Worlds of Deep Space Nine (Volume 2)

Posted on October 19, 2010 by smellincoffee

Worlds of Deep Space Nine, Volume 2: Trill and Bajor
© 2005 Martin, Mangels, and Kym
380 pages

On the cover:  Nicole de Boer as Lieutenant Ezri Dax; Avery Brooks as Captain Benjamin Sisko.

S.D. Perry’s Unity ended the first major phase of Star Trek relaunch literature, bringing multiple Deep Space Nine storylines together and capping them off with the assassination of Bajor’s prime minister on the eve of its admission into the United Federation of Planets. The assassin, working on behalf of the government of Trill, operated on the concealed knowledge that the minister was posessed by a parasite genetically related to the symbionts of the Trill homeworld.  Trill’s government, highly protective of the symbionts that so many of its leaders are joined to, was desperate to hide the symbiont/parasite connection.  In the midst of this chaos, Benjamin Sisko returned to the land of the living just in time for the birth of his daughter; previously, in “What you Leave Behind”, he vanished into the etheral realm of the Prophets, aliens who occupy a nearby wormhole and are the objects of Bajoran religion.

Worlds of Deep Space Nine is a three-part series that explore the aftermath of Unity while TNG launched its own arc which eventually culiminated in Destiny. The book contains two novellas that are set four days apart from the other and on their respective worlds. In Unjoined, authors Martin and Mangels depict a Trill on the edge of chaos. Its streets are filled with citizens brimming with anger, demanding full transparency from the government — and some, giving into fear, demanding an end to the custom of joining. After Lieutenant Ezri Dax and Lieutenant Commander Julian Bashir are called to Trill to give testimony at an official inquiry into Trill’s role in the assassination, terrorist groups target the symbionts and government officials while Dax discovers buried history that may forever change Trill.  While the political story and cultural examinations are interesting enough, Unjoined is most notable for me in seeing Lieutenant Dax come into her own as a character: she’s finally adjusted to being joined, and her experiences since then are setting her on a path away from her old life.

Fragments and Omen‘s major theme is adjustment: Bajor is now a member of the Federation,  and while the general populace is looking forward to the future, there are others who fear Bajor’s individuality will be left behind. Jake Sisko is also trying to find a life for himself now that his father has returned — and Ben Sisko believes that he was sent back because Bajor is about to undergo a crisis.  While Kym’s novella is perfectly enjoyable to read for DS9 fans, it lacks the active punch of Martin and Mangels: it’s more a prolouge for what is to come, though readers are only teased by this in the last chapter of the book.

I haven’t read a novel from the Deep Space Nine relaunch for five years: I bought this and another book in the “Words of Deep Space Nine” series, but found both too dense to get in. I’m apparantly better at reading now, for this read was smooth sailing. In the five years that have past, I’ve forgotten most of the details of Unity, but was able to piece them together from this book’s infrequent exposition. While Unjoined is the Dax-and-Bashir show, Fragments and Omens draws from most of DS9’s officer ensemble plus a Bajoran politician or two.

Good read for general Trek readers, particularly Unjoined. As said, Fragments and Omens is mostly prologue.

Related:

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Teaser Tuesday (19 October)

Posted on October 18, 2010 by smellincoffee

It’s that teasin’ Tuesday time again!

Tim was getting a bad vibe. Not a look-out-he’s-a-werewolf kind of vibe, just a feeling that the guy might be tedious. 

The stranger said, “I jumped out of an airplane with my dog.” 

On the other hand, the best hope of a memorable barroom conversation is to have the good luck to encounter an eccentric. 

(p. 10-11, The Good Guy. Dean Koontz.)

[Sisko] reached into the crib and scooped his daughter up in his arms. Check for leakage, the Old Dad instincts told him. Structural integrity may be compromised. 

(p. 204, Worlds of Deep Space Nine volume 2: Trill and Bajor.) Quotation is from J. Noah Kym’s Fragments and Omens.

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The Roman Way

Posted on October 17, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Roman Way
© 1932 Edith Hamilton
281 pages

                                        Slave: He saw the girl.
                                        Master: Oh, hell! How could he?!
                                        Slave: …with his eyes.
                                        Master: But how, you fool?
                                        Slave: By openin’ ’em! (“Merchant”, Plautus)

The Roman Way follows up on the success of Edith Hamilton’s The Greek Way, and models itself after that first work of Hamilton’s, in which she used Greece literature to evaluate it. In Roman Way, she draws on the comedic plays of Terence and Plautus, the histories of Caesar, the letters of Cicero, and the poetry of Catullus and Horace among other authors.  The book’s greatest virtue is that Hamilton’s choice to reproduce pages from plays and longer passages from letters allows students of Roman history to connect with that history more directly — to test the waters of literature from another time while protected from confusion by the presence of the author’s commentary. Hamilton’s writing is strong and flourished, conveying a clear affection for the subject: she reads plays originally written in Latin for pleasure.

