Musings from Brian J. Noggle

All right, I think this author took slightly more liberty with this novelization than “Gene Roddenberry” did with the first one; a lot of the scenes that I don’t remember from the movie are a little disparate (but nobody got implants that disappear). Given what I’ve seen of the novelization of The Search for Spock, though, this one is relatively bang-on the novelization.

To recap: While the Enterprise is on a training mission, it investigates a scientific lab outpost that sends a garbled message to Kirk. Meanwhile, an enemy from Kirk’s past has put events in motion to steal that lab’s discovery and to kill Kirk in revenge.

These books clock in under 200 pages, even with the additional emoting scenes and scientific mumbo-jumbo added. If you’re into Star Trek, you will probably get a kick out of them.

As you might know, gentle reader, I picked up a number of Star Trek movie novelizations last autumn along with a copy of My Enemy, My Ally. I also later bought VHS copies of all of the movies but The Voyage Home. So I’ll be able to do a comparison of the films to the novels as well, once I get around to watching the movies.

The book follows the movie, mostly, with some variations (as I recall). For example, I don’t remember an implant that gives Kirk direct access to the Starfleet emergency channel. But it’s in the book and, as I know of the Star Trek universe, nowhere else. However, my reading in the canon is a little light, but that’s changing.

The book also looks at some of the behind-the-scenes politicking that made Kirk an admiral and some of the history of the Enterprise era, but it looks as though this, too, never made official canon. I have to wonder if they really paid attention to the books when building the movies and other series. Actually, I don’t have to wonder; I can infer by what Ms. Duane said when she commented on her book.

A quick enough read, and it was fun enough. If it doesn’t line completely up, I won’t notice in most places and won’t mind too much when it does. Which is why Paramount can do it so sloppily.

Oh, yeah, the plot: A big probe comes to earth to destroy it. No, not because of the whales, because it’s Voyager coming to meet its creator and disinfect the planet of the irrational carbon units. Then, a hot bald chick acts as its emissary and the dad from 7th Heaven unites with the hot bald chick and the machine. Credits roll.

Sure, it’s thin, but audiences waited through the whole 1970s, almost, to get that, and they were ecstatic. Once the geeks were happy again, the fog of the 1970s lifted, the moribund economy rebounded, and we’re still seeing the effects of that national optimism today. Reagan revolution? No, the Roddenberry Revolution.

As I move the books and the MfBJN home office, I’ve shuffled through my to-read shelves and have found a couple of books that I would have surely read by now if I’d known they were present. This book is one of them. The Lucas Davenport novels are pretty good genre reads.

This book, from the middle 1990s, details Davenport’s search for a madman who has kidnapped a shrink and her two daughters and keeps them hidden in a root cellar in the country. Davenport marshals his team (sorry, Deputy Chiefs his team) to find the perp and to hopefully rescue as many as possible.

Davenport novels have a good sense of the upper Midwest, but like in Mortal Prey, someone in the know will find a jarring inaccuracy. In that book, it was little things about St. Louis; in this book, it’s when discussing GenCon (whose t-shirt the bad guy was seen wearing). Davenport explains it off-handedly that it’s a gaming convention in Lake Geneva. Although the name comes from Lake Geneva, the convention was held in Milwaukee at the time. Take my word for it. Before I was living in St. Louis to prepare my John Sandford fact-checking abilities, I lived in Milwaukee and attended GenCon to hone my John Sandford fact-checking abilities.

Regardless of those occasional devil chords of obvious problems (which probably include things about which I don’t know, so I don’t hear the krang!), the books remain readable and enjoyable, and I’ll get around to the one remaining Sandford on my shelves (Dead Watch) one of these days.

I read about this book in an Entertainment Weekly at the dentist’s office, and since I used to work for an interactive marketing agency, I had to have it. So I ordered a brand new book for over $1. Which explains why I’ll avoid Entertainment Weekly in the future; it tempts me to order expensive books that I might enjoy.

I did enjoy this book. It details the story of a Chicago ad agency (real ad agency, not interactive) that’s slumping immediately after 2000. Told in the first person plural (we this, we that), it nevertheless breaks individual characters out to identify what role they play in the process.

It’s enjoyable and comedic, but not quite completely on the money in describing the day to day that I would expect from a failing company. I mean, the book describes some office nuttiness and the dread of lay offs that trickle out over the course of days or weeks while people continue their underemployed shenanigans. Brothers and sisters, in most cases, layoff will happen pretty chop-chop when things are as bad as they’re portrayed in this book. Also, the characters are just a shade too whacky. The narrative voice takes a while to get used to, and I’m not sold on the ultimate sentences that wind it up–I don’t know what those are supposed to mean.

But it’s a good enough book, and a literary read at that. Who would have known?