Note: I’m doing a little catch-up here, having finished a couple of these a few weeks back. So you will be getting this and the next installment back-to-back.
Overview
After Spock Must Die! it was another six years until we had another book presenting new Star Trek stories, and Star Trek The New Voyages gave us just that. But in this case it was an anthology of stories, written by fans.
As I write this, the Trek world has its collective nose in a snit about the role of fans and their creations, what is allowed by the owners of the Star Trek brand, and other such details sure to set Trekkies at each others’ throats, and mystify anyone else who should stumble in on that fracas. For the details on the snipping back of fan productions, I refer you to others who are more knowledgable and who have more time on their hands for this sort of thing.
But for today, we go back to the innocent 1970s (and only a Trekkie could put “innocent” and “1970s” in the same sentence) and where we meet superfans Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. They loved Star Trek a lot. And they loved the characters a lot. And they loved the idea of Kirk and Spock loving each other. A lot. More on that in a couple of books later. For now, we meet them as the editors of a collection of fan fiction, for which they gathered introductions penned by the TOS actors.
This book was a big deal for me as a kid. This was the first original Star Trek book I read. But I have to say, in retrospect, I could only remember spare details of a few stories. So I was very eager to jump back into this collection, which I remember savoring the first time.
The Stories
Ni Var
Oh good God that was awful. The first thing to read after Spock Must Die ends up being … another story with two Spocks. In which much of the plot happens offscreen, and much of what we see is a tender rumination on Kirk and Spock which borders on slash. It’s a great concept: what would happen if Spock’s human and Vulcan halve become physically separate. But it completely falls apart.
Intersection Point
Better. Kind of a throwaway actioner, with a sort of a deus ex machina ending. Again very 70s emotional handling of the characters. “Jim” instead of “Captain Kirk” throughout. Well crafted if forgettable.
The Enchanted Pool
Again, I feel like I’m stepping into some fangirl’s private fantasy life, but at least this wisp of a story holds up. Kind of like a lesser episode of the Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, with a magic pixie girl.
Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited
Cute and not overly cute, funny story about what if Shatner, Nimoy, et al. got transported to the Enterprise in a switch a la “Mirror Mirror.” This is the companion to an earlier story, “Visit to a Weird Planet,” which put Kirk and friends being transported to the Desilu Studios of 1966-8. That story isn’t in this book, but readable online. I remember loving this one as a kid. It hasn’t aged quite so well, as we know more about what production and the cast were like, and this doesn’t quite match. Still fun though.
Face on the Barroom Floor
A fairly inoffensive “Kirk takes a holiday” tale that doesn’t do much. I remember fan fiction like this, which had a lot of stuff involving what the crew did when things weren’t exciting on the Enterprise. Okay. Just okay.
The Hunting
McCoy has to match wits with a feral Tiger-thing/Spock, after an interspecies mind meld goes wrong. I actually liked this one quite a bit because, unlike most of the other stories, there was some suspense and good pacing. It felt more like an adventure, and not like a fanwanky “after hours” story. I always like a good McCoy story, and much of this is from his perspective.
The Winged Dreamers
Better written than several of the others, but it kind of is a rehash of elements of the episodes “This Side of Paradise,” “Shore Leave,” and “Operation Annihilate.” And it gets a little slashy, again.
Mind-Sifter
Or as I like to call it, “Kirk Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
Oh, I wish I hadn’t re-read this. I loved it so much as a kid, but now it just reads like warmed-over bits of “The City on the Edge of Forever.” The focus gets drawn in on a romance-not-a-romance, and a hurt/heal scenario which has Spock out-doing Guinan at sensing a disturbance in the force across huge spans of time and space. It casts McCoy and Scotty in a unbelievable adversary role against Spock. And the time travel element is used for nothing more than putting Kirk in an insane asylum.
One thing bugged me. two actually. There is this sense of urgency that they have to find Kirk before he dies. Um, he’s in the past, so isn’t he dead already? And that brings up the bigger problem. Kirk gets thrown into the past, but it seems to cause nary a ripple in history. Um. Isn’t that the main source of tension in these time travel stories?
The Ratings
I regret to say that, because Mind Sifter hasn’t aged well, it brought down my opinion of the collection as a whole. Too much fan fantasy and not enough story, too much borderline slash and Mary Sue, and characterizations that said more about the authors than the characters. Much can be ascribed to the period being written in, but not all.
A couple of the stories work okay, but overall there were frequent pauses of, “um, no.”
The Facebook group readers tended to like this collection more than me.
Three Spirks: Enjoyable. Good as Trek and/or General: 6
Four Spirks: I loved a lot of it. Shades of future novels: 3
Two Spirks: Okay, but was this the best they had? 1
Five Spirks: A classic collection. These could be movies/pros. 1
Mind-Sifter: 5
Visit to a Weird Planet Revisited: 4
The Enchanted Pool: 1
The Hunting: 1
Now, take a deep breath. next time: Spock Messiah is coming.
Bunging a Rock at It 