Books: Star Trek: Elusive Salvation By Dayton Ward (2016)

The shared universe of Star Trek novels –and the sheer numbers published continuously since 1979 when Pocket Books overtook Bantam Books (who released a sporadic, but fair number of titles in the early to mid 1970s) - means the quality of them goes up and down from novel to novel. And it’s hard sometimes not to see these tales as nothing less than fan fiction, albeit “official”, for most seem to revolve around characters and situations established on the various TV series and movies over Star Trek’s 50 year life span. Even the fan web series, which began around 2000 and continue today, seem obsessed with doing sequels to TV episodes instead of trying to do original stories using the Star Trek characters. 

Part of that, I guess, is that fans like familiarity. By doing continuations of those stories, concepts and ideas, the readers are not subjected to anything that may be challenging. And I don’t mean to sounds like an ass when I say that, it’s just today’s media seems infatuated with idea that originality is somehow dangerous and that the audience only wants retreads of what came before. And that’s part of the reason why I sort of left the Star Trek original novel series behind, only occasionally dipping my toe back when something peaks my interest.

And while Elusive Salvation is a serviceable novel, light and fun, the reader clearly knows how this will all end from the start of the adventure. 

“The Arctic Circle, 1845: Escaping the tyranny under which their people have lived for generations, aliens from a distant planet crash land on Earth’s inhospitable frozen wastes. Surviving the harsh conditions will pose a challenge, but over time the aliens will migrate to more populated areas, with decades passing as they work to conceal their presence from their former oppressors, who continue to hunt them at any cost. San Francisco, 2283: When a mysterious craft is detected entering the solar system, Admiral James Kirk is dispatched by Starfleet to confront the vessel. He meets with an emissary from the Iramahl, a previously unknown alien race who have come in search of their brothers and sisters thought to have gone missing in this area of space centuries earlier. Having recently thrown off the last chains of subjugation by another species, the Ptaen, they now believe their lost people hold the key to saving their entire race from eventual extinction. New York, 1970: Roberta Lincoln, young protégé of the mysterious agent Gary Seven, is shocked when she receives the oddest request for help—from the future…”

As I’ve mentioned before, I do enjoy time travel stories, and beyond the great looking cover this book has (yes, I bought it because of the cover. Mostly.) it does involve that great trope of science fiction, time travel. It also has Roberta Lincoln from the TOS episode Assignment: Earth, a great character (and concept) that probably would’ve been neat to see as a TV series (that episode, as I’ve read, was really a backdoor pilot at NBC that never went anywhere). Of course it was Teri Garr’s wonderful performance that made the episode memorable. And while author Greg Cox has revisited Lincoln and her mysterious boss, the human Gary Seven, in a few novels that fleshed out the Eugenics and Khan conflict (the duology novels: The Rise and Fall of Khan Nooien Singh) no great origin story has been developed. Gary Seven remains a cipher and in this book by Dayton Ward, you’ll not get any clearer picture of who Seven is or why the organization known as Aegis does what it does (and how they're able to do what they do, because Ward spends no time even attempting an explanation).

Of course, one of the best aspects of these Star Trek novels is its ability to connect dots that were never intended to be made. The franchises does have a rich history, but a lot the Federation and Starfleet's origins were not nailed down continuity wise during TOS run, so it’s enabled these writers to make speculative jumps in their stories (such as: Gary Seven and this Aegis group are now connected to the Temporal Cold War arc that was part of Star Trek: Enterprise’s first few TV seasons). Which is great, I like that. But sometimes it’s the other stuff, the other characters and actions and the pacing of the book that divides these books from good to bad or just serviceable.

Ward, who also penned the 2013 Trek novel From History’s Shadow (which I did not read, and which the writer spoils entirely here), is clearly a fan of UFO’s and our governments history of “covering up” alien activity here on Earth. He seems to have spent a great deal of time researching real life conspiracy agencies like Project Blue Book and Majestic 12. He also takes pot shots at more modern Star Trek TV series that seemed to think James Kirk’s style of it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. This corporate utopian that slithered into Star Trek has been one my most critical aspects of the franchise in its later years; that what made the show, the crew of the Enterprise so much fun was its ability to break the rules and use “cowboy diplomacy” to resolve many problems.

