Spoilers DSC: The Way to the Stars by Una McCormack Review Thread

The Way to the Stars kind of reads like a young adult novel, but that's no complaint. It might be more accurate, though, to say that this is a bildungsroman, or at least part of one; this is how Sylvia Tilly struggles to fit herself into society but then discovers the place where she belongs. Tilly is harangued by her mother, goes to space boarding school, tries to succeed in academics and extracurriculars, struggles to make friends, and eventually makes a momentous decision. That's the point where the book-- which had always been good-- becomes great. The Way to the Stars takes Tilly further than she's ever gone before, as she meets a variety of people who accept her and shape her and help her to grow. It's really heart-warming without being saccharine, optimistic without being blinkered. It's just a really good book about growing up and finding your place.

It's also successful as a prequel. I mean, there are obvious ways for it to be so: Tilly mentions her mother on screen in one Discovery episode, and she appears briefly in Short Treks, and Tilly's mother is a good extrapolation of those bits. But there's a deeper, better way for a prequel to work, which is when you're watching the original again, you experience resonances in things that worked fine on their own the first time around. Like, Tilly's father tells her there's something of her mother Siobhan in her, in the way Siobhan can command a room. Tilly doesn't believe him. But she must have realized he was right when she had to pretend to be her mirror counterpart. After reading The Way to the Stars, it's easy to imagine that she's drawing on her mother in those scenes, even if she herself doesn't realize. It's moments like that that make a good prequel into a great one, and this is the most enjoyable Discovery novel thus far.

More thoughts here: https://lessaccurategrandmother.blogspot.com/2019/01/review-star-trek-discovery-way-to-stars.html

(What class do we figure for the Dorothy Garrod? Oberth is my inclination.)

 

Deja vu. Una McCormack described the book almost word-for-word the same way in her StarTrek.com interview:

Oberth almost feels too small for the ship (an unremarkable lieutenant has a two-room suite, and there's a shuttlebay), plus, you know, movie-era (though the idea of what they'd look like a few decades earlier is a lot more complicated, now). I was thinking of one of the really compact DSC ships. The Engle gets my vote. The Hoover and Magee were runners-up, but I think the Engle looks coolest of the three.

 

Heh, I hadn't seen that interview. I guess I got her purpose!

I'd always assumed the Oberths were refits of older ships, like the Constitution and Miranda classes, though I guess that's mostly based on the low registry numbers they use. You have a lot of room for crew quarters when your science ship is all social scientists; no lab space needed! But I do like the Engle.

 

Sidebar question: what would the Oberths have looked like at that point?

 

And this would be the ship's namesake?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Garrod

 

It's a good question. I've seen several attempts at TOS-ifying the Oberth over the years, but I don't think I've seen one recent enough to take into account the probably-contemporary Kelvin from ST09, never mind the DSC ships. I feel like the DSC ships to add enough to the TOS-era toolbag to make a retro version a little more plausible. The straight-TOS reinterpretations always looked a little labored to me, since the Oberth is so intrinsically swoopy and curved, and TOS is, like, the antithesis of swoopy and curved.

Yep. I googled her when the ship was first mentioned, remembering the Athene Donald from Una's last few 24th century books, and it was confirmed later on when Tilly did some research into the ship's namesake.

 

I have to agree with Stevil2001 that this book reads like a "young adult" novel for teens. Granted the story is about a teenager and so I am OK with that being the case. Personally, I rated the novel as above average. I would like to have given an outstanding but it fell a little short for me. Perhaps had I been a teenage girl reading it I would have liked it more but as a 62-year-old male I found it a little too, well, "girly". That said I do think Una is a very good storyteller and she does have a way to bring you in and move the story along. It's also a very quick read. I consider myself an average speed reader and I read it in around 4 hours over two days.

So far none of the DSC books have been what I was hoping for in quality but perhaps as we get more seasons and character development of the show the stories will get better.

 

Can't wait to read this, based on the author and everyone's comments here. Although ... will we ever have more of her wonderful Garak/Pulaski/DS9 work?

 

I've a hypothesis about the Dorothy Garrod.
The UFP has, up to the start of DISCO, been at peace(as far as we know) for almost one hundred years.
They're well into one of the most explorey-sciencey-diplomacyish eras in their history.
I think, thusly, the ship'd be a new one. As modern as they get. Probably nothing we've seen before.

 

Yindi is a reference to Aussie Indigenous musical group Yothu Yindi. (I may have gushed to Una about her on twitter and confirmed that).
I'm also wondering if its a nod to Bindi Irwin, Steve's daughter.
Holden might just be a reference to the car manufacturer. Its also not an uncommon Aussie name.
Maybe even an even subtler nod to James F**king Holden from The Expanse.

 

I found it a bit of a slow start, but then again, given that I'm an Alan Dean Foster/Humanx Commonwealth fan, slow starts have long since ceased to bother me.

Interesting. Overbearing mother sending her off to a boarding school full of diplomats' kids who actually want to become diplomats themselves. After her own mother had sent her to -- what was it -- a convent school? They say you become your mother. Reminds me of the one about the woman who had had piano lessons forced on her as a child, when she had wanted ballet instead; when she had a daughter of her own, a friend asked her if she'd learned her lesson, and she replied, "Oh, yes, my daughter will dance!" (Isaac Asimov tells it far better, as I recall, in either Treasury of Humor or Asimov Laughs Again).

At any rate that certainly explains why, when we first meet her, she comes off as an awkward, geeky, ingenue.

 

Got more interesting when Tilly ran away.

 

Almost done. Seems wrong to have a holodeck on that ship.

 

^ haven't gotten there yet, but I've heard plenty people point out that there was a holodeck-like holodeck in TAS if that's worth anything.

Also, I always assume these DSC holodeck-like holodecks/holographic tech and the TNG holodecks are the difference between modern 4k gaming graphics and nintendo 64 graphics. The holodeck/training thing on the Discovery is so obviously "ancient" compared to what a 24th century holodeck can do it doesn't bother me one bit.

But that aside, I'm about 2/3rds of it done, and this story is so gigantically epic on such a tiny scale, and I love it. I can get emotional and worked up while reading, I know we all can, but reading this book I am quite literally cheering Tilly on as she makes her journey. I think I actually applauded following her and Dad's showdown with Mom.

 

Also, The Making of Star Trek from 1968 said that the Enterprise's unseen recreation center had a facility that would use "a sophisticated extension of holography" to project immersive 3D movies around the viewer, or to let crew members watch recorded messages from home as if their loved ones were standing in the room with them. So there were always meant to be holographic facilities on the Enterprise, as far back as the original series; for whatever reason, they just never got around to showing it. (It would've been easy enough to fake it with live actors and sets and jump cuts/dissolves, so I don't know why they never actually showed it. Maybe they thought it would confuse the viewers or require too much explanation.)

Yes, the DSC holograms are translucent and intangible. That's a far cry from simulations that are effectively solid and indistinguishable from reality.

 

Great read. The school chapters depressed me a bit but that is because it was intended to be depressing for Tilly. It made me really love the character and preorder Una’s next book. Una is one of the best Trek writers at creating fully fleshed out new characters. I’d actually love to see her with her own spinoff series with a novel every year like New Frontier.

 

I think it was just average. Maybe if I were a Tilly fan...

 

What's Una's next book?