Have you read The Covenant of the Crown? It’s #4 in the series (unless you are reading the UK Titan order) and that was by Howard Weinstein. Weinstein also wrote the Animated episode The Pirates of Orion that Alan Dean Foster later adapted in Star Trek Log 5.
I haven't read The Covenant of the Crown, but it came up earlier in the this thread. I got a good recommendation for it, and it fits with a sequence of books that I've lined up in a future list for after I finish the list I'm making my way through right now. I found a copy in reasonable condition. I'm happy that Deep Domain worked out well, so I will look forward to that one in the future! Have you read both Deep Domain and Covenant? How do they compare, in your opinion? I did know that he wrote that episode of TAS. When I went through all TOS, TAS, and the movies a little over a year ago, I paid particular attention to that story, but to be honest I didn't get a strong impression of Weinstein's style, based on the dialogue. I kind of felt a little disappointed that Pirates didn't stand out. In some ways, this is making me think about comparing Diane Duane's novels, versus the comics she wrote for the DC Star Trek series. The Wounded Sky was fine, but I grew weary while reading My Enemy, My Ally. The prose started to seem very verbose. But I got a clear sense of her style. Her storytelling seemed to work better in comic form, because it streamlined her approach. With Weinstein, there was no way I could tell from The Pirates of Orion that Weinstein has some beautifully expressive prose, without overdoing it. It's been interesting to discover that I prefer writers story telling in a particular media over another, and how drastic a difference that can make for emphasizing certain perceived strengths or weaknesses.
Howie sold the script for "Pirates of Orion" when he was nineteen, which made him the youngest person ever to sell a Trek script.
I read an interview where he talks about that, not too long ago. Maybe I'll have to take another look at it. It's almost too bad that all the scripts for the animated series were all adapted by Alan Dean Foster. It would have been an interesting alternative to have Weinstein adapt that script, in the vein of Foster's last four book where they are expanded with a lot of new material. I think Weinstein's writing is solid, and on the strength of Deep Domain, I'll look forward to trying not just Covenant of the Crown, but also The Better Man, and some of his TNG novels as well. I tried looking into if he continued writing, outside of Star Trek, but I didn't find anything. Which is too bad. Reading Deep Domain, I really enjoyed the Akkalla world, and it struck me that I thought he would do great at coming up with unique worlds that are all his own outside of the Star Trek universe, for original novels (or comics, ect). I was sad to leave Akkalla behind, because I wanted to learn more about it.
He wrote a western in 2017 : https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/howard-weinstein/galloways-gamble.htm
Oh, yeah, I should've remembered that. I checked his Internet SF Database page and didn't consider that it wouldn't list non-SF works.
How intriguing! Thanks for sharing that. I don't know about westerns, though, it's not quite in me to delve too deeply into that genre. I've promised myself I'll read a Zane Grey or two, one day; and the stories collected in the Robert E. Howard anthologies I have. If those work okay, I'll keep Weinstein's later book in mind for down the road.
I read The Covenant of The Crown over 10 years ago (and before I had seen TAS on DVD). For a pre-TNG novel I thought it was pretty good, albeit a few details had been contradicted by TNG. I’ve got his other TOS books one my shelves, but I haven’t gotten around to reading them. I have read his 3 TNG novels. “Power Hungry” I remember enjoying until the end, at which point it felt like he ran out of space in the book and had to just go “oh well” and the resolution was terrible. “Exiles” I read around 2000 and it’s plot has faded in the mists of time. “Perchance To Dream” again it’s been over 10 years ago, and aside from the artwork, and that shuttle, nothing has stuck.
Besides the Klingons I remember there were a few things with how Starfleet operated that had been clarified and expanded upon in TNG, like the Prime Directive, but in 1981 had little more than a generic “law of non-interference” reference. And I was reading the book in 2004-05, so this was after TNG/DS9/VOYAGER/ENTERPRISEhad aired and even the majority of the TOS movies had been in theatres and dug into Trek history so when I was reading it, there were contradictions that I could see as being from the pre-TNG era.
The Prime Directive was well-established in TOS, even if it wasn't obligatory to refer to it by that name in every instance. And the way it was applied in the TNG era was quite different from the way it worked in the 23rd century, which is not a continuity error because such things can change over time.
Very true! I like seeing elements of westerns in sci-fi settings (I Firefly, and the more recent show, The Mandalorian). I haven't ruled out trying the western genre in more "pure" forms.
