Star Trek Ruminations

This review of "The Smallest Choices" from Strange New Worlds 9 contains some major spoilers. There are stories in the Strange New Worlds 9 collection with incredible cosmic scope, fantastic amounts of Star Trek trivia woven into the story, or just plain creative story-telling methods . But the story that resonated the most with me emotionally was this one: "The Smallest Choices" by Jeremy Yoder . To say it had an emotional impact is something of a paradox since this quiet story has only two characters and both are Vulcans: T'Pring and Spock. But Yoder deftly handles the nuances of the Vulcan psyche in a way that is true to what we know of Vulcans and yet dramatically compelling. I see no way to comment on what made this story so great without giving away significant details, so be warned, significant spoilers follow. "Amok Time" is one of the most celebrated episodes of Star Trek . It is a landmark, indispensable moment in Trek lore. To tell a short...

This is a review of the Grand Prize winner from the Strange New Worlds 9 collection. It is therefore more thorough and contains significant spoilers. One of the draw backs of many episodes of Star Trek is that in the end our heroes fly off into the galaxy and completely leave behind the alien/planet/problem-of-the-week never to be heard of again. The grand prize winning stories picks up one of these dropped story lines and follows through. Consider the episode"The Hunted" ( TNG ). In this story the Angosian government created genetically enhanced soldiers. When the war was over, the soldier were discarded, confined to a penal moon because they were too violent to be reintegrated into society. We learn all of this when one of these soldiers, Roga Danar, escapes and runs amok on the Enterprise . But when the episode is over, Picard literally beams off of the planet when these super-soldiers storm the Angosian capital. And we never hear of the Angosians again . . . . . ....

Reviews of stories from Strange New Worlds 9 may contain minor spoilers. "Staying the Course" is an excellent story about Worf and Alexander by Paul C. Tseng . The episode "Firstborn" ( TNG ) gave us a glimpse into a possible future where Alexander became a Klingon diplomat (a seeming contradiction of terms), but came back in time to make himself more of a warrior, believing this could prevent his father's death. In that episode Worf said he now realized that Alexander had his own destiny, and that it would be a great one. We get to see that great destiny in this story. It's a touching portrayal of Klingon honor and the loyalty between father and son. Tseng succesfully draws on what we already know of Worf and Alexanders past and portrays a plausible, and very moving future. "Solace in Bloom" by Jeff D. Jaques reintroduces Picard's friend Louis and the Atlantis project from the episode "Family" ( TNG ). It takes place during the w...

Reviews of stories from Strange New Worlds 9 may contain minor spoilers. At least three stories deal with Earth's formative years that paved the way for Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets. The Enterprise episode "Carbon Creek" introduced the character Mestral, a Vulcan science officer who elected to stay on Earth in 1957. "Mestral" by Ben Guilfoy takes place a century later. The long-lived Vulcan has a significant impact on the events that paved the way for Star Trek:First Contact . It's a great use of the character and won third place in the collection. "The Rules of War" by Kevin Lauderdale opens with the line "A spray of bullets sent chips of cement flying from the building's wall across Archer's face." That very gritty opening leads into a story about the start of the Eugenics War and Jonathan Archer's grandfather. Archer described this incident briefly in the episode "Hatchery." Now we get to s...

Reviews of stories from Strange New Worlds 9 may contain minor spoilers. Two stories in this collection are worth reading not only because of the stories themselves, but becuase of the unique ways that they are told. "Book of Fulfillment" by Steven Costa is written in an excellent approximation of King James vintage Old Testament prose. It begins with a nice tip of that hat to The Next Generation with a reference to professor Galen, seen in "The Chase," and mentioned in "Gambit I,II." The story is a translation of a fragment of an ancient manuscript. This race describes their encounter with "the Liberator" who "came from beyond the sky," and his attendants: the Healer at his left hand, the Sage at his right, the Wayfinder, the Armsman, the Proclaimer, and the Machinist. According to the scroll, "the Sage spoke quiet words of counsel in the ear of the Liberator, speaking of the oath. And the Healer spoke fiery words of counsel ...

Each year brings another Strange New Worlds anthology. And for eight years I have looked at them on the shelf, thumbed through them, but never picked one up for myself. This year I finally bought one and was delighted by theses stories written by fans who have little if any work professionally published before. While I am not planning on reviewing every story in the book, I do want to progressively share some of the highlights. Reviews may contain minor spoilers. Tribbles, Tribbles and More Tribbles Tribbles are perhaps the most beloved non-humanoid aliens in the Star Trek universe. The very word has worked its way into mainstream vocabulary right along side so many other trek-isms. Three stories in this volume deal with the prolific furballs. I will comment on two of them. I will leave the third one for you to discover rather than give away the ending of that story. The first tale of Tribbles is "A Bad Day for Koloth," by David DeLee . This story picks up where ...