THE BOOK THAT NEVER WAS:
What Really Happened to A FLAG FULL OF STARS
by Brad Ferguson
Soon, now, there will appear the umpety-umpth novel in the Star Trek series, A FLAG FULL OF STARS. (As of this writing, it has already appeared in some areas.) My name is on the cover, which might lead you to think that it's my book.
Well, it is and it isn't. Mostly, it isn't.
I first proposed AFFoS to Pocket in 1986, soon after my first Trek novel, CRISIS ON CENTAURUS, appeared. I wanted to do a Trek book set on Earth during the three hundredth anniversary of the first manned lunar landing. That original proposal, which was for a first-generation book, had Captain Kirk and a refugee Klingon scientist defeating an Imperial spy ring that had gained knowledge of an important new source of freely available energy discovered by the scientist.
On December 13, 1987, there was a meeting at Pocket Books to discuss an ambitious plan: the creation of a series of novels set in the "lost years" between the end of the five-year mission and the first film. Editor Dave Stern thought that, with a little tweaking, AFFoS might work as the second book of the proposed three-novel series. Present at the meeting were Dave, Bob Greenberger (who came up with the idea for the series), and writers Jeanne Dillard, Irene Kress and myself. We all got along very well and got a great deal of planning done. The books were to come out, one right after the other, in early 1989.
Too bad it was all for nothing. Gene Roddenberry himself soon enough let it be known that he didn't think the "lost years" should be written about, although I've never been told why. Irene's book was cancelled after it was finished, and it was stated that only two "lost years" books would be produced -- mine and Jeanne Dillard's. I myself added to the problems: I was terribly late in delivering my own book, thanks mainly to ill health, but also thanks more than a little to being stuck on dead center because of an ever-increasing number of restraints on what I could and could not do in the book. ST:TNG had come along, you see, and that meant the Star Trek office at Paramount was giving the novels a great deal of attention.
The preliminary manuscript of AFFoS, due in August 1988, was (finally!) delivered by me to new editor Kevin Ryan at Pocket Books on March 31, 1989. That wasn't the end of it, though, because there then followed a raft of revisions. Some of the revising did indeed have to do with story problems, which is normal and expected ... but most of it had to do with satisfying anticipated objections from the Star Trek office at Paramount -- that is, objections from Gene Roddenberry's assistant, Richard Arnold. Without exception, those pre-emptive revisions weakened the story I was interested in telling. Each revision, by my lights, made the story less special and more bland. I revised AFFoS from stem to stern fully four times between April 1989 and August 1990 -- and, in the end, it was not enough.
Kevin said he was disappointed at the final result and told me that AFFoS had been turned over to Jeanne Dillard for a fifth revision. I was disappointed at that, and perhaps a little surprised, but not angry. To tell the truth, I was relieved; I did not want to have to take yet another whack at the book, and said as much at the time -- and more than once -- on the GEnie computer net. I suggested to Kevin that Jeanne might deserve a byline on the book, but was assured that she would not be doing all that extensive a job. To quote what Kevin told me more than once, it would still be my book. (I never talked to Jeanne about this myself. Perhaps I should have done so. Live and learn.)
I assure you that it is not my book. If AFFoS were a movie, you could perhaps give me a "from a concept by" credit, but that's about all.
I finally received the revised manuscript just a month before publication, and quickly saw the book for what it had become: a hastily produced and clumsily edited cut 'n paste of my stuff mixed with some reasonably good stuff grafted on by Jeanne. Unfortunately, the scars of those grafts clearly show: Our writing styles are vastly different, and AFFoS indicates that they don't mix very well. The book desperately needs some smoothing, and it wouldn't have taken long to do, but there was no time left for it. (I know. I volunteered.)
There are other problems, too. For example, one major character is introduced twice, ten manuscript pages apart -- once by me and once by Jeanne. There are sometimes drastic, and occasionally bizarre, inconsistencies in characterization. Futuristic terminology is awkward: my "viddycams" have been replaced by mundane "cameras," but "watches" have become mysterious "chronos." There are also sentence fragments strewn all over the landscape like slats from a barn after a tornado.
Worst of all -- at least, as I see it -- the ending of the book, fairly downbeat in the original, has been revised drastically and is now "happy." There may no longer be room in the Star Trek universe for anything more thoughtful than a happy ending. The people who license and publish the Trek books may have come to believe that their readers can't handle an ending that isn't "happy." Could be, could be. The folks who produce those romance novels you see in the supermarket think that way, too.
Kevin Ryan tried -- briefly -- to convince me that it's a good book, but I am realistic enough to know better, and he is honest enough not to have tried too hard. It is poorly handled and, in the final analysis, it is not about very much at all. I am stuck with this two-headed yet brainless mutant child who bears my name, and I do not like it. Not at all.
[Copyright (c) 1991 by Brad Ferguson. No changes or deletions can be made without the written permission of the author. Permission to distribute by written and electronic means is hereby granted.]