Like with my current list, I'll try to keep Covenant of the Crown in context. As my review for Deep Domain upthread indicates, I had to remind myself to not apply my own knowledge of how Trek has been defined and redefined long after the book was written and published. Even though it's part of my purpose and approach to these books in the first place, I have to acknowledge that I felt that impulse, despite myself. Do his novels endings tend to be rushed sometimes? The worldbuilding is great, but it was a little disappointing/jarring when Deep Domain ended in a hurry. I wonder if there were length constraints for Weinstein? Maybe they should have given him one of the Giant Novels, or one of the harcovers. I wouldn't have minded reading a Giant Novel version of Deep Domain. I really like the cover for that one, and the blurb does sound interesting.
Here's where I make my obligatory observation that the "Wagon Train to the stars" pitch was not specifically saying "Western in space," since half the shows on TV back then were Westerns. If that were all he'd meant, he could've chosen any of them. He chose Wagon Train as his analogy, not because it was a Western, but because it was a long-running, critically acclaimed adult drama with a pseudo-anthology format centering on guest stars of the week. It was a shorthand for telling network execs that he wanted to aim for that same level of sophistication and that same storytelling format, and hopefully the same degree of success and acclaim.
My memories of Exiles are reasonably positive. Weinstein had picked an interesting history for the sector where he was operating, with a relative lack of local sentients creating a possibility for a power vacuum and with the local Federation member works of Alaj being a deeply polluted planet with a tense relationship to the groups of Exiles it has cast off over the centuries. The Enterprise found itself in a position of brokering a peace between a reformist government in Alaj and one of the splinter cultures, in Etolos, and got dragged into the deep history. I enjoyed this. It explores the environmental themes that Weinstein likes, if a bit preachily, had an interesting setting, and has compelling stakes. It was definitely one of the more memorable books.
It sounds like there are similar elements to Deep Domain, in a good way. Thank you for sharing your experience of reading Exiles!
Strangers From the Sky by Margaret Wander Bonnano Intro In the 21st Century... ...In the year 2045 an unidentified craft crashed in the southern Pacific Ocean. It subsequently sank and was swept by the underwater currents into the depths of the Mayabi Fault. Some conspiracy theories have suggested that survivors rescued from the wreckage were otherworldly visitors that the post-War, recovery-era Humanity was completely unprepared to interact with, psychologically. Officials of the Vulcan and Earth governments continue to avoid making an official statement that any of the events depicted in the book, Strangers From the Sky, ever happened... We see a tableau that echoes the images of Kirk and Sarek's mind meld in The Search For Spock; except that it is Spock initiating the mind touch this time. McCoy is there, too, recording data with his tricorder, looking worried. As the echo of imagery closes in on Kirk's left eye, we see the book reflected in his eye. The Katra ritual gong sounds, and we see the book snap opened violently in time with the gong, revealing a blackness that we plunge into at harrowing speed. The blackness resolve into the image of the Enterprise hovering over a planet; and the planet winks out in time with the second sounding of the gong. Five Starfleet officers, seemingly semi-transparent, fly through space heading away from the vanished planet, and then all of a sudden they are speeding towards Earth. The Starfleet officers seems to intersect with a Vulcan scout craft, and even though they are intangible, somehow at that moment of intersection two of the scoutcraft's engines flare in time with the another sounding of the gong. The flaring engines then die and the craft spins towards Earth, too. The Katra ritual gong sounds at increasingly shorter intervals, punctuating dynamic moments in the story: A kelp farmer's hands tremble in time with the gong's reverberations, despair on his face at the sight of the green blood on his hands; the first appearance of a partly bionic terrorist; the conning tower of a huge ship breaking through ice; an AeroNav officer backhanding a raquet with nearly feral ferocity, a close up of a pulsating crystal, it's pulsing in time with the gongs's reverberation; a blonde Starfleet officer pressing in on her captain and first officer, and finally, the sight of a DY-100's engines igniting. The tightened timing of the gong builds to a crecendo and then stops and the reverberations fade away. A Gateway to the Past; Many Journeys are Possible Strangers From the Sky is very much in line with Vonda McIntyre's depiction of Vulcans as highly sensitive touch telepaths, much like in Bonnano's earlier book, Dwellers in the Crucible. Dwellers also feeds into Strangers. The Final Reflection and Strangers both show Jim Kirk keeping up with the latest bestseller books. Strangers draws on The Spaceflight Chronology for contextualizing where the human race is in the expansion throughout the solar system, and the first expeditions to the closest neighboring stars. The Need of the One I love time travel stories, and I love the Vulcans. One of the great things about the 80's novels is the stories developing and exploring the possibilities with other Vulcan characters, and the Vulcan race as a whole. And of course there