Hair-raising premise but an excellent book, actually. The description of what it would be like to have your consciousness trapped within an entirely different type of creature, with its own autonomic system, etc was very well done. Although the premise is weird on its face, it shouldn't be put into the category of the Black Fire's of the world, and other campy-but-fun books. Windows isn't campy at all, and at some point begins to feel, dare I say, plausible?
Weirdest Trek novel
- Thread starter E-DUB
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I think you might be thinking of Black Fire, which is where Spock becomes a pirate. I don't remember the rockets or the cavewoman's pet stuff, but it's been a minute since I read it.
I've read Black Fire a few times; I suppose that (like Death's Angel, and maybe even Spock: Messiah) it might even qualify as a "guilty pleasure."
I don't think I've read Intellivore more than once or twice, but the very title itself is a callback to The Romulan Way. Diane Duane is brilliant.
I don't think I've read Intellivore more than once or twice, but the very title itself is a callback to The Romulan Way. Diane Duane is brilliant.
Ah yes Black Fire, sorry for the misnomer. I also recall it took days for the Enterprise to fly around the sun
Oh, yeah. That bugged me too.
Wasn't there stuff in Black Fire about the Enterprise getting a partial refit prior to the first movie, such that there was sort of a transition between the look and design of the TV series and that of the Motion Picture? I seem to remember that Cooper even wrote in the new uniforms, but maybe I've made that up?
Yeah, there was a refit and new uniforms, though the description doesn't really match the TMP uniforms. The book started with the bridge being bombed, so it had to be rebuilt along with much of the saucer.
Black Fire was referenced/parodied in Prime Directive with McCoy's "Black Ire" pirate persona. It stood out like a sore thumb back in the no-continuity days of the books.
I realize this post is an antique, so forgive the lateness of this comment.
To our knowledge what happened was De Forest Research noted the similarity, and very late in the game Gene Coon called Heinlein to get a waiver of similarity. Then the show sent him a script (gray cover). In his Tribbles book, Gerrold relates that he autographed the script. I've handled the actual script when I was going through some materials in the Heinlein papers at UC Santa Cruz, and I saw no signature or note. Perhaps Gerrold signed a cover letter that I didn’t see (there's a LOT of correspondence).
There's some correspondence about what happened from Heinlein's side, and as of 1975 he wasn't happy about how that all went.
It did have fanfic connections, though... After publication, not before.
From Fanlore wiki: "What was left out of the pro novel?
"'Black Fire' as a pro novel was published in January 1983.
"In 1984, Cooper, perhaps unhappy with the editing the pro book had received and seeing an opportunity to set the record straight (or wanting to help sell a zine), published addition fictional material from 'Black Fire' in the zine Infinite Diversity #5. An ad in Datazine #32 (October 1984) for that zine said: 'Do you want to know what was left out of Sonni Cooper's 'Black Fire'? Then you will want a copy of Infinite Diversity #5 (1984). [It includes] things that were changed or left out of the book."
"In 1987, Jacqueline Lichtenberg (who had feet in both the fan camp and the pro camp) commented on the differences in editing between pro books and zine fiction in regards to 'Black Fire'":
Sonni Cooper ran William Shatner's fan club, was his publicist, and handled his correspondence, IIRC.
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Yes, but a similar premise happened in "Prime Directive", which sort of explains the visual differences in the TOS and TAS bridges.
These two:
It just seemed like, in both cases, they were not 'dedicated' Trek stories but used Trek elements to frame them.
It just seemed like, in both cases, they were not 'dedicated' Trek stories but used Trek elements to frame them.
Regarding Devil World,
There was a time during the Bantam era, when it seems like roughly every other ST novel was a rehash of the same "Kirk & co. start mucking about in something way above their pay grade" premise that worked rather well for Planet of Judgment, but quickly became stale and hackneyed. And I refer to those novels as:
The Starless World, World Without End, Perry's Planet, and the ever-popular Devil World.
Somehow, Devil World just doesn't have quite the same ring to it without prefixing the title with "the ever-popular."
As to Demons, you do realize that, at the time, J. M. Dillard (Jeanne Kalogridis) had kind of a thing going with writing horror fiction set in the ST milieu. It started with Mindshadow, but really got going with Demons and Bloodthirst (a vampire story set in the ST milieu). And she went back into it, a decade later, writing Possession, a direct, TNG-era sequel to Demons.
There was a time during the Bantam era, when it seems like roughly every other ST novel was a rehash of the same "Kirk & co. start mucking about in something way above their pay grade" premise that worked rather well for Planet of Judgment, but quickly became stale and hackneyed. And I refer to those novels as:
The Starless World, World Without End, Perry's Planet, and the ever-popular Devil World.
Somehow, Devil World just doesn't have quite the same ring to it without prefixing the title with "the ever-popular."
As to Demons, you do realize that, at the time, J. M. Dillard (Jeanne Kalogridis) had kind of a thing going with writing horror fiction set in the ST milieu. It started with Mindshadow, but really got going with Demons and Bloodthirst (a vampire story set in the ST milieu). And she went back into it, a decade later, writing Possession, a direct, TNG-era sequel to Demons.
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Yes....oddly enough, I liked Bloodthirst quite well, even though I'm not a big fan of vampire fiction in general. I will have to grab a copy of Possession, just for the curiosity factor. Thanks for the heads-up on that one.
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