Star Trek: Logs Nine and Ten

Star Trek: Logs #9-10

by Alan Dean Foster

"SPACE. THE FINAL FRONTIER . . . These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise(TM)." Celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Star Trek(R) with the original mission logs chronicling some of the crew's most bizarre missions and strangest encounters with alien races across the galaxy . . . where no man has gone before(TM).

Bem
It seems a simple request. The Pandronians have petitioned to send a representative to observe a Federation crew carrying out a survey mission. So Commander Ari bn Bem joins Captain Kirk to evaluate aboriginal life forms of undetermined intelligence and accomplishments on planet Delta Theta Three. There, the trouble begins with an omniscient entity.

Then disaster summons Bem to his home planet, with the Enterprise ordered to assist him in every way. The shocking theft of a priceless treasure threatens to reduce Pandronian civilization to anarchy-and bring the crew of the Enterprise to the brink of disaster.

Slaver Weapon
A billion years ago Slavers ruled the galaxy, but all that remains of their once awesome empire is concentrated in extraordinary cubes known as stasis boxes. Now the Enterprise must transport a stasis box containing the ultimate weapon, a war computer/handgun with settings that fire nuclear explosions.

But the Kzin-violent, ferocious, catlike creatures-crave the weapon that will make the galaxy a smorgasbord for their insatiable appetites. With ruthless cunning they lure the unsuspecting starship to an icy planet, where a cataclysmic fate awaits them-and the universe.

Genres: Star Trek, Science Fiction

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Bestselling science fiction writer Alan Dean Foster was born in New York City in 1946, but raised mainly in California. He received a B.A. in Political Science from UCLA in 1968, and a M.F.A. in 1969. Foster lives in Arizona with his wife, but he enjoys traveling because it gives him opportunities to meet new people and explore new places and cultures. This interest is carried over to his writing, but with a twist: the new places encountered in his books are likely to be on another planet, and the people may belong to an alien race.

Foster began his career as an author when a letter he sent to Arkham Collection was purchased by the editor and published in the magazine in 1968. His first novel, The Tar-Aiym Krang, introduced the Humanx Commonwealth, a galactic alliance between humans and an insectlike race called Thranx. Several other novels, including the Icerigger trilogy, are also set in the world of the Commonwealth. The Tar-Aiym Krang also marked the first appearance of Flinx, a young man with paranormal abilities, who reappears in other books, including Orphan Star, For Love of Mother-Not, and Flinx in Flux.

Foster has also written The Damned series and the Spellsinger series, which includes The Hour of the Gate, The Moment of the Magician, The Paths of the Perambulator, and Son of Spellsinger, among others. Other books include novelizations of science fiction movies and television shows such as Star Trek, The Black Hole, Starman, Star Wars, and the Alien movies. Splinter of the Mind's Eye, a bestselling novel based on the Star Wars movies, received the Galaxy Award in 1979. The book Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990. His novel Our Lady of the Machine won him the UPC Award (Spain) in 1993. He also won the Ignotus Award (Spain) in 1994 and the Stannik Award (Russia) in 2000.

Reviews

[Terence · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've been in a Star Trek "mood" ever since I picked up a scale model of the rebooted Enterprise. Of the three original series versions, I think I like this one even more than the movies'.

Plus, I keep seeing all these rave reviews of Foster's Logs and decided to check it out for myself.

Plus plus, I've been reading some brain-bending serious stuff lately and need some cognitive downtime.

*********************************

I just couldn't finish it. I tried. But I just couldn't.

I chose this volume and the combined Logs 1-2 for two reasons: This one contains "The Slaver Weapon" and Log 1-2 contains "Yesteryear," the justly famous episode where Spock uses the Guardian of Forever to travel back in time and save his 7-year-old butt.

I wanted to read "The Slaver Weapon"* because I like Larry Niven's Known Space stuff - at least the earlier work. (The latter Ringworld novels weren't terribly good, and after the disappointing sequel to The Mote in God's Eye, he's dropped off my radar.) I've also enjoyed Foster's many novelizations of movie fare - often an afternoon or evening was whiled away reading Alien A Novel and Aliens by Alan Dean Foster or Outland by Alan Dean Foster or Darkstar by Alan Dean Foster. Unfortunately, in "The Slaver Weapon," Foster was unable to rise above his material to create anything interesting.

