Spoilers VOY: The Autobiography of Kathryn Janeway Review Thread

Wasn't Janeway's life already covered in "Mosaic"?

 

That's never stopped anyone before. We're up to something like nine different versions of the end of Kirk's 5-year mission at this point, and probably close to half a dozen versions of the origin of the Borg, just in professionally published fiction alone.

 

Not to mention my own unpublished short story, "The Gray People" (and I wrote it in part because I don't actually like Borg stories, just as I wrote "Interview With Dr. Ambrose Crater, or The Salt Vampire Ate My Parents" entirely because I despise "The Man Trap").

At any rate, I'm about 150 pages in, and as far as I'm concerned, it's the best "autobiography" yet. But I always liked Janeway (and I'm probably one of the two or three people who actually liked "Mrs. Columbo"; even Mulgrew herself dislikes that series).

. . .

Just finished it. Gave it one of my vanishingly rare "Outstandings."

I will note, however, that the command Dorothy gives the Silver Shoes (NOT "ruby slippers"!) near the end of Chapter 23 of The Wizard of Oz is "Take me home to Aunt Em," not "There's no place like home." While I think "There's no place like home" does appear at least once in Wizard, it is never chanted as some sort of incantation or mantra. (And by the time you read this, I will have begun re-reading Wizard for the I've-lost-count-of-how-many time.)

. . .

"There is no place like home" (Baum used contractions about as much as Data does!) occurs exactly once, in Chapter 4, in a discussion between Dorothy and the Scarecrow about why she wants to return to Kansas.

 

I enjoyed it as a relaxing read but I was annoyed the photos gave away a pointer from the last page so I advise not to look at them until finished reading

 

I noticed that, too, although I didn't find it nearly as annoying as the extremely fine print in the captions.

And speaking of which, who's the father? An anonymous sperm donor? I find myself thinking of the song, "Bennie's from Heaven" (a parody of "Pennies from Heaven"). The last time I checked, virgin births in humans require a rather exceptional mother.

 

Meh, you pretty much have to accept that photo inserts contain spoilers as a reality of photo inserts.

 

I love Una McCormack!

“I’d love to do a Sisko bio. I always love to hang around DS9. My imagination’s there half the time. Sisko would be really good fun. I love Sisko. He’s a phenomenal character. His pull between public idealism and private grief… all this power and this passion. DS9 gets better with every view.”

https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/star-trek-books-picard-janeway-una-mccormack-interview-fanfiction

 

They're about 350 years more advanced than we are. I'm sure there'll be a way around it with science by then.

 

Chris was able to interview Una on Literary Treks and it is out now!

 

Interesting.

 

I just finished listening to this podcast very good discussion about Katherine Janeway and interesting choices Una Made about writing about Janeway's life from watching the Voyager episodes and wanting her book to be different than Jeri Taylors Books on the Voyager characters is really intriguing great interview thanks for posting it here.

 

This was definitely my favorite of the three autobiographies so far. I enjoyed the more introspective, reflective, and conversational tone (something I'd hoped for in the earlier installments of the series based on the expectations PAD set those many years ago when he suggested that James Kirk had written a popular memoir and excerpted a page or two). It was interesting that the book seemed to assume a great deal of familiarity with the story of Voyager; characters and situations from the show are dropped in with hardly any introduction, not that, you know, I'd expect many people to read a book like this who weren't familiar with the series (or, in-universe, with the exploits of the Voyager crew, especially since the book only seems to have been written ten or fifteen years later, when Voyager-mania would still be in many people's minds).

Some scattered notes I took; I enjoyed Janeway's self-indulgent asides and private jokes, like a stray remark about how family legends tend to be exaggerated, as well as Una's, briefly mentioning an otherwise-unchronicled encounter with Dr. Pulaski where the subject of children's entertainment somehow came up. Janeway did seem to know about Trill symbionts a few years too early, but I chalked that up to a mix of an unreliable narrator not necessarily remembering in detail exactly when she learned every relevant detail about what she was writing about, and her describing her sister-in-law in broad strokes, covering several years of getting to know her in a few paragraphs. I liked the phrasing that when Janeway showed up at an empty house, she went from room to room "asking for lights," a rare and subtle bit of sci-fi in the otherwise fairly grounded domestic segments. And I laughed out loud at the David Bowie joke in the last chapter.

I did keep a lookout for any britishisms that slipped through, though the only major one was the use of the word "specialisms" rather than "specialties," which isn't the most glaring one I've ever read (that would be a novel set in the U.S. which repeatedly used the spelling "kerb" for the raised area marking the edge of a street). There's a typo on page 79 that results in Captain Paris agreeing with himself, as well as one on page 85 that refers to Luis Martinez as "Shulie."

 

I thought in universe the book would have been written in the 2390s, based on the uniforms being used in the last photo in the insert in the middle.

 

Fifteen years after 2378 is 2393. So closer to "fifteen" than "ten," I guess. Based on the ages involved, the photo would've been taken sometime between 2394 and 2397.

 

Exciting news! StarTrek.com is reporting that Kate Mulgrew is performing the audiobook version of the autobiography, due out on January 26. The story has an excerpt of her reading.

 

Sweet!

 

Kate Mulgrew also read Mosaic 20 years ago. So it’s nice to see she’s doing the second Janeway biography.

 

That's awesome! Is this the first of these to be read by the actor who played the title character? Not counting Shatner reading excerpts at the con after the Kirk one came out.

 

Excellent news - I've been surprised at the lack of reviews of this. Now if only the publishers could have Andrewn Robinson read A Stitch in Time and/or Robinson or Marc Alaimo read The Never-Ending Sacrifice, etc.

 

I’d give my eye teeth for these!