Sorry for bumping this thread but this may be of interest especially to Mr. Cox : http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/New-View-of-Saturns-Hexagon-235111821.html
I saw that! Wow! (For the uninitiated,the hexagon in questions figures significantly into the plot my book.)
Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I finished this book today (I've been on something of a Greg Cox tear lately, having also just read The Weight of Worlds and No Time Like The Past) and really enjoyed it. The interpersonal relationships between the Lewis and Clark crew were a lot of fun, and the Enterprise crew were their familiar selves. I particularly liked Spock realizing that his lack of empathy could be a liability in certain command situations. Another great job, Greg--looking forward to your next book!
Small mod note - resurrecting an old review thread because you've just read the book is never a problem. Feel free Trek books are forever and so are their review threads
Can someone explain to me the origin of the names "Zoe Querez" and "Qat Zaldana"? I've figured where "Zoe" and "Zaldana" come from but not "Qat" and "Querez".
Honestly, at this late date, I can't remember how I came up with those names--except that I wanted to them to be similar but not too similar. And, believe it or not, I'm not sure if I was deliberately referencing Zoe Saldana or not. It seems obvious when you point it out now, but it might have been unconscious on my part . . .. I certainly wasn't imagining Zoe Saldana in the part. In my head, Zoe was more like Sarah Silverman--or maybe "Claudia" on Warehouse 13. A hip, smark-alecky wiseacre, not Uhura. (True story: Zoe was originally going to be "Rain Robinson" from Voyager, but I discarded that idea early on.)
Another quick question about The Rings of Time, Greg, if you do not mind. I was reading some Strange New Worlds stories, and I noticed that "Assignment: One" named Shaun Geoffrey Christopher's (first) wife "Debbie". And The Rings of Time does as well. However, there are major incompatibilites between "Assignment: One" and your 20th/21st century novels. Did you take "Debbie Christopher" from "Assignment: One"?
That's not a coincidence. I certainly read "Assignment:One" while writing my book, and lifted the name of Shaun's wife from there. I wasn't going to drive myself nuts trying to reconcile the two stories, but I took what I could from that story. If somebody has already given the wife a name, why not use the same one?
Just finished it, excellent as expected from Greg. I also liked the 21st century sections a great deal, perhaps even more than the TOS parts. A rollicking good time.
Thanks. That was five or six books ago so it feels like ancient history to me. Great to know that people are still discovering it!
Finished reading the book yesterday. Not likely to see a Saturn mission in the next two years, but I loved the pioneering adventure embedded in the overall Trek mythos. Also pictured Christopher as Jason O’Mara. He bears resemblance to Captain Christopher.
Glad you liked it. I remember feeling that I couldn't push the Saturn mission too far ahead and still have Shaun Christopher be the son of Captain Christopher from the 1960s. The window of opportunity to tell that story was shrinking rapidly!
This, bizarrely enough, is one of only three Pocket-era Trek novels I don't yet own (along with Captain's Blood and A Choice of Catastrophes). I look forward to reading it when I can get my hands on it!
So I'm the first to post something about this book where the "past" story is really set in the past. I really enjoyed the book. I like time travel stories so this was right up my alley. Reading trek's version of 2020 was fun. Some might say there one is better than ours but we all know what is coming there. At least we don't have these HEL people. They sound like a fun bunch. I had a feeling Zoe was a Q being from the start. Just from the way she acted. She just seemed far too comfortable in that situation. Had no idea that Qat was, and that they were the same person. That surprised me but made a lot of sense. Cox also, early on, managed to have a TOS, a DS9, and a Voyager reference all in one page. That's quite an accomplishment.
It is a bit depressing that the "past" elements of this book are now in our past. 2020 seemed so far away when this book came out.
As I said in the current reading thread, I enjoyed this one quite a bit. I was expecting the probe to figure into the second mind transfer, so I was a little surprised that Spock took the reins to make that happen. One of my few quibbles with it is that the doctor actually trusted the terrorists to keep their word regarding his daughter's safety. I don't know the statistics in those sorts of scenarios, but it does not seem like the HEL had a good reason to keep her alive, even if he did what they wanted. Wouldn't calling the authorities be the right thing to do in almost any similar situation?