So What Are you Reading?: Generations

[youngtrek]

Finished reading this one last night. Not much I really need to say about other than that it’s a really good book about one of my top favorite tv shows growing up, “The Greatest American Hero” (1981-1983). The book is The Greatest American Hero Companion by Patrick Jankiewicz (BearManor Media, 2023).

Jankiewicz has written several books about shows like this from the late 1970 and 80s (my particular “golden age” of all things pop culture), including You Wouldn’t Like Me When I’m Angry!: A Hulk Companion (which I am also in the process of reading) and Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century: A TV Companion, as well as Just When You Thought It Was Safe: A Jaws Companion.

Jankiewicz really does his homework, not only detailing the creation of the show by Stephan J. Cannell and the casting of series leads William Katt, Robert Culp, and Connie Sellecca, plus the obligatory complement episodes guide. He also has loads of interviews with everything, some conducted by him specifically for this book, others conducted earlier (for Cannell, the actors, and other significant people who had died).

And of course it also goes into how its famous theme song (“Believe It Or Not”) by Joey Scarbury came about.

This is a pretty definitive book resource about the making of this short lived but still widely remembered television series, one which came out in a lull period in terms of superhero pn TV (“The Incredible Hulk” was just finishing it’s run at the time that “Hero” was beginning). But it was a sign of things to come. I highly recommend The Greatest American Hero Companion to all fans of the series. I gave it five out of five stars on GoodReads. (Copy read checked out from the Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library.)

— David Young

 

[Christopher]

...which came out in a lull period in terms of superhero pn TV (“The Incredible Hulk” was just finishing it’s run at the time that “Hero” was beginning). But it was a sign of things to come.

I don't know if I'd say that. One thing that strikes me about TGAH in retrospect is how contemptuous it was of the whole idea of superheroes. It treated the supersuit as an embarrassing burden for Ralph, and civilians who saw him in the suit always stared at him as if he were a pervert or a madman. The show never even gave him a hero name. It just underlines how much less cultural respect there was for the idea of superheroes at the time. A modern remake would probably have to take a very different tack to reflect how much more mainstream and popular superheroes have become.

If anything, TGAH fits with Hulk in the way the shows felt the need to downplay the fantastic/superhero elements in favor of more grounded, "real-world" storytelling. And that was reflected in later things like early Smallville, which actively avoided overt comic-book trappings and tried to retell the Superboy story as a magic-realist teen drama for the Dawson's Creek audience. But it was during Smallville's run that hit superhero movies started to change the public attitude toward the genre, so by the end of that series it was fully embracing the comic-booky stuff it had self-consciously eschewed nine years earlier.

 

[Falconer]

I read The Tears of the Singers, a novel centered on Uhura and Kali (a female Klingon from the Animated Series). It is a silly book. Uhura and Kali hang out and talk about how stubborn their boyfriends are, but how they nevertheless love them and wouldn’t want to live without them. They have sex with their boyfriends* and chat with them about how bad violence is and how they wish everyone would just be nice. Together, the quartet thwart mean human hunters and Klingon mutineers. Through the power of music and niceness, they save a planet of magical sea lions (who, it's obvious from page one, are actually sentient) from some kind of anomalous rift in space which is not really defined, but if you’ve read The Entropy Effect or The Wounded Sky, you get the idea.

Kirk, Spock, and McCoy pop up occasionally to provide wisecracks and to stubbornly fail to figure anything out (and they avoid using Spock’s mind meld ability for vague and unsatisfactory reasons). Given the paper-thin plot, the novel is at least 60% padded with vapid dialogues and internal monologues, which makes it tedious indeed.

I’ll have to be more selective in the future. Next up is Uhura’s Song. Another novel about Uhura and music? But it has an impeccable reputation. So maybe it’s just the thing to cleanse the palate.

* - Kali’s boyfriend is the formerly fearsome Kor—here as tame as a kitten.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

TotS may not be in the same category as US, but SOMEBODY must have really liked it, since Melinda Snodgrass ended up a TNG staff writer, while Janet Kagan merely got Tuckerized in a John Ford novel.

(I like both books, but US is obviously better.)

 

[Commander Troi]

I loved both books when I read them a jillion years ago. IDIC

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

I recently finished reading Provenance of Shadows by David R. George III.

Really interesting from start to finish, and I especially liked the parts following McCoy "during" the events of "City on the Edge of Forever." They were very touching, and well thought-out.

 

[Victoria]

I recently finished reading Provenance of Shadows by David R. George III.

Really interesting from start to finish, and I especially liked the parts following McCoy "during" the events of "City on the Edge of Forever." They were very touching, and well thought-out.

I thought this was the best of the three Crucible novels even though it seemed the least "star trekky" of them.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

With the subject of The Laertian Gamble coming up recently, I'm now re-reading it. I'd completely forgotten just about everything about it. I notice that the chapters are extremely short, and it's filled with asides (mostly witty ones) that feel like intentional author intrusion (and yet they don't throw me out of the story the way massive disregard for established canon tends to).

