Vulcan! (1978)

One of the earliest authorized stories, Spock and a strange doctor have the pleasure of overcoming her racial prejudices as they do the usual fight for their lives.
It was a fun book and a quick read. ( )

Terrible book. The 'plot' is little more than a Very Special Episode About Racism, and the characters are flat, dull and poorly-done. A xenobiologist arrives aboard the Enterprise to help lead a research team on Arachnae, but - uh oh! - she's horribly racist against Vulcans! And presumably that isn't at all a problem in Starfleet, a military organization of a Federation FOUNDED by Vulcans, so no one seems to think it's a big deal beyond "oh maybe we should fix this so she can work with Spock." MAYBE YOU SHOULD REPORT HER ASS FOR INSUBORDINATION, I dunno, it seems like her constant temper-tantrums would be more than enough for a court martial or something. Christ, it's ridiculous.

It requires more than just a suspension of disbelief to read - it requires a suspension of all knowledge of literary technique and form. I've read fanfiction that was hundreds of times better than this ridiculous, inane, badly-constructed pile of words. I want to not only recommend that anyone else considering reading it stays far, far away, but I'd also like to completely purge the memory of this dribble from my brain. ( )

A fine novel about bigotry in Star Fleet. A beautiful scientist accompanies the Enterprise to determine if the antlike inhabitants of a planet are intelligent, before the planet drifts into Romulan space. The scientist, however, has a bitter hatred of all things Vulcan, which precludes her and Spock from working together. It is left up to Spock to discover the reasons for her bigotry and resolve them before they are killed by the Arachneans they came to study. An excellent study in issues of character, race and prejudice. ( )

This book is more of a piece of social commentary on the late seventies than a Star Trek novel, and i mean that even within the conext of all Star Trek novels being social commentary. This actually reads like Sky's research project on psychoanalysis and racisim using Star Trek characters, which is extremely interesting, but if you're looking for action, you can skip to the end.

That said, the last, oh, thirty pages is actually pretty interesting, if you can manage to get through the first two-thirds. The first part of the book consists of a xenobiologist who is both A. brilliant and B. gorgeous, and Spock even goes so far as to help decorate her quarters. I know, Sky broke the rule of Vulcan reserve and disinterest, but she tortures him so much later in the book i guess she needed to set him up for a greater fall. See? I'm getting the hang of this psychoanalysis.

When she gets on board the Enterprise, coming along to identify a race as sentient or not before the planet drifts into Romulan space, she refuses to work with Spock, refusing even to acknowledge him as a sentient being. Kirk is naturally furious. McCoy is torn, since now he doesn't have to compete for her affections, but her racisim is so blatant and horrific, none of them know what to with her.

Every man has his method. McCoy tries to pshychoanalyze her with an interesting machine called the Sigmund, which is a immensly time-consuming process that would absolutely cripple a working environment of any kind if a doctor had to send everyone through it... well, Sky sort of lost me there, but hey. Kirk tried to seduce her. That was REALLY funny. I'll give the author a huge round of applause. Poor Kirk. Not so much.

And eventually, as is only fair, Spock and she are forced together. And that is where the book warms up. Way up. Sky stumbles with the shy romantisism of the Southern gentleman, and does a neat and sharp smack-down on Kirk's brand of come-all-ye-women, but she is absolutely brilliant with Spock.

Ah, i think. This is where the author's heart truly is. And she was waiting all book to get there. It's worth reading just for that warm, rich conclusion. ( )