is the chance of seeing what first contact between Humans and Vulcans was like. There's a movie now that covers this territory. But as I read Strangers From the Sky, I started to feel like the First Contact movie doesn't have something that this book provides: some of those first steps in the collective relationship between Vulcans and Humans. The 1996 movie leads up to a version of the moment of first contact, but it ends with a handshake. Strangers From the Sky is exciting because it shows what happens after the handshake. Who gets along, between the first Vulcans and Humans that interact with each other, who among them become fast friends, what kind of conflicts result between each Human and Vulcan group? Looming over it is that the author has told the readers this is the first failed try at first contact between Humans and Vulcans, a bad enough failure that no matter what good comes out of it, it has to be erased from recorded history for a couple hundred years. In case anyone is wondering, before I go any further, I still haven't seen an episode of Enterprise that goes by the name “Carbon Creek”...yet. Having not seen “Carbon Creek” I really enjoyed this story for expanding (in spirit) the potential relationship between Humanity and Vulcans after the first handshake. It didn't necessarily need to be a time travel story, I'm sure I could have accepted it in the vein of books like The Final Reflection, which explores far beyond the scope of the usual adventures of Enterprise. Still, it's nice to have that ship and the familiar characters who crew her have an important role. And the book does feel like it explores far beyond the scope of what we know or think we know. The Enterprise only gets a cameo in her series and movie configurations. I really enjoyed reading the pre-Wrath of Khan set-up being used as one familiarity anchor point, and I was quite surprised by how long that part of the story carried on. If I had been picky about plot focus, I might have complained about drawing out the earlier sequence where Admiral Kirk reads the in-universe book Strangers From the Sky, and starts to experience a mental health crisis. I am left with a feeling that this book has an awful lot of set up. The framing story, in addition to the time-travel set up, means that TOS characters only begin to navigate through their history on a mission after the book is past the half-way point. The two chapters that set up the accidental time travel is disconnected from the narrative of the first contact that went wrong. Although I very much enjoyed the framing story during Admiral Kirk's time at Starfleet academy, and similarly had fun with the set-up aboard the Enterprise as crewed by Kirk, Spock, Gary Mitchell and Lee Kelso, the book needs a lot of page count to get to where it needs to be. I dislike critiquing this aspect of the book, as very nearly all of it's content I wouldn't want cut. The only thing I would have liked streamlined is the introduction to Parneb, where Kirk and Gary waste time being disagreeable with Parneb, which slows down Parneb's explanations of their situation. As a reader, if a story has a certain amount of plot urgency and momentum, it sometimes propels me to read faster than I usually do. With the large amount of set-up for Strangers From the Sky, though, the book kind of settled me in to a slower reading pace. I didn't resent downshifting into a slow reading speed, because the book does what I want to experience when reading any Star Trek novel, it returned me to the ST universe to visit the characters and situations I like. The only other critique I have would be a puzzling sense of mysticism colliding with the setting of Earth in the year 2045, which felt like it had shades of a techno-thriller. I only say that because of the scope of the mission Kirk sets for his crew in their past. This time travel adventure isn't confined to a single city, or a few contained locations, like in TOS episodes and movies. SftS spans the entire globe; Kirks crew are scattered far and wide, and they end up visiting Egyt, the U.S., South America, and Antarctica. Once the story settles into this phase, it bounces around to all these different locations; and with the inclusion of the ocean going military vessel, the Delphinus, I kind of got a Tom Clancy vibe. The mysticism that is associated with the character of Parneb seems to clash with the Tom Clancy vibe I got from the second half of the novel. It didn't really bother me, but I could imagine other readers finding the character concept of Parneb being a little out-of-place or distracting given the subject matter of the rest of the novel. I personally enjoyed Parneb, as a character and as a character concept. He is fun and very likable, and committed to doing the right thing, but there's a nice sense of good-natured anarchy there as well. His abilities are qualified as being magic and sorcery, but the book gives reader the option to downplay it as explainable magic; his own innate talents as being measurable on a psi-rating scale (nicely tying in with the presence of Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Denher, and their own psionic potential), and the artifacts Parneb uses to enhance his own abilities are suggested as “science so advanced it looks like magic.” I really liked Parneb. I liked his friendly, helpful personality, and I liked how down-to-Earth he seems to be. So many characters from the original show with powers on this level are arrogant or alarmingly chaotic, or generally disagreeable. For once with Parneb we have a god-level character who tries to make people feel at ease. I felt genuine sympathy for the sadness of his life's