And I can certainly see parallels with Douglas Adams.

On-deck is Cassidy Hutchinson's Enough.

 

[Bryan Levy]

I just finished Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October. It may just be the perfect cozy Halloween book.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Did I say that I could see parallels with Douglas Adams?

Forget that; you'd need to put a Douglas Adams book into a room with an infinite improbability generator (plugged into a hot cup of advanced tea substitute) to get it to look and feel like a Robert Sheckley book.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Now re-reading A Flag Full of Stars. I'd forgotten most of it, but not to the extent that I'd forgotten The Laertian Gamble: every major plot point, the Klingon physicist as a schoolteacher, said Klingon physicist adopting an abandoned kitten, &c. immediately came back to me. As opposed to The Laeartian Gamble (is there any allusion to either the Hamlet character or the legendary ancient king?), in which absolutely nothing rang any bells, and it was like reading it for the first time.
*****
Now on page 146: 60% of my way through it, the Tarsus IV flashback has happened (I was right about "Geordie" Kirk not being with Winona and the kids, but mistaken about Winona being there as a consulting agronomist; they were merely awaiting a connection).

 

[Greg Cox]

Today's comic book haul: Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong, Star Trek: Holo-Ween, Marvel's Crypt of Shadows.

Tis the (spooky) season!

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Nearing the end of A Flag Full of Stars.

Spoiler: The Enterprise . . .

. . . has been rushed out of spacedock on a rescue mission (where have I just read about that happening?), Keth and Klor have been apprehended, and the hostages have been rescued.

I find myself wondering what ends up happening to Leaper (G'Dath's cat), and Olesky (he didn't appear to be dead when he was hauled away). BF was certainly (and sadly) prophetic about Challenger not being the last shuttle to be lost with all hands, and rather cavalier about how ruthlessly the shuttle prototype Enterprise was gutted, but he was thankfully wrong about the disposition of Endeavour, Atlantis, and Discovery.

 

[Zapp Brannigan]

I'm reading the Millennium trilogy of DS9 books by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens.

I'm a fan of how they take the time to develop the details and lore of the world, and the books feel like a DS9 epic movie.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I'm also hoping to begin on Cassidy Hutchinson's Enough. And on my lunch break, I'm reading the September/October 2023 Smithsonian (I just finished an article on how the Choctaw People came to the aid of the Irish during the Potato Famine; up next is an article on mead).

And I still have the first two PRO youth novels waiting.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

VM's Enterprise: The First Adventure. I don't get the hostility that's been shown lately against it; I've always preferred it over her The Entropy Effect. Yes, there are a few flaws, but I blame most of them (e.g., "Constellation class") on bad copy-editing.

 

[Daddy Todd]

I'm on Book 9 of The Expanse, Leviathan Falls. Then the collection of shorter Expanse fiction, Memory's Legion, and I'm done with Holden and his crew. It's been a great ride. I'll miss them.

I'm also reading Allan Asherman's Making of Star Trek II, from 1982. It's an interesting contrast with Tenuto & Tenuto's just-published Making of the Classic Film, which I just read. Apparently Asherman was unaware (or not allowed to say) that the shooting script was the work of Nick Meyer, and not Jack Sowards, credits to the contrary. I haven't read Asherman's book in 40+ years, and I didn't remember how many things I thought I "discovered" much later were right there in Asherman's book, like the plots of the early treatments & screenplay drafts. I think we just lost Allan a short time ago. What a loss!

I also recently read the first 7 issues of Joe Sikoryak's When We Were Trekkies, a really good comic memoir of being a Trekkie back in the 70's. I'm looking forward to the forthcoming issues.

 

[Christopher]

Yes, there are a few flaws, but I blame most of them (e.g., "Constellation class") on bad copy-editing.

Oh, that one's encyclopedic error -- it comes from the Star Trek Concordance, so anyone using that as their primary reference source would've made that mistake. And to be fair, TOS was never really explicit about the Constitution Class name until the movies, and that could've been taken as specific to the refit; it was just "Starship Class" on the TOS plaque. It was pretty common to see it called Constellation Class back in those days.

I think McIntyre also replicated another of the Concordance's errors, calling Dr. Boyce Joseph instead of Philip. (Making it either an amusing coincidence or a really deep cut that Joseph is now the first name of Pike's chief medical officer in Strange New Worlds.)

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Whose Waves These Are by Amanda Dykes.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Oh, that one's encyclopedic error -- it comes from the Star Trek Concordance

Really? I don't recall ever seeing that, although my STCon (Ballantine edition) is at home, 7 miles away from me, and wouldn't you know, I don't have access to a particle transporter.

I'll look tonight. And I'll also look up Boyce, while I'm at it.