Star Trek: Logs 1-3

Star Trek: Logs #1-3

by Alan Dean Foster

Now, at last, all three exciting books in the STAR TREK series are together in one volume. Here are nine thrilling adventures that star Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of U.S.S. Enterprise!

Genres: Star Trek, Science Fiction, Anthologies, Fiction

564 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 23, 1992

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

[Ian Banks · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know that The Animated Series isn’t held in very high regard in some parts, but Mr Foster has done an outstanding job in translating some rather bland adventures into something quite special. He’s done this by linking the adventures so that the whole feels like something serialised rather than some random alien encounters. He’s also added a lot of exposition so that 22 minutes of cartoon is fleshed out into about 60 pages of fairly decent story. Where his real skill is displayed is in how natural he has made it feel and how much it feels like a natural addition to the original screenplay rather than an author trying to get things padded out to a reasonable length. However, when reading James Blish’s novelisations of The Original Series, I noted that he’d managed to retell all the good episodes quite quickly while the stinkers took several pages longer. Of course, all this proves is that all authors write differently. I really enjoyed this collection and the only thing that kept me from pushing it up to 4 stars was that some of the stories just aren’t very good, despite Foster’s best efforts.

[Bruce Gray · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short novellas adapted from episodes of Star Trek: The Animated Series. They range from weird to just out right nuts. Consistently enjoyable throughout though.

[Ibis3]

Fuller review of "The Lorelei Signal": Ridiculous plot from the description of which I was expecting a thoroughly sexist treatment. In truth though, I think it was actually a feminist commentary on TOS: a supposedly egalitarian crew where all the men are actually in charge: Captain, Science Officer, Chief Medical Officer, Chief Engineer, Transporter Chief, Security and so on. It takes an external force debilitating all the male crew (& making them look foolish in the process), for the women to have the opportunity to have any power at all. Sadly, it didn't pull it off entirely: the women in charge were not proved capable of saving everyone entirely on their own so as to thoroughly reverse the damsel in distress trope (Spock came up with both the shield and the transporter trick that restored all the affected guys and it was Scott and Kyle who took over at the end to carry it out), and having the external force debilitating all the men being alluring women who drain their life energy? Yeah, still sexist. Also really ridiculous.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not great but almost any Star Trek TOS is good Trek.