I read the phoenix novels years ago .A friend warned me they were badly written Startrek books they weren't kidding I didn't like them at all. I got rid of them as soon as I finished reading both books.To a used book store.I never wanted to read these books ever again once was more than enough for me.
The Phoenix novels worked for me when I read them around 1986, as a new take on Trek (like the first couple of Diane Carey novels). Triangle and Prometheus Design were major league chores to get through, but back then written Trek/Who/whatever was so rare you didn't give up on what was out there however awful.
"Pawn And Symbols" I remember trying to read it when I was starting Grade 5, since I thought the cover was interesting. But at that time I couldn't get my mind around what was going on in the first couple of chapters. I may try the book again soon to see if it goes better.
Thank God other people are saying that they found these books incomprehensible.I thought that it was just me. Really weird vibe in the books,it never really felt like anything I knew from the TV series,even the Enterprise "felt"wrong.
After reading this thread, the perverse little imp in my head is chanting, "Read these books! Read these books!"
I've had that thought myself a few times. I've been hearing about how weird these books were for years, and I've thought about expieriencing it for myself a fee times.
I recommend it. Once you read them you won't spend any more time wondering what they are like. I should also add that I enjoy them quite a bit in small doses.
I read the two Phoenix novels not too long after they came out; though it was after the second one, since I read them back-to-back. I remember rather enjoying the Price, but the Fate dragged quite a bit. My most enduring(?) memory of them is that the authors kept using the same plot device for the drama, and it just got old and worn out - how do you take it serious when you have the same threat repeating itself over and over. That was what I was left with anyway.
He could beat the sap from the Pine. I don't know why so many people had a hard time understanding what was going on in the PHOENIX books. It isn't THAT dense a read, I mean we're not talking Joseph Conrad, where it might take you 8 hours to read 90 pages. They may not be as lean and straightforward as SPOCK MUST DIE! (which I recall being able to read cover-to-cover while the afternoon movie (3:30pm to 5pm) ran, but PRICE and FATE's characters were quite recognizable to me as the guys from the TV show. That was true in PROMETHEUS as well (they got Shatner as Kirk in the dialog SO well that I was really hearing Shatner when Kirk argued with the god-like aliens), but TRIANGLE! I guess I know how most of you feel if TRIANGLE is what you got from the other books.
I've done a little more digging on Marshak and Culbreath. They seem to have had a reputation as promoting the K/S premise, and it seems a lot of fans today think of Phoenix as a slash book. I remember Therin of Andor saying earlier in this thread that there had been underground copies of the Phoenix books with slash scenes written in. In 1984, David Gerrold said: "The people who created STAR TREK neither share nor endorse the belief that Kirk & Spock are gay lovers. Indeed, two of the most aggressive promulgators of this belief have been barred from the lot and from the offices of those who produce ST." He also mentions them (not by name) in this 2013 Facebook post, saying these "two most aggressive women behind the phenomenon" once told him that it was obvious "Kirk secretly wants to be raped by Spock." I had wondered if their being banned might have had to do with their book Shatner: Where No Man (of which more here). The way I understand it, Shatner bought the rights to the book along with all outstanding copies, which he then burned. However, their last book, Triangle, appeared in '83, so it might have been something else that got them.
I was assured by K/S fans in the 80s that "bonus chapters", printed up in fanzine format, were available for all four M&C novels. Don't forget that Roddenberry himself acknowledges K/S fans with Kirk's cheeky footnote to his in-character foreword to the novelization of TMP. M&C supposedly sold "Mr Spock's Guide to the Planet Vulcan" for Bantam, but it was abandoned when Bantam's contract ran out, and it was again announced as forthcoming (in "Locus"?) from Pocket, but it never materialized. They also announced (in one of the "New Voyages" collections that they were working with Nichelle Nichols on "The Uhura Connection" (aka "Uhura!"), some kind of factional work about Uhura's ancestor, one Ms Nichols?
Well, he acknowledges them in order to shoot them down, with Kirk stating definitively that he's not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that. And that he could do better than a partner who's only interested once every seven years (although Dorothy Fontana would call that a misinterpretation).
I remember being on a bus that had to slam it's breaks for some reason while I was reading The Prometheus Design and thinking if that had been a serious accident this lame paragraph on "Vulcan command mode" could have been the last thing I would have ever read. That would have sucked!
Are you sure you weren't reading out aloud and the bus driver just lost all his will to life hearing that?