Star Trek: Crossroad (#71) by Barbara Hambly (1994)

I just completed this novel. I sort of found it average. First, what I liked. The story was pretty good. It features a starship arriving in a sector the Enterprise is investigated and they find it to be a futuristic Starfleet ship, but one that is run down and frankly dirty. Apparently they are rebels fleeing an organization called the Consilium, which at one time worked with Starfleet to eliminate a plague, but then ended up turning Starfleet into an almost totalitarian organization as a result. The woman nominally in charge of the ship that follows the rebels back and she has certain powers of persuasion that she uses on Captain Kirk and the crew to try to get them to help the Consilium capture the rebels. She causes a solar flare to destroy the intelligent life on a planet who's empathic abilities she realizes can help the rebels, though she does save several for her own uses. Of course Captain Kirk and the crewmembers that are aware of where the ships are from have to be careful not to alter the timeline, though they are obviously disturbed about what happens to Starfleet in the future (just under 300 years in the future). And they find out that a crew member aboard ship is the creator of the Consilium (who it is was quite a surprise at first, but made sense when I thought about it).

What I didn't care for was I found the technobabble here a bit overwhelming. I typically don't complain a lot about technobabble actually, but there is a lot of it in the novel, and what's worse is there is a lot of unfamiliar technology noted in the book and it happens over and over again making the novel a bit of a challenge to read. The work degausser must have shows up about 326 times (from context I inferred it to be a device that opens doors when the power is off). There are also a number of lifeforms listed repeatedly, like a yagghorth, that I've never heard of before. And there is a lot of that in the dialogue and it just feels unnatural for the characters to be using highly technical terms in a lot of their dialogue. Some I don't mind, but as I noted it just got too much after a while.

The story itself takes place about 3 months before the end of the 5 year mission, explicitly stated in the novel. There is also a shout out to TNG when one of the rebels noted that a Klingon serves on the Enterprise-D in the future.

So overall I thought the story was pretty good, but I thought it could have been better if some of the technical terms were thinned out.

 

A degausser is a tool for demagnetizing things. They were built into cathode-ray tube TV sets and monitors to demagnetize the screens to avoid image distortion, and they can be used to erase magnetic tape recordings or computer disks/drives. Presumably the assumption of the book is that the ship's doors were magnetically locked.

Is that so unusual? Lots of Trek novels introduce original aliens.

 

Apparently starships build up a lot of magnetic fields in the transporter rooms as we saw Chell degaussing the transporter room in “Learning Curve”. Of course that hand unit was a punishment from Tuvok.

 

I got the impression it was her favorite word as it was used over and over again in one section of the book. Thanks for the explanation though.

Well, it just seemed on the Nautilus that they had a serious space mold/algae issue. I'm used to a lot of intelligent life forms being introduced but it just seemed a bit much. Most of the time in novels I get enough in context to figure it all out.

I guess my major complaint about the novel comes down to that there was a lot of unfamiliar technical terms and alien life form terms that it was actually awkward to read. It seemed every paragraph had unusual terminology and it kept pulling me out of the story. I thought the story had some potential. The plot wasn't bad, I just felt it could have been an above average book if she just relaxed a bit on all the unfamiliar terminology.

 

Crossroad is one of my all-time favourites. The dark future of the Federation under Consilium rule (possibly now more meaningful than ever), that it all somehow stems from Christine's choice to leave or remain with the Enterprise...

Plus, learning disabilities in Trek, something that very rarely comes up.

Oh, and bonus points because the walking routes around the USS Enterprise are from the original Franz Joseph Schnaubelt Star Trek Blueprints.

 

It's been twenty years since I read this bit I seem to remember really enjoying it.

From recollection the yagghorth is an attempt to provide an truly alien threat - if you encountered one, your options were to run or die...

In the real world, they are intended to prove a dark Lovecraft type threat... I guess the author was a fan?

 

Not sure if I read this or not, but I bought the ebook for 99 cents and going to start today!

 

One of my all-time favorite 5YM novels. Really made an impression on me, and recently re-read it just a couple years back.

 

Thanks @Damian (and everyone else) for bringing this one up! It wasn't really on my radar, but the premise sounds fascinating. I have to admit, I have steered clear of Barbara Hambly after reading her first Star Wars novel and feeling underwhelmed, but that was many many years ago. I'm not going to revisit the SW book that didn't work, but given the premise and the passage of time, it's sometimes worth it to give an author another chance. I wouldn't have gone for it even on ebook sale, but comments on here have made me re-think and go for it.

 

Christopher gave it a nod once in one of his own Trek novels too, IIRC (can't remember which one right off the top of my head, though).

 

You may also want to try her other TOS novel Ishmael. But fair warning it's a bit of a crossover with another 60's TV show (which I will not spoil here).

 

Since it's a time travel novel, I alluded to it in DTI: Watching the Clock.

As well as tossing in Easter-egg references to a number of other shows and books.

 

Thanks! I did snag that one when I found a decent copy, for down the road; it's another one that had a fun sounding premise.

 

Yup, that was the one. Thought it was probably one of the DTI books, there.

 

Yeah, the story/plot was good enough. I just personally felt she overloaded the book with technical terms, technobabble I guess you'd call it. For me it broke the flow as I was reading it.

I think if she had thinned some of that out I probably would have enjoyed it more.

 

I agree with the consensus that this is one of the best original series tie-ins around. Moody and atmospheric and tense.

 

Somehow, I didn't much like it the first time I read it, but my opinion improved substantially when I revisited it.

 

I haven't read the novel since around the time it was first released, but I can back you up on this part--degaussing is most of what I remember about it, so that must've been going on constantly.

That shouldn't be taken as any sort of comment on its overall quality, though, and I've been meaning to read it again in light of its positive reputation.

 

Yeah, it was one word that showed up over and over again for a period of time.

I do seem to be in the minority on this one. It seems a number of people loved the novel, I was sort of meh toward it. I did like the plot. It was just the highly technical terminology of the book I found took me out of the story.