Spoilers TOS: The Face of the Unknown by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread

[Desert Kris]

The one thing that kept bothering me is that I kept on "hearing" and "seeing" Pine's Kirk rather than Shatner's. It's happened at some point while reading pretty much any TOS novel I've read since I've seen Star Trek Beyond. It did happen more frequently while reading this one but that might just be me.

Not a problem, as far as I'm concerned. These are just actors playing roles; you can mentally cast whoever you want, just as you can choose whether you want to imagine Kirstie Alley or Robin Curtis as Saavik, or whether you want to imagine Adam West's voice or Kevin Conroy's when reading a Batman comic. Remember, in the '09 movie, Spock Prime recognized Kirk and Scott on sight. So in-universe, they look the same. So I think it's fine to imagine either set of actors in either universe. Heck, these days I tend to default to imagining Bruce Greenwood as Pike even in Prime stories.

I was surprised to find something similar happening, but more selectively. I was slightly disconcerted a short while ago to find that while reading a TOS novel, for a short sequence involving Kirk as a young cadet, Kirk appeared in my mind's eye as Chris Pine. The small Klingon fighters from STiD popped up on another occasion. It's a useful shorthand, rather than trying to work harder to imagine Shatner even more younger, or trying to imagine a Klingon ship design I've never seen before from scratch. Makes it an easier reading experience for the brain.

 

[Kilana2]

Finished it and voted 'outstanding'. Another great work by Christopher. It was nice to see Balok and Bailey back in action. Koust was the most interesting character for me. And Balok had his droll moments. And I had no big difficulties with the language. I just wanted to read another TOS stand-alone novel before diving headfirst into the Legacies Trilogy.

 

[Stevil2001]

It's not exactly what @Christopher is talking about I think, but apparently some executives actually wanted Spock to kiss Uhura in Plato's Stepchildren instead of Kirk:



http://www.cbr.com/tv-legends-revea...erracial-kiss-nearly-between-uhura-and-spock/

Interesting, thanks!

 

[thribs]

I’m about 280 pages into it and I’ve gotta ask, is Kirk’s ancestor who was a Lunar Commander a Airplane II reference?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I hope not.

 

[plynch]

I so rarely read novels, much less Trek novels, but why don't I? A new TOS story!

Saw it at my closing-forever local bookstore and since I "know" the author, I couldn't resist. I especially liked the Trekkiness of the ending.

 

[thribs]

I hope not.

Really? Not a fan of Commander Murdoc?

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[Christopher]

From my spoiler annotations for the novel:

The other ancestors I mention are in-joke references to a couple of other William Shatner characters; he played Moon base commander Buck Murdock in Airplane 2: The Sequel in 1982, and Venus explorer Jeff Barton in The Outer Limits: “Cold Hands, Warm Heart” in 1964. My original, longer draft of this passage mentioned ancestors including the owner of a law firm (Boston Legal), a police officer (T.J. Hooker), and a clerk at the Nuremberg Trials (Judgment at Nuremberg), among others, but I decided that was belaboring the joke.

 

[thribs]

Really? Kirk was going to be related to Denny Crane? No wonder he was undefeated.
So are we getting some novels about this Lunar Commander?

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Really? Not a fan of Commander Murdoc?

Airplane II, lacking Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers, was never even remotely as good as the original. And on January 28, 1986, it stopped being funny entirely.

 

[thribs]

People say that but I found it just as funny. Most of the quotes I remember are from that one.

 

[Christopher]

Airplane II, lacking Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers, was never even remotely as good as the original.

No, but that doesn't mean it was completely devoid of merit. The Buck Murdock sequence was one of its better parts. And Murdock was an important role in Shatner's career. As with Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves, and to an extent Lloyd Bridges, his appearance in an Airplane! film launched a new career for him as a comedy actor after a period of being seen as a dramatic actor past his heyday. So it arguably led to some of his prominent later roles like Denny Crane and the Priceline Negotiator.

Anyway, I wasn't concerned with the quality of the roles I was referencing, since it was just an in-joke about Shatner's career. It was just that those particular roles were connected to space exploration.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Not blaming you or faulting you, Mr. Bennett. Just stating the fact that a little over three years after its release, a film that had previously been simply the "meh" stepchild of a comedy classic suddenly, through no fault of its own, got stripped of all its humor by a terrible real-life tragedy, caused by arrogant overconfidence, that was a little too close to the subject.

 

[Christopher]

Just stating the fact that a little over three years after its release, a film that had previously been simply the "meh" stepchild of a comedy classic suddenly, through no fault of its own, got stripped of all its humor by a terrible real-life tragedy, caused by arrogant overconfidence, that was a little too close to the subject.

Look, I'm one of those people who will never forget where I was when I heard the Challenger had exploded. But even so, I think you're overreacting here. There are always going to be tragedies that happen to resemble the plots of works of fiction, because fiction is about crises and problems. There were many fatal air crashes long before the original Airplane! was made and many after it, but people were still able to enjoy it as a comedy. The only thing that makes Space Shuttle crashes seem like a different category of tragedy is that they're so very much rarer. You mention the disaster happening 3 years after the sequel -- well, just six days after the original movie's release, there was an airliner crash that killed 163 people. And dozens more in the following three years. But that didn't ruin the film forever.