The writing is plain awful; clunky and overwritten. For example:

"Vedama's ancestors had fought for a subsistence existence outside a bloated city on Earth named Bombay. Now the great-great-grandson of those struggling peasants commanded more knowledge at his fingertips than had all his ancestors combined." (p. 209)

or

"`The man's name is Jaiao,' she began tiredly. `One of our excavators. Just because he's not as bright as some of our scientists was no reason to suspect him of harboring dishonest thoughts. Jaiao's difficulty is not unique. He simply feels he's not as wealthy as he would like to be.'" (p. 214)

And then there's the contrived plot: Prolog - Uhura kills a fake lion as part of her coming-of-age ceremony in her homeland of Kenya. I don't know if this ever plays a role later in the story since I couldn't finish it. Chapter one and following, Enterprise is tagged to represent the Federation in sensitive negotiations with the Briamosites (try to say that without wincing), who may go over to the Klingons. Conveniently, the Briamosites are sticklers for punctuality and will not tolerate tardiness (does the Fed really want to ally themselves with a bunch of interstellar hall monitors?). While enroute to Briamos, the ship picks up a priority call from a group of scientists who have discovered a Slaver stasis box that needs to be secured before enemies hands can get to it. Unable to divert Enterprise, Kirk sends Spock, Uhura and Sulu in a shuttlecraft to pick it up. The story continues its descent into one contrivance after another until the transporter accident that scrambles the personalities of Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Sulu.** At that point I gave up; threw in the towel; cried "Uncle" and "have mercy."

I don't know why anyone thinks these elaborations of the animated series are very good, and I can't recommend this to anyone (even a Klingon).

* In the Known Space series, Slavers were the dominant species in the Galaxy 1 billion years ago. They and the tnuctipun who overthrew them left behind stasis boxes filled with various treasures from the era. Niven, in the original script, just lifted them into the Star Trek universe.

** For the curious - Spock got transferred to Uhura's body, Uhura got thrown into Kirk's, Sulu into Spock's, and Kirk into Sulu's.

[cauldronofevil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a 424 page novelization by Alan Dean Foster of two episodes of the Star Trek Animated Series. The two episodes are “BEM” and “Slaver Weapon”.

I only read the ‘Slaver Weapon’ story because it’s part of a project I’m doing for some friends. It starts on page 189 so it’s a HUGE adaptation. It actually greatly expands the episode, really acting like two different and pretty much unrelated Star Trek episodes.

I didn’t mind this at all because the additional material was excellent. The material before the ‘episode’ in the book actually fills in a hole in the episodes plot, by explaining why only Uhura, Spock and Sulu are in the episode.

It explains that the Enterprise gets called away to a meeting to try to persuade some aliens to join the Federation rather than the Klingons and they must not be late and therefore must abandon those three to search for (SPOILER ALERT) what turns out to be the Slaver Weapon.

The episode detail itself is excellent and doesn’t vary much from the animated episode but definitely adds some more texture to it.

The rest of the book is the rest of the story of captain Kirk going to the meeting with the aliens and the Klingons and doing that diplomatic thing he does.

The aliens are interesting and the book is a very fun read. Definitely not a filler and of course, the characters are captured very well.

I give this book 4 stars, a terrific addition to the Star Trek lore. Now I only read half of the book so the other story might suck, but the quality of the Slaver Weapon give me a lot of confidence. I will read it some time (but I have two other Star Trek books I have to read first!).

[Ben Guilfoy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ultimately pretty lame. The 20-minute animated episodes do not expand well to full-length novels, despite Mr. Foster's best efforts. "Slaver Weapon," in particular, sounds pretty cool from the description and turns out to be a slog of a novel having little to do with the Slavers or their ancient technology but instead mostly about Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Sulu getting their minds swapped on the eve of an important peace conference under threat by the Klingons. Mr. Foster is a talented writer, and I'm sure he could have done better than this.