in a blackened circle of land. Afterward, the people of Lorraine fear him, for in their folklore the evil Lord Corwin ruled the land without mercy. He doesn't bother trying to explain that this was not him--and it doesn't matter anyway, since he's still got to go to Avalon.

He and an old friend named Ganelon travel for several days, Corwin manipulating Shadow to bring them closer to the land they once knew and loved: for the "true" Avalon is long since fallen. They reach one of Avalon's reflections--much the same, but not theirs, for this Avalon's tales remember him unkindly, too.

They reach an Avalon mopping up after its own victory in battle with the forces of darkness. Avalon's "Protector" turns out to be one of Corwin's brothers, Prince Benedict.

Can Corwin complete his business in Avalon without Benedict learning of his plans?


Ahhhh, more good reading. Once again, Zelazny gets us into the action quickly. He keeps his narrative and dialogue simple, using only what's needed. Corwin tells us what he saw and felt at the time, and it feels plausible. More than any other fantasy series, "Amber" is the one in which I wish I could live, where all I need do is walk, changing my surroundings, until I reached my own Amber.

Amber 01: Nine Princes in Amber (Zelazny, Roger)--full review

Rating: 5/5
Year: 1970
Genre: Fantasy
Read again? Yes!

Awwww, yeah. It's good to begin a new year with good reading. I've been reading and re-reading Roger Zelazny's "Amber" series since maybe 1983. From then until the mid-90s, I was reading the whole set at least twice a year, especially when Zelazny started adding to the original five with another set of five. The original quintet is told from the point of view of Prince Corwin of Amber. The second set is told by his son Merlin.

Corwin awakens in a small private hospital somewhere in New York state. He remembers a car crash, but his own identity is a mystery. There's a "hard-boiled detective" quality to this part of the book. Is his name Corey? Carl? Who caused the wreck? Who's keeping him there?

Sister? Evelyn Flaumel? Nothing to do but go for a visit. She's got a very expensive house in upstate New York. They talk. She gives him his own name--Corwin. She mentions "Eric." All he knows is that he hates the man.

The mystery unfolds a bit at a time, as they should. Building, building...a name...a place...a scrap of memory...they talk some more.

Julian.
Caine.
Bleys.
No faces, no clue who these men are. He knows he can't trust anyone. Every interaction is a chess match played many moves ahead, with life and death at stake. He doesn't tell Evelyn about his amnesia.

She mentions Amber. He knows it's a place, but can't see it in his mind.
Florimel; he knows that's her real name.

The next morning, she's gone. He explores the library, ultimately finding a small case of cards. They're designed like Tarot cards--wands, pentacles, cups and swords, and the Greater Trumps are people he knows.
Random.
Julian.
Caine.
Eric.
Benedict.
Corwin himself.
Gerard.
Bleys.
Brand.
Nine brothers.

Florimel--Flora, for short.
Dierdre.
Fiona.
Llewella.
Four sisters.

But what's with the medieval garb? Why does Corwin know how to use a sword?

Brisk the pace, quick the action, and short the novel. By page 141 Corwin has his answers, has regained his memories and has joined brother Bleys in raising an army and navy to take the throne of Amber from their usurping brother Eric. We've got 34 pages to go.

We're into the action quickly, as opposed to the near-leisurely pace of a 400-page Mercedes Lackey novel. By page 141 in one of her books, the protagonist is just facing the Big Crisis that ends the first act, with decades of pages thereafter 'til resolution. Then you've got two more 400-page books after that.

Zelazny takes us much farther with an economy that I really wish Lackey and other wordy writers would (or could) learn. His style is conversational and flows without distractions. But as we'll see in the next nine books, he builds a believable, complicated, sophisticated world, joining mythology, psychology, philosophy, and references to Shakespeare.

Amber: Re-reading the Classics

On the heels of Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World," I've started in on Roger Zelazny's "Amber" series.

In the meantime, here are some Amber-related scribbles from previous posts:

Amber series overview--the Corwin books

Amber 01: Nine Princes in Amber; Corwin wakes up with amnesia

Amber 02: The Guns of Avalon; Corwin embarks on a journey of revenge...and to take the Throne of Amber from his brother Eric!

Amber 03: Sign of the Unicorn, where Corwin has the Throne...but does he even want it now?

Comparing...: Magic--Transportation, a look at the magic systems of Amber, Robert Asprin's "MYTH" series, and Lackey's "Valdemar."

Demon-Haunted World, The (Sagan, Carl)

Rating: 5/5
Year: 1995
Genre: Nonfiction / Science
Read again? Yes.

It took 3-1/2 weeks to get through this one; it's not a quick read, but it's a damn good one. After four crappy B-grade sci-fi books masquerading as readable fiction, I needed something solid. I didn't roll my eyes once or wonder _why_ Sagan would write _this_ this way. His writing is friendly, approachable, every bit like his presentation in "Cosmos."

"World" is an indictment of the state of scientific literacy and critical thinking in the United States and (to a lesser extent) the rest of the world. It should be required reading for any teacher or administrator--but for that to happen we'd have to clear the anti-science kooks out of the system.

His prose is eminently quotable:

If we teach only the findings and products of science...without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?

Given that a hefty percentage of people in this country believe we were magicked into being just a few thousand years ago; given that a hefty percentage of people in this country claim that the moon landings were faked; given that medical quackery such as accupuncture, chiropractic, and homeopathy are taken seriously...alien abduction...demonic possession...psychic phenomena...ghosts...crop circles...even when the science is THERE and showing these things to be wrong...even then, people buy into it whole-hog.

Why?

It has to start with education. Sagan voices concern that this country will become an information economy, with its industries moved offshore--the things we need if we are to prosper, let alone survive, as a scientific power, whilst the navel-gazers sit and watch Oprah, letting their critical faculties wither and die.

[I think we've long since been headed in that direction. Our politicians and their corporate pals have been selling off chunks of our industrial base for decades: home electronics in the 1970's and '80s, the clothing industry in the '90s. Did you know the VCR was developed by an American company? Did you know that they didn't see how to make a quick profit, so they sold it to Japanese interest? Did you notice that no American company ever manufactured a VCR? How much of the clothing you buy is even made in America?

For all their talk about buying American, conservatives never did anything to bring that industry back home, did they? No, they waved their flags and proclaimed their devotion to them--without checking to see whether those flags were Made in Taiwan. --J.]

He delves into the similarities between today's "alien abductions" and tales of demonic interference in human lives from centuries past:

...sexually obsessive non-humans who live in the sky, walk through walls, communicate telepathically, and perform breeding experiments on the human species."

He discusses education and how the simple act of reading led a slave named Frederick Bailey into freedom. He changed his name, then: Frederick Douglass became one of the greatest political leaders, writers and speakers in American history. He was an advisor to President Lincoln. How cool is that?

Sagan details the _need_ for critical thought--and then he takes us to a principal cause for the lack of it: the schools. He reprints letters, some barely literate, in which he is criticized for "bashing" America. There's no problem! We need gawd in the schools! The ACLU is the problem! Socialism!

Sagan wonders why excelling in science is "elitist"...yet varsity sports--the "best of the best"--is not.

And there's more, so much more to "The Demon-Haunted World." Hypnosis, religious whack-jobs, crop-circle kooks, psychics, ghosts, witch-hunts.

As I said before, this is not a fast read; there's a density to his narrative that makes me want to read "Contact" (also by Sagan) to see how his fiction works. Sagan doesn't swamp the reader with science and equations, nor does he hold your hand and condescend.