The Abode of Life

I don't ask for much from Star Trek novels, just familiar characters and a bit of humour. Exciting plots and original extraterrestrials are bonuses, but not required. That said, I think I downloaded the wrong book after trawling through the TOS novels on Amazon, because this is terrible. Flatter than flat - a depression, in fact - repetitive language ('This spin-off fiction was brought to you by the words data and snapped'), but worst of all, bland and unrecognisable mockeries of the main crew. Kirk is all over the place - 'Yeoman, how about your input from the woman's point of view?' - and then decides, in the words of one of the alien characters, to 'take a chance that you would destroy a whole planet, a whole people, a whole culture' show more for the sake of repairing the Enterprise. Correy has the captain agonising over the Prime Directive - which Kirk never held by anyway - only to turn around and basically say, 'Planet schmanet, we need spare parts'. Doctor McCoy is continuously referred to as 'Bones' , despite the fact that only Kirk ever used that nickname, Scotty's favourite phrase appears to be 'dinna ken' (so the reader can tell he's supposed to be Scottish), and Janice Rand is made to sound halfway intelligent in the early chapters, only to be relegated to taking notes in the rest of the book. All in all, in a complete amateurish waste of time, and I have read quite a range of TOS novels by now. Don't bother. show less

There's an episode in the fifth season of Mad Men when the pretentious Paul Kinsey (who had left the ad agency a couple of years previously) reappears and asks Harry Crane, the head of the firm's television operations, to use his Hollywood connections to get NBC to look at his Star Trek spec script entitled "The Negron Complex" about a world in which a group called the Negrons are enslaved by people of different skin color. When Harry reads it he is appalled by how terrible it is, particularly with the clumsiness of its parallels to civil rights issues. "The twist is that the Negron is white!" he marvels sarcastically.

Ever since I laughed at Harry's deadpan declaration, I keep coming back to it when I encounter other heavy-handed show more examples of the franchise's commentary on contemporary society, as it came to mind again as I read this book. Written by "Lee Correy" (the pen name for G. Harry Stine), it transports the Enterprise crew to the planet Mercan, where a priest-like leadership known as the Guardians exploit the periodic radiation outbursts from their sun to maintain control over the population. Resisting them are the Technics who, in addition to developing prohibited technologies, are promoting the heretical idea that the Mercans are not the only beings in the universe.

You can guess how that turns out once the Enterprise shows up. And that for me was the big problem with this book, as the author is more focused on criticizing intellectual oppression than he is on developing distinctive characters or writing a suspenseful novel, At no point is there any real sense of narrative tension; the danger to the crew is minimal (the Guardians are very lackadaisical in their handling of Kirk and company), and all it takes to expand the civilization's horizons is a quick trip to the ship. Perhaps if Stine was focused less on setting up such flimsy straw men he might have done more with some of the more interesting ideas he introduces, such as the concept of a teleporter-based civilization. Instead all we have is another weak example of a Star Trek writer who prioritizes their opinionating over telling a good story. show less

A somewhat less than stellar Star Trek book but a pretty decent sci-fi story. It's as if the author had a good idea for a science fiction plot and then sort of man-handled it into a Trek tale. Details of the operation of the ship and the fleet seem slightly off and the interactions between the characters don't really have that Trek feel to them (Kirk hardly seems to be friends with Spock and McCoy most of the time). And I have issues with some of the writing. (Dialogue tags. Oh my head, the dialogue tags. "Kirk wanted to know" is not a dialogue tag. "Said" is a dialogue tag. "Asked" is a dialogue tag. "Whispered" is a dialogue tag. Dialogue tags are verbs. They can be modified, on occasion, with great care and restraint. While "snapped" show more is a dialogue tag, it's generally a bad one and in Kirk's case is indicative of a mode of speaking Kirk would only use rarely. To have him "snap" every other time he speaks is bad writing and reveals a poor understanding of his character. . . . . I might be done now.) But. There are some really neat science-y ideas here of a caliber one doesn't often run across in Trek, and overall the story was satisfying. Recommended if you can stand some writing ticks and accept that this won't feel like Trek. show less

This was not an especially notable Star Trek novel, except that it provides the background for a later novel, Chain of Attack. Actually, it feels more like a Star trek: The Next Generation story, because it focuses very heavily on a Prime Directive-related dilemma, and because it's bland.

Also, this is probably the worst Star Trek novel cover art I've ever seen. I've laughed at it for years--look at the expression on Spock's face.

Somewhat interesting in that it plays with the idea of a 'lost colony.' It seems another version of the "World Is Hollow And I Have Touched The Sky" idea, but this time with an actual world, not a generationship. Not very compelling, however, in the end - I felt like the Mercans needed more development for me to truly care about their curious society.

A reasonably well-done Star Trek story in which the Enterprise, damaged and limping, hoves into an isolated planet whose inhabitants believe they are alone in the universe, and whose sun is about to go nova. Nicely done, but sort of a shopworn premise.

Definitely an early work. The characters weren't true, and they handled the situation badly. The writing was kinda messy, too. Still,there were plenty of interesting ideas and I enjoyed the short book.