path through Earth's history. I tried to mull over the thematic significance of having so many character with a high psi-rating. Even as I resolved to enjoy having an extra adventure featuring Mitchell, Denher, and Kelso, at the end the tragedy of their fate is reasserted. I supposed it connects within the overall book in the sense that the book is full of characters with so much potential, the relationships between many of them tragically unrealized. It makes it more sad with that in mind to see SftS as a failed first contact, with everyone's role carefully, deliberately erased; all the hard work resolutely forgotten. The book deals with the complicated ethics of erasing history, and erasing memories. There's something really unsettling about the Earth government of 2045 being well-practiced at freely wiping the memories of large numbers of people who participate in the hidden first contact. We are shown how much of a toll this takes on Dehner, having to do it with a small handful of people, and finally there's Parneb's erasure of memories of the Enterprise landing party personnel. The long-ranging consequence, which results in Kirk suffering an unfathomable mental trauma just for reading a book left me with a feeling of how wrong it all was. I felt like the book dealt with complicated ethical issues in a very thoughtful way. At least, it seemed that way. There were some moments here and there where I don't know if I understood all the nuances being hashed out. Much like Dwellers in the Crucible, I was struck again by the level of clever literary techniques. SftS didn't feel as saturated as Dwellers did, but there are some quite striking moments. One of the most memorable scenes is a set-up featuring the character Melody Sawyer, who matches against Kirk in a tennis game, and then competes against T'Lera, one of the marooned Vulcan survivors. There's some clever word play here, as the game is used as an aggressive yet safe competition while the characters assert their philosophical viewpoints. Sawyer is a really well-done character because she is always on this fine line between likable and unlikable; a nearly likable pain-in-the-ass. Sometimes it's fun when she is being disagreeable (at one point she grins evilly...which made me grin evilly right along with her). Yet there's a troubling shadow that hovers over Melody Sawyer, it's upsetting seeing her reacting badly to the Vulcans. Yet in the tennis match scene, she is able to “shoot back”, a double meaning. She shoots the ball back, but she also shows that what is going on with her is just a little more complex than other characters (and I as a reader) expected. The reason why she is so angry and hostile towards the Vulcans gets a neat reveal, in the context of Melody playing the game that she is good at. I was very curious and invested in seeing where Melody ultimately ended up, and felt she was a particularly noteworthy character. Which isn't to say that I didn't connect with the other major original characters at the heart of the story. Jason Nyere was perfectly fine as a 2045 counterpart to Kirk. And I liked Yoshi and Tatya perfectly fine, and felt melancholy about learning how they drifted apart eventually. I felt like Yoshi and Tatya got lost in the shuffle just a little in the latter half of the book, but I still liked them and cared about what happened to them. There is some sense of detachment from the 2045 characters because the sense of them being characters in a book is heightened by the sense of them being two levels down, existing in the book that is inside the book. In point of fact, that's something of a curiosity. I felt closer to Yoshi and Tatya when they were the first characters I meet in the book within the book. There's this cool effect of seeing Kirk and Spock endangered by the act of reading this book; in response to which they practically enter the book by way of a Vulcan mind-meld (it's not quite like that, but in spirit it almost is). But when they descend into the book that is driving them out of their minds, and take up roles within the book, they kind of hijack the narrative...and that's where Yoshi and Tatya kind of felt like they get displaced. They are obviously still important to the narrative, but there's something to be said about the weight of Kirk and Spock becoming presences within the story, committed to bending the narrative toward the direction they need for the sake of the future they know. The Needs of the Many As a book that builds on the continuity of the previous books I've been reading, this one was hugely satisfying. Of all things, Strangers From the Sky felt like something of a companion piece to The Final Reflection, as both have a book-within-the-book, and both are heavily rooted in the Spaceflight Chronology. I had a happy accident of timing with the reading, in that I had read through one section ahead of the spot where Strangers From the Sky fits into the SFC. This was helpful for getting the full effect of the timeline's context. In an early conversation between Kirk and McCoy, they hash out the sequence of events that happen before and after the historical book they are discussing. It was very exciting to be in the know along with Kirk and McCoy as they outline a brief history of first contacts that are lined up like dominoes for the Human race, before McCoy tries to sell Kirk on the idea of a hidden first contact with the Vulcans that didn't go well, and why Humanity wasn't ready the first time. I'm glad to have awareness of the SFC, as a supplement to these novels. I like that Strangers From the Sky takes material from the SFC and draws inspiration, respects it, yet also critiques that seemingly