A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Neutral Zone
This one is literally just my favorite Star Trek tie-in novels.
Aefvadh, creatures! In this edition, your intergalactic Dragon nerds right the heck out.
You know, I tried to come up with some kind of justification for why you’d read Star Trek tie-in novels if you are not already a huge fan of Star Trek. But I’m not convinced that there are particular kinds of science-fiction stories this shared corporate universe allows writers to tell in a uniquely interesting way. I just like spending time with the characters I love, who include two of my first crushes (Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhura) and aliens ranging from space Romans to acid pizza rocks.
Hon. Mentions: The Kobayashi Maru (fun-enough accounts of how the various officers beat the unbeatable test; good for Sulu fans); The IDIC Epidemic (a painful read given its exploration of the ways a pandemic can damage both physical infrastructure and social trust). And also Mark Okrand’s Klingon Dictionary, truly a labor of love and the first place I learned about things like “glottal stops” and similar ways of describing the physical processes of speech. (Nice short background here.)
5. Carolyn Clowes, The Pandora Principle. A novel about the Vulcan equivalent of therapy? Saavik, a half-Vulcan, half-Romulan woman, was discovered as a near-feral child on a planet with the only too appropriate name of Hellguard. Spock took her in and tried to pass along his own half-Vulcan generational trauma, but now, for reasons I frankly don’t remember, she has to reopen the lockbox of her wretched past and return to the ruins of Hellguard. I read this in like middle school, which is an age when kids absolutely adore wallowing in trauma narratives; it’s where I learned that A.E. Housman poem, “I to my perils of cheat and charmer….” Now that I’ve forgotten bits of “Jabberwocky” I think this might be one of only two poems I still know by heart, alongside that Keats one from Tam Lin.
4. Margaret Wander Bonanno, Dwellers in the Crucible. Very little participation from the Enterprise crew in this tale of diplomats’ relatives held hostage. Most notable for its loving portrayal of Vulcan culture and, especially, for the depiction of two women, a Vulcan and a human, forming the Vulcan t’hyla or soulmate bond. I assume you can see why this bit spoke to me! NB, stronger allusions to sexual torture than I expected or wanted.
3. Diane Duane, My Enemy, My Ally. The first of Duane’s “Rihannsu” series, showing us the Romulans on their own terms. This one is a more traditional Trek novel about a shaky alliance between the Enterprise crew and a Romulan rebel, Ael t’Rllaillieu, I can’t believe I can still spell that from memory. Ael is one of my very most favorite sff character types: the conservative, the true believer in her world’s ideals and order, who is forced into the role of a rebel. I super also always love conflicted traitors, people with divided loyalties for whom every choice is wrong, lol I wrote about this in Gay and Catholic and it’s just my favorite.
I love Duane’s Rihannsu/Romulan culture (more on this below) and Ael embodies mnhei’sahe, “the Ruling Passion”: “not quite honor—not quite loyalty—and not quite anger or hatred or about fifty other things. It can be a form of hatred that requires you to give your last drop of water to a thirsty enemy—or an act of love that requires you to kill a friend.”
Can’t remember if this one or The Romulan Way features a Romulan’s first encounter with Lt. Naraht, the chipper Horta aka talking pizza rock, but Naraht is always a delight and so are gobsmacked Romulans.
2. Janet Kagan, Uhura’s Song. Kirk & crew journey to the planet of giant singing kittycats! Forbidden songs and a dangerous coming-of-age ritual hold the key to stopping a deadly pandemic. Big fluffy pussycats must overcome generations of guilt and shame! They have competing cultural interpretations of how one should use one’s tail!
The cat cultures are built out really well, they’re not “alien” in a mind-bending way but they are pleasingly different from us, and there’s a fun subplot in which a Starfleet officer may be one face of the universal trickster god. I love that subplot because it’s weird and unnecessary (there’s a special pleasure in novels’ curlicues), and also because it helps the book’s structure. I’m terrible at structure and I’m trying to learn from how well this book parceled out its surprises, climaxes, and mysteries. Once the pandemic plot is resolved, there is still one last spicy bite left on the plate….
1. Diane Duane, The Romulan Way. Dr. McCoy tries to reawaken a sleeper agent who may have forgotten or rejected her mission among the Romulans. Alternating chapters tell the story of the Romulans/Rihannsu from their own perspective, exploring their mysticism of names, their readiness for violence, and the ascetic stringency of their idea of honor. This book has a genuinely religious atmosphere, an acceptance that many things matter in life besides reason and accomplishment, which Star Trek rarely attempts.
I love this book, though maybe for bad reasons. Duane’s Romulans are very space-Romans; our sleeper agent is enslaved when the book begins, and slavery is taken for granted as a part of the society. I don’t think this book would be written this way today. There’s a subgenre in American pop culture where Romans are kind of “Cozy Slavery,” lots of threatening gestures but nobody actually gets hurt, lots of emphasis on hierarchy and feudal loyalty. I do not think Romans went in for microaggressions. Duane’s portrayal of a declining, luxury-addicted imperial order is very much the perspective of a late Western elite, drawing on the perspective of the late Roman elite. If the world wants space Plautus I guess I will have to write it myself.
(The world does not want space Plautus. But I do!)
And last, here’s a fanfiction short story I enjoyed, revisiting “The Enterprise Incident” with allusions to various other encounters with Rihannsu.
icymi: Some thoughts on the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and the pitfalls of “stories about storytelling.”
Now Playing: Harrison Lemke, “Perpetua et Felicitas.” You can remember that St. Felicity is the enslaved one because Romans liked to name their slaves “Lucky.”
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination symbol via Wikimedia Commons.
YES! FINALLY! Rogation Dragon content about media I've heard of! It was *extremely* weird to see "Aefvadh" in my inbox attached to this sender line.
First things first: I feel that no discussion of Star Trek tie-in novels from the 1970s and 80s is complete without a link to http://mightygodking.com/2009/02/23/and-the-circle-is-complete/
However, I'm really just here to put in a good word for Spock's World, also by Diane Duane, which had a plot of some kind who knows, but which spent most of its time (as far as I can recall) exploring Vulcan philosophy and the life of Surak, with overall surprisingly Aristotelian vibes. It really grabbed me.
I am also a big sucker for stories of the Sundering between Vulcan and Romulan, which, to me, is just an incredible largely-untold story. (And one that feels more and more... relevant?) Like, come on, S'task was Surak's greatest disciple and then he founds Romulus instead? I need to know how that conversation went!
I've never actually read The Romulan Way, much to my shame, but I have checked it out from the Internet Archive just to read all the parts in flashback. The better parts of the Vulcan's Soul trilogy are all flashbacks to the Sundering, too, though those were written well after everything else on this list.
(I was able to get Joanne Linville to reprise her role on my show in 2016, which was quite an experience -- and I think her last time acting? -- but, since I hadn't read Rihannsu then, either, I've always worried I screwed her character up. Still, that lady could ACT.)