The Price Of The Pheonix

[Miss Mess]

Has anyone read 'The Price Of The Pheonix' by Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath? or it's sequel, ' The Fate Of The Pheonix' ?

Opinions?

[Zaku]

It was the first Trek book I ever read. And it had almost convinced me not to read more trek books...

[King Daniel]

Rubbish. The first "grown up" Trek novels I read (age 12), and thus very nearly the last.

It's been a while (I re-read them about 5-6 years ago), but I don't think Marshak and Culbreath laid on the K/S stuff quite as thickly as they did in The Prometheus Design or Triangle. It is, however, loaded with meek, pandering pathos. I vaguely remember lots of thinly veiled dom/sub roleplaying stuff involving clone Kirk and the female Romulan commander.

There's a bit where Kirk cries because Omne "beat the jungle out of him", as in "broke his manly spirit". Words fail me .

Please do not judge all of Treklit based on the Phoenix novels.

[Christopher]

The Phoenix novels are kind of bizarre by today's standards, but they deserve credit for at least attempting to tackle some substantive ideas. For instance, Fate of the Phoenix was the first Trek novel to take a critical look at the ethics of the Prime Directive, although it didn't do much more than pose the question and then move on. Most of the Bantam novels were fairly generic science fiction tales that happened to feature the Enterprise crew, but the Marshak-Culbreath novels were among the first to really come at ST from the perspective of true fans, including both the positive and negative things that that entailed. They felt more like Star Trek than a lot of their contemporary novels, there was a love for the show and the characters suffusing them, but that love was somewhat out of hand and more than a little obsessive toward the characters of Kirk and Spock, treating them as superheroes and sex objects rather than as life-sized, believable characters.

[Miss Mess]

Yea! Was anyone afraid at one stage that Omne was going to rape Kirk...or was that just my dirty mind? lol

Kirk/Spock slash-wise, how can 'Triangle' be any worse?
Dear lord...

[King Daniel]

Miss Mess wrote:

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Yea! Was anyone afraid at one stage that Omne was going to rape Kirk...or was that just my dirty mind? lol

Kirk/Spock slash-wise, how can 'Triangle' be any worse?
Dear lord...

Kirk bangs Sola Thane, while thinking of Spock. Later Spock bangs Sola, thinking of Kirk. Lots of talk about Kirk feeling safe in Spock's "warm, strong" hands. Kirk and Spock are described as "the two who are one". Kirk talks about spending years trying to get Spock to "break free of his Vulcan chains". You just want them to f-k and get it over with .

[Christopher]

Miss Mess wrote:

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Yea! Was anyone afraid at one stage that Omne was going to rape Kirk...or was that just my dirty mind? lol

There is a scene that can be interpreted that way, yes.

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I've read worse. Far worse. They're a bit verbose and dense, but they're certainly not even in the same league with The Starless World, World Without End, Perry's Planet, or the ever-popular Devil World.

[King Daniel]

^I would put all of those above the Phoenix duology .

[Daddy Todd]

KingDaniel wrote:

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^I would put all of those above the Phoenix duology .

I would put virtually every Trek book ever written above the Phoenix duology. Including Warped.

[Captain Robert April]

Haven't read those two books in around thirty years, and haven't had an urge to do so.

I did rather like the Romulan Commander, but then I liked the character anyway. Otherwise, Marshak and Culbreath can't write dialogue to save their lives, and have some serious issues regarding their ideas about male sexuality.

[TheAlmanac]

hbquikcomjamesl wrote:

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I've read worse. Far worse. They're a bit verbose and dense, but they're certainly not even in the same league with The Starless World, World Without End, Perry's Planet, or the ever-popular Devil World.

I think you just hate novels with "planet" or "world" in the title.

I've been trying to find matching editions of the two Phoenix novels at used bookstores here in Winnipeg so I can finally give them a read. My main early memories related to those books are how much people gushed about them in The Best of Trek whenever novels came up (seriously, they put them right up there with The Final Reflection and Diane Duane's novels), then later learning elsewhere (like here) how much of a heavy K/S undertone there (apparently) is to the whole thing.

That writing team seems like a weird pair. They played such a significant role in keeping Star Trek alive in print in the Seventies, even though their take on the series is so...off. I think Christopher is being generous, although I won't deny that the mythological-figure take on "the triumvirate" in general was also certainly present in those Best of Trek articles--especially the earlier ones, contemporaneous to this particular duology.

[Therin of Andor]

Christopher wrote:

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The Phoenix novels are kind of bizarre by today's standards, but they deserve credit for at least attempting to tackle some substantive ideas. For instance, Fate of the Phoenix was the first Trek novel to take a critical look at the ethics of the Prime Directive, although it didn't do much more than pose the question and then move on. Most of the Bantam novels were fairly generic science fiction tales that happened to feature the Enterprise crew, but the Marshak-Culbreath novels were among the first to really come at ST from the perspective of true fans, including both the positive and negative things that that entailed. They felt more like Star Trek than a lot of their contemporary novels, there was a love for the show and the characters suffusing them, but that love was somewhat out of hand and more than a little obsessive toward the characters of Kirk and Spock, treating them as superheroes and sex objects rather than as life-sized, believable characters.

Totally agree. And I impatiently read "The Fate of the Phoenix" first, 'cos ""Price" was so hard to find. Very few ST fans were letting their copies out of their hands, unlike other Bantams (Corgis in UK) that were quite plentiful in second hand bookshops in 1980. I remember them fondly as bizarre ST novels written with lots of love.

TheAlmanac wrote:

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I've been trying to find matching editions of the two Phoenix novels at used bookstores

We reach. I finally bought a Corgi, then replaced it - years later - with a Bantam early edition.

[Christopher]

TheAlmanac wrote:

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I think Christopher is being generous, although I won't deny that the mythological-figure take on "the triumvirate" in general was also certainly present in those Best of Trek articles--especially the earlier ones, contemporaneous to this particular duology.

Not so much being generous as trying to be fair. I'm not saying they're good books by any means; the last time I tried to reread Price, I simply couldn't get through it. I'm just trying to present the other side of the issue and put them in perspective. By the standards of a less sophisticated era of Trek literature, they were a step forward in certain directions, and that's why so many people at the time found them admirable.

[T'Ressa Dax]

I know I read the Price of the Phenix when I was about 13, so I probably missed or was confused by yhe K/S stuff. Don't think I liked it much, but I can only really remember that Omne was in it now. When I was packing up my books for a move, it was easy enough to leave that one in a box destined for storage. Other choices were harder.