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arbieroo

Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog

It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.

Currently reading

Station Zero
Philip Reeve
Progress: 220/282 pages
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition
Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Vess
Progress: 749/997 pages
The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry
Robert Chandler
The Uncertain Land and Other Poems
Patrick O'Brian
Progress: 8/160 pages
The Heptameron (Penguin Classics)
Marguerite de Navarre
Progress: 152/544 pages
The Poems and Plays of John Masefield
John Masefield
Progress: 78/534 pages
Poems Selected
Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes
Progress: 4/50 pages
Selected Poems
U A Fanthorpe
Progress: 18/160 pages
The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
Mick Imlah, Robert Crawford
Hainish Novels & Stories, Vol. 2
Ursula K. Le Guin
Progress: 133/789 pages
Spock Must Die! - James Blish OK - the first Star Trek story not based on a shooting script, requested by popular demand (fan mail to the author, from readers of his script adaptations.)

What would you do with that opportunity? Let's just say I am unsurprised that Blish's story revolves round a transporter accident. The technology raises heaps of questions in the minds of anyone with the slightest philosophical bent - and any decent SF writer fits in that category. Also, at the time, most of those obvious ideas hadn't already been used three times each...

The book opens with Bones waxing metaphysical with Scotty and Kirk being surprisingly willingly dragged into the debate. Not long after, a transporter accident makes the theoretical discussion all too real, and threatens the very existence of the Federation, to boot. A good deal of care was put into developing a story that fits the characters and background of the TV show. Indeed, in an utterly non-preachy way, Blish pushes the values of equality and non-prejudice espoused by the Federation even further than the broadcasts did, by giving Uhura much more prominence and effective input.

I can't help feeling that Blish had his tongue in his cheek, affectionately, too, though: mastery of James Joyce helps in the field of practical cryptology and Scott's accent varies from barely comprehensible Glaswegian to completely neutral, depending on his stress-level, as if Blish is taking the mick out of James Doohan's portrayal...

(Anybody who knows Blish's work well will recognise that James Joyce was something of an obsession of the author.)

It's an easy, entertaining book that Blish manages to turn into a good opportunity to examine ideas that interested him and I therefore strongly recommend it to Blish fans who might feel reluctant to read a "tie-in" novel. It's not first-rate, but it's worthwhile.