smooth-running chronology. I've though similar thoughts, too, as I've done reflection write-ups for sections of the SFC. I've speculated that because the SFC has to lead into TOS about seventy years sooner than the modern chronology, events have to move swiftly to the point where I've sometimes thought of it as something of a clockwork chronology, having to pace the unfolding of major turning points rapidly while trying to make the flow of events seem plausible. Strangers From the Sky is very satisfying the way it zooms in on a single year within the chronology and shows humanity struggling with a number of things hidden behind the SFC's exclusive focus on spaceflight considerations. Yoshi and Tatya's kelp farm may be a mass food production project in service to keeping Martian colonies fed, but Yoshi and Tatya are distant from the opportunity to travel into space themselves for the bulk of the novel. The captain and first mate of the Delphinus show how the AeroNav service they are a part of has taken steps toward a mentality that Starfleet will eventually have in a more fully realized form. There is also a general sense of the human race recovering from a bad war, called The Third War in this book, which I had the impression was one and the same as the Eugenics War/s, and involved Khan and Colonel Green. The most fun aspect for me was the sense of SFtS doubling down on the set up of The Final Reflection. It's fun to imagine that McCoy is always recommending a book, and Jim Kirk occasionally keeps up on the latest blockbusting bestseller book; that this happened more than is shown before, and continues to happen later. Even though this isn't really supported in the book, with Kirk complaining that The Final Reflection gave him nightmares, which is why he holds off on trying Strangers. And then Strangers gives him nightmares, and a psychotic episode. There's a kind of self-serving appeal to having the novel series version of the Star Trek characters played up as more bookish (just like us) than we saw on the television series, but at least it shows what we are told about Kirk being well-read, and having been a “stack of books on legs” in the Academy. I felt it was well worth it to have read Dwellers in the Crucible before Strangers as well, and not just because of the cameo appearance of Cleante alFaisal and name-check for T'Shael (although it is certainly nice to read about them in more easy-going circumstances). The presence of Cleante and T'Shael reminded me of how Dwellers was an exploration of a relationship between a Human and a Vulcan that is parallel to Kirk and Spock's bond as t'hy'la. Rightly or wrongly, with this in the back of my mind, and some of what SFtS develops, I ended up with the impression that Strangers suggests that the Human race and the Vulcan race are, on a large scale, t'hy'la. Which made the failed first contact shown in Strangers seem like a kind of epic meet-cute. This fanciful thought came from seeing how Strangers explores what Humans and Vulcans bring to their alliance with each other. It felt very similar to Dwellers, when that book goes into what strength Cleante and T'Shael brought to their relationship. Much of the bulk of Dwellers shows T'Shael's obvious strengths and capabilities, in the face of which Cleante often seems awkward, clumsy, and emotionally overwrought. Dwellers did really well at hinting at the subtleties of what strengths Cleante brings to the relationship, and locks it in firmly by the end of the book; yet I felt that the relationship equation felt unbalanced for much of Dweller's page count. I felt like SFtS had a similar pattern going on, showing how Humans benefit from interacting with Vulcans, but there isn't a strong sense of what Vulcans gain from being allies with Humans. There is some implication that Human assertiveness prevents Vulcans from being conquered by another ally race that ends up being part of the Federation, which seemed to imply to me that the Vulcans are being considered too passive for their own good in this story. Writing of assertiveness and aggresion in member races of the Federation, Strangers gives readers a version of Kirk's participation in The Vulcanian Expedition, which is a grim depiction. Kirk's recollections about it leave him feeling uneasy. This interpretation of The Vulcanian Expedition does not reflect well on Starfleet and the Federation. This is one of those odd moments were I had difficulty accepting the explanation for an unexplained line of dialogue from the show. I accepted this version for it's place in the novel Strangers From the Sky, yet I feel reluctant to let that depiction stand in the back of my mind when I go on with reading other Star Trek novels. Final Thoughts I really enjoyed Strangers From the Sky. Even though I didn't read through it at top speed, I enjoyed relaxing into the reading experience, and was happy to revisit some favorite situational set-ups (early Enterprise crew, and Admiral Kirk at the Academy). Strangers felt like a more relaxed entry into this continuity compared to Dwellers, but has it's own intensity of focus. Of the three TOS Giant Novels as they were published in the US, Strangers may not have the nostalgic hold on me that Final Frontier does, but I feel like it's the strongest of those three event novels. The Dimensions of Creation Make Our Future Choices Limitless The Romulan Way is next, and this is one I've really been looking forward to. It's been a really long stretch since the last Diane Duane novel, My Enemy, My Ally (although I've read some of the ST comics she wrote for the DC Volume 1 series, which were well done and kept her original characters in mind).