Throwing A Book At You

Written By: Randy Hall

Published: Issue 29

As I write this, I'm laid up with a very nasty bug that has my nose thinking it's a faucet and my eyes looking like, as my Mom would say, "burnt holes in a blanket." But rather than go another week without a column, I thought I'd share a quick review of one of my favorite Trek paperbacks.

While I don't have the time to read every novel produced at Pocket Books under the editorship of John Ordover, sometimes a title will catch my eye, and I'll pick it up. Such was the case with the 84th Classic Trek book, which was entitled Assignment: Eternity and brought back Gary Seven from the TV episode "Assignment: Earth."

This story starts at the conclusion of Star Trek VI, when a member of the Enterprise crew is unexpectedly killed at Khitomer, an act that threatens to throw the time line into chaos.

Responding to the crisis, Seven (not of Nine), Roberta Lincoln, Isis the cat, and their little green cube travel across time and space to the bridge of the Enterprise just after the events of "Turnabout Intruder." (Yeah, I know. I hate temporal mechanics, too!)

Despite Kirk's efforts, Seven manages to detour the ship deep into enemy territory, near where a ruthless Romulan commander has taken control of the base of operations for one of Seven's fellow agents. It then falls to Kirk and Seven to make the future right again before it happened the first time.

After reading this book, I came to one conclusion: If continuity is king, then author Greg Cox is its crown prince. While many authors don't do enough research on Trek history, Cox's story is packed full with it ... as well as references to the 1960s, Generations and even Voyager!

While this is for the most part terrific, there are a few times when I felt like saying, "Not the whole encyclopedia, Cox!" Still, it's obvious that this novel was a labor of love, so I'm willing to forgive him going overboard a couple of times.

But mixed in with all that trivia is a good story, including Roberta Lincoln staging a "sit-in" on the bridge of the Enterprise that forces Spock to mind meld with her. Fun stuff!

Rating: Highly Recommended

Convention Calendar

Creation has already begun listing its guests for the Grand Slam convention to be held in Pasadena, California, March 30-April 1 of Trek's 35th anniversary year, and they include none other than William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Jimmy Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Walter Koenig, Grace Lee Whitney, and Majel Roddenberry. Another guest will be John deLancie, who will join Nimoy in performing the sequel to the "Spock Versus Q" audio presentation during the con, as well as someone who has never before been a convention guest: Ricardo Montalban (Yes, that's right. KHAAAAAAAAAAN!) As far as I know, this is the only convention that will have all available members of the Classic Trek cast in attendance, and it might be a great idea for us to have a BBK get-together there so we can get the Bring Back Kirk message out to an audience that should be very receptive. If you have any ideas or questions, write to me at the e-mail address below.