Blood and Fire is a return to form, a more tightly focused and suspenseful novel. It's also much more closely tied to the
Star Trek universe than its predecessors. It's based on the unproduced
Next Generation episode discussed above, and follows the script very closely. It expands on it, of course, being longer and having the space to add more subplots and complications, but there are no significant changes. The only scene from the episode that's completely missing from the book is one in which Picard talks with Wesley Crusher about the dangerous situation Beverly Crusher is involved in. Otherwise, it's pretty much all there; many lines of dialogue are reused with little or no change.
But it's not just a
Star Trek story with the names changed. It's also, in this form, a barbed commentary on
Star Trek, especially on Gerrold's experiences working on
The Next Generation. In the novel, the starship infected by the Regulan bloodworm (a
Trek term first used by Gerrold in "The Trouble With Tribbles") is called the
Norway. The Norway Corporation was the name of Gene Roddenberry's production company. There are also mentions of tribbles and of characters with the names of people associated with
Star Trek in the real world: graphic artist Michael Okuda and novelists Diane Duane and Peter Morwood. There's even a reference to the "Big E," the flagship of the fleet.
Starships in Gerrold's universe have HARLIE-model artificial intelligences. A few have the more dangerous and unstable LENNIE models.
'The LENNIE units are particularly nasty; they have a higher incidence of psychotic behavior than any other intelligence engine.... The LENNIE units are the only Intelligence Engines specifically designed to
lie.... They're process-oriented to a degree that you or I would call obsessive; they're greedy, selfish, uncaring, and if such a thing were truly possible in an intelligence engine, also
thoughtless. The feelings and concerns of other beings -- even their own crews -- are irrelevant to LENNIEs.... LENNIEs are intended for institutional use, not starships. They're designed to be soul-sucking lawyers." (p.71-72)
Can there be any doubt that LENNIEs were inspired by Gene Roddenberry's lawyer, the late Leonard Maizlish? Back in 1994, when Maizlish died, Gerrold posted about it on CompuServe, commenting that Maizlish was an unpleasant and unethical person who violated Guild rules and was responsible for a number of people leaving the show. He also mentioned that he knew no one who was sorry to hear about Maizlish's death. The book has another parting shot at him, a mention in passing of "... parasites from Maizlish; it's a planet orbiting a bloated dead star." (p.147) If it seems a bit harsh to take potshots like that at someone who's dead, consider this: in an article at
Salon.com, Gerrold says, "To my face, [Maizlish] called me 'an AIDS-infected c_________. A f___ing f_____.'"
