Boogeymen

Eek. This gave me nightmares. Technology run amuck is not my favorite trope. I like that it was finally a person who is not a nerd, who thought outside the box, who figured out the solution.

I'm also not sure why it was pretentious of Shubunkin to say "Anything not forbidden by the rules of the universe is eventually required."

For the first time, we see computation dealt with in terms that seem close to today's: the Enterprise is still a "mainframe," but there is a depiction of a virus that actually illustrates some of the things that could happen if a virus affected the Enterprise. It's not exactly all coherent - there's a good bit of "and then it can do this because PLOT should happen" - but that's OK; it works nonetheless. That's pleasant, but even more pleasant is that the novel makes Wesley into a sympathetic character.

It had been much too long since I had perused the shelves of my Star Trek novels. Of course, my favorite is TNG. I picked "Boogeymen" because it was early in series of novels (#17) and it, according to the back cover, dealt with one of Picard's old friends, and too, it alludes that the setting is the Enterprise itself.

The only setback is that the novel's main antagonist (heheh) is that annoyingly puerile Ensign Wesley Crusher. The thing is, he's not that annoying here—not as much as usual anyway. The prologue gives us a glance into Wesley's personal log, which shows a depth not often seen in his character.

The story itself remained plausible up until around the middle of the book. Things got a little ridiculous, but overall Mel Gilden show more does a great job of telling an interesting and succinct tale. There were a couple of issues, but I've forgotten them now. I didn't think the end was very plausible—Picard heading to the holodeck to check out a woman in his private detective scenario.

So, "Boogeymen" successfully tickled my nostalgic bone for TNG, and there were lots of little character easter-eggs of sorts for long-time fans. show less

I was a big fan on the Star Trek TNG, TV Show. The book was entertaining but had it slow parts.