Christopher's ENT novels are the reason I remembered that. Anyone remember if there were Reed and Mayweather biographies done by Mike Sussman?
Spoilers The Autobiography of James T. Kirk - announcement and reviews
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Christopher's ENT novels are the reason I remembered that. Anyone remember if there were Reed and Mayweather biographies done by Mike Sussman?
I've wanted to read Captain Kirk's autobiography ever since I read "Once Burned," where Peter David (as Mackenzie Calhoun) spent a page or two describing it and even included a small "excerpt." I wasn't sure if I should read this one, since it by definition couldn't be the hypothetical book I'd been intrigued by back in... wow, 1998. I was won over by the positive reception in this thread, so I gave it a shot. Even though it's not the book I hoped for, it's closer than I expected to the contemplative, philosophical version PAD proposed, and a good read in general. I imagine I would've liked it unreservedly if I didn't have a bunch of die-hard fanon baggage.
If we lived in a kinder world, it would go without saying, but I really appreciate that the book was about the life and times of James T. Kirk from Star Trek, and not the bed-hopping intergalactic frat-boy he's caricatured as in pop culture. I'm not sure how an autobiography from that kind of character would read (come to think of it, I probably have a good idea from McSweeny's series of reviews of self-help books by pro athletes), but the style of the book did not come across as written by someone who was a childish two-fisted hot-head.
The pre-TOS section was my favorite. I enjoyed a lot of the stuff in Kirk's early life, and the way all the different backstory references in TOS were tied together. I also liked the element of Kirk commanding a ship before the Enterprise, something I saw occasionally referenced in older media, but which hasn't seemed to break into the current corpus of fanon.
The movie era was a bit sketchier, but I recognize how tough it is to nail those time periods, and getting stories set then to feel natural tends to require a more epic scope to avoid giving the impression that TMP happened, then this one thing happened, then everyone started teaching, and the rest of the decade passed quietly.
Still, I don't know that the part of Kirk's life we saw needed to be covered in the same detail as his early life. One of the common questions about a book like this would be how to do it without just novelizing a bunch of episodes we already know backwards and forwards. Touching on those stories and giving some more development to the interstitial bits is a valid solution.
Not to go and review the book that wasn't written, but I would still be interested in something that took the "Once Burned" approach, which described a book organized more by subject and theme than chronology, specifically recounting a chapter where Kirk talked about the different Starfleet officers gone bad he met, and how it made him reflect on himself and whether he could've dissolved his whole crew into salt crystals or something under the wrong circumstances.
Oh, one last thing I hadn't noticed mentioned in reviews, that I was this surprised and delighted by:
If we lived in a kinder world, it would go without saying, but I really appreciate that the book was about the life and times of James T. Kirk from Star Trek, and not the bed-hopping intergalactic frat-boy he's caricatured as in pop culture. I'm not sure how an autobiography from that kind of character would read (come to think of it, I probably have a good idea from McSweeny's series of reviews of self-help books by pro athletes), but the style of the book did not come across as written by someone who was a childish two-fisted hot-head.
The pre-TOS section was my favorite. I enjoyed a lot of the stuff in Kirk's early life, and the way all the different backstory references in TOS were tied together. I also liked the element of Kirk commanding a ship before the Enterprise, something I saw occasionally referenced in older media, but which hasn't seemed to break into the current corpus of fanon.
I go back and forth about how I feel about Cartwright's cabal of hard-line anti-Klingon flag officers having been together and pushing for militarization for so long. On the one hand, it's certainly realistic: there are political and defense-policy cliques that go from presidency to presidency, and you'll see the same names years or decades apart. But still, it feels small for Starfleet to be so chummy at the top, and unwholesome for people to have been trying to gin up a war under false pretenses for thirty years before TUC. It's not that there's anything wrong with it as a dramatic choice, I'm just not sure if it's the one I'd prefer. Not to mention the stuff with the mutant animal-weapons. That seemed hardcore for the Prime timeline.
The movie era was a bit sketchier, but I recognize how tough it is to nail those time periods, and getting stories set then to feel natural tends to require a more epic scope to avoid giving the impression that TMP happened, then this one thing happened, then everyone started teaching, and the rest of the decade passed quietly.
Still, I don't know that the part of Kirk's life we saw needed to be covered in the same detail as his early life. One of the common questions about a book like this would be how to do it without just novelizing a bunch of episodes we already know backwards and forwards. Touching on those stories and giving some more development to the interstitial bits is a valid solution.
Not to go and review the book that wasn't written, but I would still be interested in something that took the "Once Burned" approach, which described a book organized more by subject and theme than chronology, specifically recounting a chapter where Kirk talked about the different Starfleet officers gone bad he met, and how it made him reflect on himself and whether he could've dissolved his whole crew into salt crystals or something under the wrong circumstances.
