Joe Haldeman
1977
Grade: C
The writing here is of a much more professional caliber. For the first time in the novels, there is a direct correlation between Kirk, Spock, McCoy and their television counterparts, and scenes are infused with mannerisms and character ticks that make everyone project three dimensional images. It would be easy to fault the story for relying on super-powerful beings, in this instance the Arivne and their opponents the Irapina, but in 1977 the Star Trek cannon had not quite become as bloated with omnipotent beings as it would later come to be. In fact the Arivne are one of the more explicable creatures of this category with Haldeman going to great lengths to explain not only the width and breadth of their powers, but how those powers had come to alter their physiology. The setting, a rogue planet that seems to have been terraformed by an extremely advanced intelligence which includes harnessing the power of a micro-black hole, is intriguing and threatening, but fades into the background once the Arivnians finally make contact with the stranded crew.
The plot is streamlined and focused with the exception of a late, and apparently superfluous, tangent involving Kirk being transported back to the Enterprise, and it does not linger overlong on any one point. A slight plot weakness is that the initial fascination with the rogue planet, which focuses on the selective operation of physics and the stranded crew’s desperate struggle against the planet’s mega-flora and mega-fauna, is ultimately irrelevant to the overall narrative and, though it is in itself interesting and well told, disappears as a conflict point and goes unexplained as the novel hits its stride. A scene where the castaways are stunned and unable to move as a flock of giant scavenger birds come down to peck the apparent corpses to death and another involving the return of Lt. Hixon to camp after being grotesquely mutated into a fitting translator through which the Arivne could communicate with the crew’s primitive minds are both gripping. However, the highlights of the novel for me personally are the flashbacks to traumatic moments by Bones and Spock. The reader gets to see Spock’s childhood and how he interacted with human children, Bone’s divorce, and even a moment where he is ambushed and nearly murdered while on shore leave. Even if the novel weren’t strong these moments alone are worth the price of admission.
Even though the novel is not very long (151 pages) there are several elements that were used for seemingly no purpose. It is possible that they were intended for a more extensive version that never got written and the publisher preferred a more streamlined final product. The most notable is the introduction of Dr. Atheling, a notable physicist being conveyed to Academy (apparently a planet at this point in cannon rather than housed at the Federation capital in San Francisco). His inclusion in the rescue team, his implied romantic vying with an Enterprise science officer named Andre Charvat over Sharon Follett (another Enterprise science officer and former student of Atheling), and even his role in the climax don’t amount to anything at all. It doesn’t impede the narrative, but it does lead the reader to wonder why it’s even there. Another such instance is when the non-science officers that had been stranded on Anomaly are suddenly transported back to the Enterprise as though not needed for the Arivnian experiment. This leads to a scene of Kirk turning the Enterprise around and heading right back to Anomaly, and brief confrontation with another starship, the Lysander, who had been given false orders by the Arivnians, and eventually right back where he started for the climactic mental confrontation with the Irapina. The climax itself is a mixed bag. Like Spock Must Die! it ends with the characters battling in the mindscape where they can control the images with their minds and the effects are visible in the real world. The poker game between McCoy and the immature Irapina does a great job of explaining the rules and showing how the mental warfare can be fatal. After that, there are a series of scenarios put to both Kirk and Spock that are serviceable, but not as strong, leading to the revelation that the two Irapina are creating a scenario where Spock’s victory in his illusion will end up killing Kirk. Spock decides to sacrifice himself. For some reason this is seen as breaking the rules of the contest by the Irapina who proceed to try and kill Kirk and Spock physically. This is strange as, rather than ending the illusion when Spock chooses not to compete, they could have simply let the illusion kill him.
These points are minor and not too distracting in the main. Overall, this novel is a welcome improvement to the Star Trek novels and by far the closest thing to an episode of the original series to this point. Haldeman uses the benefits of the written medium to create fancy sci-fi body armor, fantastic monsters and aliens, and powers and scenes that the technology of the time couldn’t handle on screen. Maybe not a great novel, but a good Star Trek story. I’d recommend it to any Trek fan if not a wider general audience.
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