Spoilers TTN: Absent Enemies by John Jackson Miller Review Thread

[Christopher]

Pardon the bump... I finally got my hands on this. Fun story. At first, the recap of "The Next Phase" in the flashback to the Garadius mission following it seemed gratuitous, but it eventually became clear why it was relevant. Clever use of the phasing idea, and I like the idea of showing one of those pre-episode or post-episode missions that TNG often alluded to. It's a good way to fill in new stories without adding even more clutter to the TNG timeline than there already is. (There are at least two consecutive unseen missions between "The Next Phase" and "The Inner Light" -- the Garadius IV mission seen here, and the "magnetic wave survey of the Parvenium Sector" immediately before "Light.")

Reading the story, I was pleased at how well JJM's explanations of phasing conundrums (like how they have air to breathe/hear through) meshed with my own ideas, and then I saw myself credited in the acknowledgments. Then I found this thread and read JJM's annotations, and I discovered that he was drawing on my comments in KRAD's Tor.com rewatch for "The Next Phase," rather than anything I'd actually put in a published story. So, John, I'm glad you managed to work those ideas into published fiction.

 

[JJMiller]

Thanks -- and thank you for your posts, which helped me as I worked through the whole thing. I try on such things to see whether any settled explanation exists — Enterprise War had another "what-if" scientific scenario where I looked to see if my conclusions matched others'.

Readers of Enterprise War, incidentally, will find something of interest in a reread in this e-book — after they're done, that is, since it takes place much later in continuity order.