Oh, one last thing I hadn't noticed mentioned in reviews, that I was this surprised and delighted by:
The obligatory non-fiction color insert of photographs from the subject's life.
It's been quite a long time since I've picked one up, but I would totally get this audiobook if William Shatner did the honours.
I might buy that audio book if Shatndr narrates it.
It would be a must buy for me.
TNG's "The First Duty" established that Starfleet Academy doesn't have sliding doors for some reason.
The only 23rd century doorknob we see in TOS was on the door of injured Pike's room! Cruel!
Shatner has read excerpts and spent a hour with David at SDCC which you can go watch on youtube which is fantastic...and I think that when asked they joked about it--but Shat didn't rule it out. Hopefully we get an announcement sometime soon-ish.
Actually...
The book has a brief forward written by Bones, where he opens with the assertion that James T. Kirk was the greatest hero who ever lived, even though he himself would've never been so immodest as to say it.
So probably not.
I'm sure Kirk would've been deeply embarrassed by that subtitle.
And I'm not convinced it's accurate either. We all treat Kirk as the uber-captain of the 23rd century because he was the star of the show, but we tend to forget the other captains that Kirk himself admired and emulated, like Garrovick and Garth. Garth was supposedly an amazingly great and important captain before his injuries damaged his mind, so I find it implausible that his accomplishments are never mentioned. It's not like he really did that much damage while he was insane, since his crew stopped him and he was then confined on Elba II; and his derangement was the result of injury, and was later cured by the new medicine. So I don't think his bout of mental illness would be held against him to the point that his entire illustrious career was effaced from history. I mean, Kirk's had some unfortunate interludes of his own, like being split into good and evil selves and becoming an amnesiac god for two months.
So treating Kirk as the only noteworthy 23rd-century captain is making the common mistake of confusing our perception of the universe as fans with the internal perception of its own inhabitants. We should remember that others like Garth and Decker and Wesley left their own marks on Starfleet history. And who knows what kind of careers lie behind flag officers like Stone and Mendez and Komack and Nogura and Morrow?
And I'm not convinced it's accurate either. We all treat Kirk as the uber-captain of the 23rd century because he was the star of the show, but we tend to forget the other captains that Kirk himself admired and emulated, like Garrovick and Garth. Garth was supposedly an amazingly great and important captain before his injuries damaged his mind, so I find it implausible that his accomplishments are never mentioned. It's not like he really did that much damage while he was insane, since his crew stopped him and he was then confined on Elba II; and his derangement was the result of injury, and was later cured by the new medicine. So I don't think his bout of mental illness would be held against him to the point that his entire illustrious career was effaced from history. I mean, Kirk's had some unfortunate interludes of his own, like being split into good and evil selves and becoming an amnesiac god for two months.
So treating Kirk as the only noteworthy 23rd-century captain is making the common mistake of confusing our perception of the universe as fans with the internal perception of its own inhabitants. We should remember that others like Garth and Decker and Wesley left their own marks on Starfleet history. And who knows what kind of careers lie behind flag officers like Stone and Mendez and Komack and Nogura and Morrow?
Could it be as in other novels, that Kirk's reputation was hyped up after his 5 year mission by Starfleet? How many mentions of Garth, Decker, Wesley, etc the 24th century movies and television shows?
Just because the book has a slightly hyperbolic title, doesn't mean it is acting as though Kirk is the only captain worthy of mention. It's the autobiography of Jim Kirk, not an all-inclusive study of the greatest Starfleet captains of the 23rd century.
Is Kirk treated as the greatest captain of the 23rd century? Searching through the episode transcripts, he's usually only mentioned when it's appropriate to the context (e.g., the Enterprise-D crew meeting Spock, or Kira and Bashir entering the mirror universe). I mean Sisko goes gaga over Kirk in "Trials and Tribble-ations," but for all we know, he'd do the same thing if he bumped into Captain Stone. Icheb's report in "Q2," the DTI agents in "Trials," and the comment about first contacts in "Friendship One" are the only times I can think of where Kirk is treated as something exceptional within the show.
Sorry, I'm not talking specifically about this book (which I haven't read) but about the general trends I perceive in the shows and tie-ins. I have a bad habit of shifting focus from the specific to the general without warning.
#StarfleetOfficerProblems
Subtitles aside, I kinda thought Jim Kirk could have come up with a snappier main title, other than "The Autobiography of James T. Kirk". (*That* should have been the subtitle!) Wasn't the in-universe Kirk autobiography mentioned upthread from the Peter David books called Risk Is Our Business, or something like that? Now *that's* got pizzazz!
^Titles are often the editor's choice, or the marketing department's, rather than the author's.
What about in the home of Thomas Leighton? I don't think it was literally a doorknob, but he did have a turn-handle front door...I think.TNG's "The First Duty" established that Starfleet Academy doesn't have sliding doors for some reason.
The only 23rd century doorknob we see in TOS was on the door of injured Pike's room! Cruel!
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