Of course, Kirk is always right, but even when he is disciplined by his superior officers, his punishment is light. So the fantasy of Star Trek continues.

Books: Nobody's Fool By Richard Russo (1993)

When Richard Russo’s Nobody’s Fool came out 23 years ago, I think I did want to read it, but 1993 is a long way in the past. I’m unsure what I was reading back then, though probably a lot of fantasy. Then in 1994 a movie was released, based on the novel, starring the legendary Paul Newman. Unfortunately I’ve never seen the film. I would offer excuses, if I could manifest them, but fear everyone would see through my lies. 

However, I did read Russo’s 1997 Straight Man, which I found brilliantly hilarious and thought that would be the beginning of a long relationship with the author.  And while working at Borders, I grabbed the ARC copy of Empire Falls, the 2001 novel by the author (this is the one of many things I miss about not being in the retail book business anymore, for one of the best perks was free books). I, of course, never read it. But I held onto it, and I think I still have that ARC somewhere in my book collection that is shoved in boxes in the garage. 

So let’s move up to 2016. I discovered that Russo was releasing a new book in May, and it turned out to be a sequel to Nobody’s Fool (called Everybody’s Fool). So, despite having many other books to read, I got a used edition at Iliad’s in North Hollywood and finally, twenty-three years after it was published, read the book. 

Donald "Sully" Sullivan is a worn yet spry hustler living in the peaceful, snowy northern New York state village of North Bath. He free-lances in the construction business, usually with his dim-witted friend Rub by his side. He is often at odds with Carl Roebuck, a local contractor, suing him at every opportunity for unpaid wages and disability. Sully's one-legged lawyer Wirf is inept, and his lawsuits are repeatedly dismissed. As a way to irritate him, Sully flirts with Carl's wife Toby (Griffith) openly at every opportunity (which she enjoys). He is a regular at the Iron Horse Saloon, where he often has drinks and plays cards with Wirf, Carl, Rub, and the town sheriff. Sully is a tenant in the home of the elderly Miss Beryl, whose banker son Clive strongly urges her to kick him out and sell the house. Family complications of his own develop for Sully with a visit from Peter, his estranged son who is a jobless professor at odds with his wife. While he and Sully reconstruct their relationship, Sully begins a new one with young grandson Will. Peter’s sudden everyday presence does not sit well with Rub, but Sully tells him that although Peter is his son, Rub is still his best friend. Meanwhile, Clive is on the verge of a lucrative deal to build an amusement park in North Bath. However the deal seems too good to be true. 

While the themes of quirky small town America life, filled with eccentric characters of all stripes, are well-worn tropes in fiction, Russo delivers a fairly original character of Nobody’s Fool Sully. He’s a well-developed, almost real-life person who clearly has succeed in failing at everything he does, but does not seem to be really bothered by it. He has a smart mouth, which tends to get him trouble a lot, but overall, his appealing nature makes the reader fall in love with him, instead of wondering why anyone would be friends with him, especially Rub.

The book has many storylines that eventually dovetail nicely, but there were many of them that went on too long and seemed to be filler (I was amused at the running joke with the snow blower, however).  But what made the book work are the carefully realized characters having real, very believable conversations. It’s a treat, sometimes, when an author can travel over well-worn premise and still deliver something worth reading.

Books: Chicago By Brian Doyle (2016)

In what is essentially a love letter, a sweet valentine to Chicago, author Brian Doyle delivers, with great skill, a novel about a certain time in the city I was born in (though grew up in its suburbs) with such intimate detail, the reader can easily feel the strum and thrum of the city, smell the empanadas of Mrs Manfredi, and smell the waters of that great lake where the city grew up around.

