Spoilers TOS: The Higher Frontier, by Christopher L. Bennett - review thread

[Christopher]

Who did the art? Is that a location / ship from the story?

The cover design is by Alan Dingman based on stock images, apparently. It represents a vista on Andoria, which is a location in the story, though the Kumari-class cruiser does not appear in the book (there is an Andorian ship later on, but not at Andoria and probably not of that design).

One part of me wants to get to The Higher Frontier through the post-TMP sequence of Ex Machina and the time travel follow-up, and finally this new one.

There's also Mere Anarchy: The Darkness Drops Again, whose first part takes place shortly after Ex Machina and the rest of which takes place after The Higher Frontier.

 

[Desert Kris]

There's also Mere Anarchy: The Darkness Drops Again, whose first part takes place shortly after Ex Machina and the rest of which takes place after The Higher Frontier.

Thank you for reminding me! There are a number of reasons I got a copy of the Mere Anarchy collection, with that being one of them. I think I'll jump ahead to The Higher Frontier, but then I'll re-visit it as part of that post-TMP sequence further down the road.

 

[F. King Daniel]

From the cover alone, one would assume it was an Enterprise novel since the ship is from that show. It looks nice, but not TOS movie era.

 

[thribs]

Speaking of Enterprise, when is @Christopher going to write the next one? We are dying to find out if this Federation idea works out. I'm still 50/50 on it myself.

 

[Kilana2]

Even though I prefer characters on a cover, this one is very nice!

 

[Christopher]

From the cover alone, one would assume it was an Enterprise novel since the ship is from that show.

Unless they actually, y'know, looked at the series title that takes up more than a third of the cover.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

It’s nice if it was a Bob Ross version of Star Trek.

Personally, I always preferred his mentor, Bill Alexander. With his Almighty Brush.

 

[tomswift2002]

Unless they actually, y'know, looked at the series title that takes up more than a third of the cover.

Just the way the series title is, it reminds me of how Pocket did their Marvel novels in the mid-2000’s.

 

[EnriqueH]

Personally, I always preferred his mentor, Bill Alexander. With his Almighty Brush.

As a kid, I used to watch Bill Alexander in the early 80s. I loved him.

Then Bob Ross came around and saw him for decades.

Then one day, I thought, “What happened to Bill Alexander?”

I recently saw a few episodes and was struck by how loud and bombastic he was. Still awesome.

 

[Reanok]

I'm looking forward to reading this novel.

 

[Joanna McCoy-Kirk]

Pre-ordered from Amazon, should come Tuesday.

 

[Leto_II]

Mine’ll be delivered tomorrow, according to the online order-tracking.

 

[EnriqueH]

So I see this is the movie era and it features CAPTAIN Kirk. So does this take place after TFF?

 

[Christopher]

So I see this is the movie era and it features CAPTAIN Kirk. So does this take place after TFF?

No, between TMP and TWOK. He was reduced to captain when he took back command in TMP.

 

[thribs]

That was always a strange period between those two movies. He goes to captain and then back to admiral, only later to be demoted again to captain.

 

[Ronald Held]

Waiting for a tracking number...

 

[Leto_II]

...Crap, mine's just gotten unexpectedly delayed 'til Wednesday now, looks like.

That was always a strange period between those two movies. He goes to captain and then back to admiral, only later to be demoted again to captain.

Also, a number of the '80s ST novels taking place closer to the events of The Wrath of Khan (including Howard Weinstein's Deep Domain, @garamet's Dwellers in the Crucible, and A.C. Crispin's Time for Yesterday) feature a re-promoted Admiral Kirk, which has also been used in more-recent tales such as Dayton's Elusive Salvation (taking place in 2283) and in @Christopher's own Mere Anarchy e-novella The Darkness Drops Again.

 

[Little_kingsfan]

I'm not sure if this is correct, but I seem to recall that - at least in some of the novel-verse continuity - after the loss of Capt. Decker in The Motion Picture in 2273, R-Adm. Kirk took the Enterprise on another five-year mission during which time he was referred to as Captain (although I don't know if he was officially demoted); upon the conclusion of the mission in 2278, he returned to the Admiralty (as either Chief of Starfleet Operations or Commandant of Starfleet Academy - I've seen it both ways), leaving the newly-promoted Captain Spock in command of the Enterprise, which was subsequently assigned to Starfleet Academy as a training ship.

 

[Christopher]

I'm not sure if this is correct, but I seem to recall that - at least in some of the novel-verse continuity - after the loss of Capt. Decker in The Motion Picture in 2273, R-Adm. Kirk took the Enterprise on another five-year mission during which time he was referred to as Captain (although I don't know if he was officially demoted); upon the conclusion of the mission in 2278, he returned to the Admiralty (as either Chief of Starfleet Operations or Commandant of Starfleet Academy - I've seen it both ways), leaving the newly-promoted Captain Spock in command of the Enterprise, which was subsequently assigned to Starfleet Academy as a training ship.

Yes, that's basically the version of the continuity I follow, specifically the one presented in Peter David's The Captain's Daughter, since that book is part of the Novelverse by virtue of establishing the versions of Captain Harriman and Demora Sulu that were featured in subsequent Enterprise-B fiction. In that version, Kirk is re-promoted in '78 and becomes Academy commandant (which is basically like a dean of students, as I discovered in my research). Chief of Starfleet Operations was his gig pre-TMP, and there's no reason why a CSO would be conducting cadet simulations and overseeing training cruises as seen in TWOK.

And of course all this is ultimately derived from TWOK, which treated Kirk and Spock's status quo as something that had been in place for some time.

 

[Leto_II]

I'm not sure if this is correct, but I seem to recall that - at least in some of the novel-verse continuity - after the loss of Capt. Decker in The Motion Picture in 2273, R-Adm. Kirk took the Enterprise on another five-year mission during which time he was referred to as Captain (although I don't know if he was officially demoted); upon the conclusion of the mission in 2278, he returned to the Admiralty (as either Chief of Starfleet Operations or Commandant of Starfleet Academy - I've seen it both ways), leaving the newly-promoted Captain Spock in command of the Enterprise, which was subsequently assigned to Starfleet Academy as a training ship.

The 1998 Marvel comic story "Renewal" (the first issue in the Star Trek: Untold Voyages miniseries) picks up literally moments after the Enterprise jumps to warp-speed at the end of ST:TMP, and depicts Kirk's confrontation with Admiral Nogura over him getting to keep his new demotion, or the possibility of him forcibly relinquishing it and returning to the admiralty at the conclusion of the V'Ger-mission.

Trying to think if another story so directly and explicitly shows Kirk fighting to keep his command of the Enterprise following the events of The Motion Picture -- @Christopher's novel Ex Machina begins its story around two weeks after the ending of the movie, but from what I remember Kirk is now firmly ensconced on the bridge by this point, and the DC Comics graphic novel Debt of Honor doesn't directly address this particular battle either, IIRC.