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RIP Gene DeWeese

Lonemagpie said:
One of the early regular Treklit writers for Pocket has passed...
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Awww. Sad. March 25? That kinda slipped passed everyone. IIRC, Margaret Wander Bonanno (garamet) was a friend of his. Certainly, Gene himself briefly joined several conversations on the old Psi Phi bbs if/when anyone began discussing his books, sometimes only minutes after someone mentioned his name.

I swapped a few email exchanges with him over the years. Always witty and chirpy. I'd really enjoyed the early "The Peacekeepers", although "Chain of Attack" felt a little too techy to me (although I was thrilled to notice it was actually a followup to Lee Correy's "Abode of Life"). I know that, for many fans, "Chain of Attack" was their first original ST novel experience, being part of a major design rejig by Pocket Books - the first on shelves after the release of the much-hyped, international hit, "ST IV: The Voyage Home". "Chain of Attack" was released in the UK as Book #1 of a new publishing program (Titan Books).

For many, "Chain of Attack" is as revered as Vonda McIntyre's "The Entropy Effect". Or James Blish's "Spock Must Die!" Or Mack Reynolds' "Mission to Horatius".

The most memorable aspect of "The Final Nexus", a direct sequel to "Chain of Attack", was the feisty female guest character depicted on the cover, plus Gene's very welcome reuse of Ingrit Thomson, the female security officer shared by several other TOS writers of the day. "Renegade" I read, but don't really remember now.

I do recall expressing my frustration, once, with how frustratingly dull and slow "Into the Nebula" was - so slow that I'd quite forgotten any details of the plot. To my initial embarrassment, Gene suddenly popped up - from a long bbs absence - to admit that he, neither, could remember anything about that novel's plot, except that the Enterprise-D crew went into a nebula.

Discussions by the regulars on Psi Phi about the mysterious "Engines of Destiny" (listed in Steve Roby's online "Lost Star Trek books" archive after someone noticed several unpublished draft manuscripts that Gene had donated to a public library's reference collection), led to garamet summoning Gene to the bbs again to tell us more about it - and, ultimately, to Marco Palmieri reactivating Gene's contract to publish it.

R.I.P. Gene.
 
He wrote stuff for the Apollo missions too? SWEET! Awesome. I remember reading the Peacekeepers, and I've probably read some of his other works too. Damn shame to lose him.
 
Chain of Attack and The Final Nexus are among my favourite TOS novels. Gene DeWeese really "got" the characters and atmosphere of the show.

My condolences to his friends and loved ones.
 
WoW! I didn't know he'd passed away in Mach. I liked Engines of destiny.I read his TOS novels along time ago.They were interesting books.
 
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RIP. I actually just read The Peacekeepers again, one of the first round of TNG novels and one of the first Trek novels I ever bought. It was as good as I remembered it to be, a nice mix of Rendezvous with Rama-style alien artifact examination (a subgenre I've always enjoyed greatly) and traditional Trek-style alien civilization case study.

Reading it I got the impression that he was a very methodological writer who would bang on the logic of his story trying to close any loopholes. As a result the characters would also behave with method and professionality in the situations he set up. And despite the book having been written before TNG even aired, he also did their personalities justice as we would later come to know them.
 
Sho said:
RIP. I actually just read The Peacekeepers again, one of the first round of TNG novels and one of the first Trek novels I ever bought. It was as good as I remembered it to be, a nice mix of Rendezvous with Rama-style alien artifact examination (a subgenre I've always enjoyed greatly) and traditional Trek-style alien civilization case study.

Reading it I got the impression that he was a very methodological writer who would bang on the logic of his story trying to close any loopholes. As a result the characters would also behave with method and professionality in the situations he set up. And despite the book having been written before TNG even aired, he also did their personalities justice as we would later come to know them.
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That's exactly the kind of review he'd have loved. He did put a great deal of thought and preparation into his work, even on short deadlines, turning things this way and that until he was sure everything made sense. :)
 
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