| Author: Anthology | Series: Star Trek |
| Rating: 7.5 (Jeremy's Scale) | Reviewer: Jeremy |
| Genre: SciFi | |
| Pages: 382 | Orig Pub Date: 2006 |
| Binding: Paperback | Cover Illus.: Jerry Vandersteldt |
This collection offers short stories in the spirit of the original 5 Year Mission of the Starship Enterprise.
This book is a collection of short stories set during the original 5 year mission of The Enterprise. I am a big fan of short story anthologies so I was looking forward to reading this book.
Featured in the book are stories by Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore, Robert Greenberger, Howard Weinstein, Jeff Bond, Stuart Moore, Christopher L. Bennett, Jill Sherwin, Dave Galanter, William Leisner, Kevin Lauderdale, Jeffery Lang, and Allyn Gibson
I did enjoy the mix of stories and writing styles in this book. Many of the stories focused on Sulu, Chekov, Scotty, and even Uhura, who get the least amount of attention within the more “epic” novels that focus on Kirk, Spock, and to a lesser extent McCoy. After reading many Star Trek novels telling “epic” tales which would be fitting of a theatrical movies, it was a nice change of pace to read these shorts, which were constructed to read more like an individual episode of the TV series. The stories wanted to capture the spirit of the original series according to the editor, and a series of “episodic” short stories did that very well.
The first story of the book was a Doctor McCoy heavy story from Dayton Ward and Kevin Dillmore. I was very interested in that story since I read their novel as my last review and didn’t enjoy it as much as previous Star Trek novels. I was interested to see what else they could offer. The opening story of the book was a good one.
Two other stories especially caught my eye. “Fracture” by Jeff Bond captured much of the spirit of exploring strange new worlds and encountering new life forms element of Star Trek. I thought the story was actually surprisingly “crunchy” in the science fiction department, for Star Trek, and it was rather deep in its implications.
The absolute best story in the book was the last regular story (the last was actually a manga story). Make-Believe by Allyn Gibson combined Star Trek with real-world, contemporary issues in a very heart-wrenching way. I thought the story was very emotionally powerful and it is the one story that will stick with me the longest. That will probably be the story that defines this book for me, in terms of “Constellations was the book that had THIS story in it”.
I don’t rank this book a bit higher because I read many of the “Year’s Best Science Fiction” and the “Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror” anthologies. From top to bottom those tend to have more of the powerfully thought provoking and resonating stories. They set the bar for that top level of rating to me. “Make-Believe” certainly holds its own with any selection that would appear in one of those collections. I believe Fracture was another of those stores as well. The rest of them were very enjoyable stories and I enjoyed the half hour or so that it would take to read them, but they won’t really exist in my memory long term. So overall, while I give this book a high grade, it’s not quite at the top of the mountain when it comes to short story collections. It is however very true to the spirit of the original 5 Year Mission and as such is a recommended read for serious Star Trek Fans.
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