Karen Haber

This book feels like it was written by someone who doesn't actually watch Star Trek. With a publishing date of December 1996, I expect the author wrote it with only first first season of Star Trek Voyager as reference material. Even if you consider that though, the characters aren't written in a consistent manner, with the show or within the book itself.

The author's use of the Prime Directive as an excuse to slow down the story progression is lazy writing and shows she doesn't seem to understand what the Prime Directive is. So this is a pre-warp civilization. Okay. Prime Directive applies. Then they call the ship and say they've been visited before and know about other species out there. Okay. Does Prime Directive still apply? A little bit, maybe. I mean, that doesn't mean just give them warp tech, phasers, etc. But when they ask for medical help with a disease that is threatening their entire planet, Janeway's only concern seems to be acquiring materials to repair the ship.

That's right. We can send down shore leave parties. We can take materials and supplies from them. But we can't give them medical technology or even help them save their people. Janeway is content to let these Pre-warp aliens help her and the ship, but not help them in return.

I realize the Prime Directive is an odd thing that even in the various TV series seemed to be used and paid attention to only when convenient, but that's no excuse to continue the trend.

Also, Voyager's sensors, which are super advanced, are good enough to detect scarred tissue on Tom Paris, from orbit, but not pick out two human biosigns on a boat on the ocean? Wha?

On a ship strapped for energy, B'Elanna is going to waste transporter power beaming around the ship instead of walking? In a non-emergency. Wha?

As the planet turns towards Civil War, Janeway's like "Not our problem. Once we have fixed the ship, lets leave." That's not very Starfleet. In more than one case, the spirit of the law, with regards to the Prime Directive, was more important than the letter of the law - on the show. That was ignored here. Quoting Riker from TNG: Justice, "When has justice ever been as simple as a rule book?". No one in the book says "Hey, I understand the Prime Directive, but this isn't a scenario they foresaw and leaving an entire planet of people to die after they helped us isn't consistent with Starfleet or the Federation's ideals."

It's a shame really, because the planet, the aliens and the darra seemed like interesting ideas. It was just terribly executed. I don't think I've given a book 1 out of 5 stars before. I almost feel bad, but I really think it's a bad book. There's better out there, skip this one.… (mer)

At the beginning of the 21st century, someone had the idea to cash in on the forthcoming Peter Jackson movies by inviting a bunch of popular fantasy authors to contribute essays on What Tolkien Means to Me. Almost all the respondents tell us how old they were when they first got hold of a copy of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, how they stayed up all night reading it, and how it led them to write their own books when they grew up. All the authors seem like nice intelligent people (except for Orson Scott Card who is evidently a big jerk), but this gets old quickly. There are many many thousands of us who have similar stories, except that we never got to the writing books part.

Only two contributors offer anything like analysis, which is what I was looking for. One is a fellow named Michael Swanwick, whom I had frankly never heard of, but who has some useful things to say; I need to find his stuff and read it. The other is the late Ursula K. Le Guin. Her piece on How I Discovered Tolkien ("The Staring Eye") was published decades ago, in the collection The Language of the Night, so her essay here is an analysis of the narrative patterns of a single chapter, "Fog on the Barrow-downs," and it is the best piece of Tolkien criticism I have ever read, even better than T.A. Shippey at his peak. Evidently being a literary artist of genius is a great help in understanding the work of another such.… (mer)