It's understandable to do something like postponing the release of such a story if a similar disaster/attack happens shortly before it's supposed to come out, since that would just be in poor taste; but it makes no sense to say that any similarity to a real-world tragedy should ruin a work of fiction for all time thereafter, even more than 30 years after the fact. Tragedy should be mourned, yes, but eventually life has to go on again.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I very vividly remember the Challenger disaster. At the time, I was straight out of college, with no work experience, effectively unemployable in my field, and working a temporary assignment as a maintenance worker for the Los Angeles Unified School District. I was sitting on the ground, in front of a toolshed, at a child care center in South Central Los Angeles, repairing tricycles and chairs. My partner for the day had run out after coffee, and returned to tell me that the Challenger had blown up. At first, I'd thought it was some sort of sadistic joke, that he'd become aware that I followed the Space Program somewhat more closely than most.

Then, I found out it wasn't. That overconfidence, arrogance, and pressure to get shuttles launched on schedule, had not merely resulted in tragedy, but in tragedy at the worst possible time, on the very launch in which a public school teacher was being sent into orbit as a way of vicariously sending all of us into orbit.

I have never passed any memorial to the Challenger or Columbia crews without snapping off a salute, whether it's their tiles on the Space Mirror Memorial, or the mission plaques in the temporary barn housing Endeavour at the California Science Center until a permanent wing can be built (or the Onizuka memorial museum that recently closed at the Kona airport).

 

[thribs]

I don’t get the comparisons. The Shuttle never blew up in Airplane 2. There was a bomb but it never went off.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Hey,

I just finished THE FACE OF THE UNKNOWN, which is part of my ongoing project to read 40 Star Trek books this year. Which is exactly the number of Star Trek books I have bought on my Kindle and picked up from the second hand bookstore over the past few years but never got around to reading. I've managed to read The Klingon Empire series, am re-reading New Frontier, did Rise of the Federation, Vanguard, and have also done a number of TNG Novelverse ones. So, yes, I'm actually pretty far into it.

I was really interested in this because I've always been a fan of Star Trek politics and was fascinated by the concept of THE FIRST FEDERATION as introduced in "The Corbomite Maneuver." I was a bit surprised to realize no one had ever picked up that angle before and was mostly only remembered by me because it's located in Star Trek: Online. So I assumed there would have been more follow-up that never happened despite it being in the credits of Star Trek: TOS forever.

I have to say that this is probably one of my favorite Star Trek "exploration" storylines as Christopher creates an entire mythology around the First Federation that make them a full galactic power and something that could have become an enormous influence in the galaxy but just...didn't.

Well, more precisely, it expanded to a point where it probably was the biggest power in the galaxy and then stopped. I'm reminded a bit of classical China and wonder if this would be a possible fate of the Federation. They become a home for thousands of races, become complacent, and then become vulnerable.

The continuity in this book is not quite as heavy as with Christopher Bennett's other books but it is still well-researched with plenty of homages. I was mostly interested in the politics of the book that feel more relevant than ever despite it being written before 2016's elections were resolved. There's a massive amount of science denial, climate change denial, and lying directly to the public's face that feels all too relevant.

I also give this book kudos for being one of the works that contains a space super-structure. I've always loved space super-structures and things like Dyson Spheres. This is one of the more imaginative ones. While we can't speculate on the future of the setting, I could easily see the First Federation spreading far across the Alpha and Beta Quadrants using their technology. Why settle worlds when you can settle space?

If I had any complaints, it's the fact the Dassik were a bit too overthetop in their evil. They had a good reason for it but kind of reminded me a bit of the Hiromi from the old Marvel Star Wars games that were a parody of the Galactic Empire. They're primitive, evil, and cruel for 90% of the book until we discover their reasons and that didn't entirely affect my original negative opinion. Even so, I really liked the twist they were only the "enemy" to be feared because of the gross incompetence of the government.

Kudos as always, Christopher.

 

[Christopher]

^Thanks for the review!

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Re-reading the present opus, I found something on page 245.

Helium balloons would not be buoyant in a hydrogen atmosphere.

Hydrogen has an atomic weight of 1, and forms diatomic molecules with a molecular weight of 2, so 1 mole of hydrogen, 6.02e+23 hydrogen molecules, would weigh 2 grams, and occupy (like a mole of any gas) 22.4 liters at Standard Temperature and Pressure.

Helium, being a Noble Gas, does not form diatomic molecules, but its atomic weight is 4, so one mole of helium, again occupying 22.4 liters at STP, and containing 6.02e+23 atoms of helium would weigh 4 grams.

 

[Christopher]

Helium balloons would not be buoyant in a hydrogen atmosphere.

The planet actually has a hydrogen-methane atmosphere; does that help?