“On the last day of summer, some years ago, a young college graduate moves to Chicago and rents a small apartment on the north side of the city, by the vast and muscular lake. This is the story of the five seasons he lives there, during which he meets gangsters, gamblers, policemen, a brave and garrulous bus driver, a cricket player, a librettist, his first girlfriend, a shy apartment manager, and many other riveting souls, not to mention a wise and personable dog of indeterminate breed named Edward.”

Having been born there and lived within its shadow for most of my life, Doyle’s Chicago reminds me why I still love that sometimes difficult city, and why LA (where I live near now) will never be anything but runner-up. 

It begins in the fall of 1978 and into the early 1980s, and the unnamed narrator (obviously Doyle himself) gives us is sensory data of Chicago –“the sounds and feelings of things” where “buildings crowded the streets;” a Chicago with its “bone-chilling cold, and shuffle of boots leery and weary of ice, and the groan and sigh of buses coming to a stop, and the whir and whine of evening traffic on Lake Shore Drive;” along with “the shriek of trains leaning into the curves of elevated tracks near Wabash and Wacker.”

I remember everything that happened in this book, know of the all the places he mentions, of the gangs and Archdiocese (Doyle worked at US Catholic Magazine) that ruled with an iron fist while ignoring the corruption around it. Then there was the snowstorm of 1979 that paralyzed the city and ultimately cost the Mayor his job (and the rise of Jane Byrne, the cities first and so far, only female mayor). But ultimately the book is less a history of that time (though it is), but more about what Chicago has done, has always done, to the people that were born, raised, and died there and the many who came to it seeking a new life and then move on, and that imprint on the soul it leaves. Even me, now eleven years nearly gone since I made the somewhat rash decision to leave, still miss the city, the friends I made and wonder of its skyline. 

Chicago, for me, is a gorgeous novel, filled with some interesting characters, human, canine, and concrete alike, and takes me back to a time when I thought there was no better place to live. It should be required reading for many Chicagoians, as well as those who visited and have felt a longing to go back.

Books: Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (2016)

As a Constant Reader of Stephen King, when he likes a book he goes out of his way to praise it and that means I’ll have to read it (much as King did with Fieldwork from a few years ago). Getting high praise from the master of horror is a good sign that Dutch author Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s Hex, his first novel to be released in the United States, is a force to be reckoned with. 

“Whoever is born here is doomed to stay 'til death; whoever settles, never leaves. Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a 17th century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters your homes at will. She stands next to your bed for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened. The elders of Black Spring have virtually quarantined the town by using high-tech surveillance to prevent their curse from spreading. Frustrated with being kept in lockdown, the town's teenagers decide to break their strict regulations and go viral with the haunting, but in so doing send the town spiraling into the dark, medieval practices of the past.”

It’s a well-written book, but as mentioned before in other posts, I don’t find these books scary; I won’t have nightmares as this book gave folks when it was published in the Netherlands. Perhaps my rational mind understands the fantasy aspect of this and many other books in this genre and accepts them as entertainment. It is creepy and atmospheric, though, and that works very well. My only complaint may be that it takes too long to get the book going. The authors spends an inordinate amount of time setting up the books final set piece, but I felt the lead up was, at times boring. But that’s just my opinion, as I still think it’s a worthy read.

The authors note at the end explains that while Nancy Forest-Flier translated the book from Dutch to English, Thomas Olde Heuvelt speaks fluent English. While he explains why he updated the book for an American audience (here), I feel slighted that this book is not a true translation –that the Dutch version is slightly not the same and has a different ending. While I understand from a business point of view why this was done, I’m disappointed that I will not be able to read it as the author originally released it (though he did write the new finale in English himself). 

Heuvelt is the author of five novels and many short stories. His work has appeared in many languages, including English, Chinese, Japanese, Italian and French. In 2015, his story The Day the World Turned Upside Down was the first ever translated work to win a Hugo Award. Two more of his stories have been nominated for both Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.