When generalizing, Hamilton is golden for the lay reader, though the more focused analyses of poetry and literature are likely to find their best audiences in serious students of literature and Roman history. Being a somewhat serious student myself, I found a lot of value here. I enjoyed reading Roman plays and realizing that for all the centuries that have passed, it’s still possible to get a laugh out of them. I found Cicero’s  humility (!) in his letters especially endearing:  sensitive about his constant bragging and the disconnect between his political values and the political choices he made, he frets to his brother:  “What will history be saying of me six hundred years hence?”  I also enjoyed the chapters on Roman romanticism and aesthetic values. Broader narratives forget to see the Romans as people at times, and Roman Way makes good on that. Times pass and values change, and the literature reflects it.

Good follow-up to Caesar and Christ;  Romanophiles and those interested in literary history should find it engaging.

Related:

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Shelfari

Posted on October 17, 2010 by smellincoffee

Earlier this afternoon a friend brought the social community for bookworms (“Shelfari”) to my attention, and I found it hospitable enough to register an account for my use. I liked the idea of being able to survey a virtual bookshelf of everything I’ve read in recent years, so I invested a little time this afternoon in adding everything from the TWATL archives to my shelves.

Okay, maybe more than a little time. Point is, now my Shelfari account has everything I’ve read here on the blog, minus a possible percentage of books that I overlooked. I also added some of the books I read in 2006 and 2007 prior to getting in the habit of raiding nearby libraries on a weekly basis. Because I filled the shelves from most recent to oldest, the most recently added books may be new to you: this blog’s original home was on something called a “MySpace” account and those first posts were copied to my archives when I made the switch to Blogger.

I’m interested in meeting other bloggers and readers who have shared their books on Shelfari; my username there is listed above, and if you want to hunt me down via email address, just tack on @gmail.com. I will continue to update Shelfari in the future with books I’m reading or want to read, and will add a link to the sidebar once I find an appropriate but tidy place to stick it.

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The Good Guy

Posted on October 16, 2010 by smellincoffee

The Good Guy
© 2007 Dean Koontz
400 pages

“Good guys finish last, Tim.”
“Maybe not if they stay in the race.”

Tim Carrier’s just an honest working man who enjoys relaxing at a local bar in the evenings, exchanging insults with his friend the barkeep and drawing eccentric strangers into interesting conversations. Only…the last conversation ended with him being given an envelope containing $10,000 and instructions that he would receive the rest once the woman was dead.  Tim’s been mistaken for a hitman.

Being mistaken for an assassin is odd enough, but then the actual hitman takes for Tim for his new boss. Thinking quickly,  Tim tells the man that his services are no longer required: the job is off, but he’ll still be paid. The ruse works long enough for Tim to escape and find the woman whose life hangs in the balance. Soon both he and she are on the run from a talented killer with vast resources.

A friend of mine has persistently recommended Dean Koontz,  and after reading The Good Guy I can understand why. Koontz is an effective horror writer: alternating chapters tell the story from the vantage point of both Tim and the hitman, who is one of the most disturbing characters I’ve ever encountered.  He’s a genuine sociopath, and while in his head Koontz uses small details to creep the reader out. The flowers that Tim notes for their smell are seen and dismissed by Krait reflexively as not being useful; they’re nontoxic.  The plot advances quickly, and Koontz’s writing constantly hits the reader — his descriptive prose and dialogue are evocative, and every paragraph made putting the book down more difficult. I read it in one sitting, not being able to resist the feeling of “Just one more chapter…” until well after midnight, when the story ended for these characters who had so ensnared my attention.

Koontz is a compelling author, and will remain of interest for future reads — though, like King, I wouldn’t be surprised if I avoided him given the creepiness factor. Suitable reading as we approach Halloween, though.

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Distant Shores

Posted on October 16, 2010 by smellincoffee

Distant Shores
© 2005, ed. Marco Palmieri
390 pages

Only hours after the onset of its first mission, the USS Voyager was thrust across the galaxy into the Delta Quadrant — a distance so great that even at maximum speeds,  returning home would take at least seventy years. Rather than giving into despair,  Voyager duly set a course for home, determining to search for new technologies and shortcuts on the way while still fulfilling Starfleet’s directive to explore space and seek out new life. Seven years later, having blazed a trail of new discoveries, alliances, and repeated victories snatched from the jaws of defeat, Voyager emerged from her long exile. Distant Shores celebrates the show’s tenth anniversary with a twelve-story anthology featuring now-familiar authors like Christopher L. Bennett, Kirsten Beyer, and Keith Decandido with many others. While a few authors write their stories around episodes from the show,  other stories are completely new or examine parts of the Voyager story that the show ignored — the integration of the Maquis and Equinox crews into Voyager’s ranks, or the effect of the ship’s disappearance had on the friends and family of her crewmembers.

The stories are arranged chronologically by season, with a slight concentration on the fifth and sixth seasons, and every member of the ensemble cast has a story in which he or she dominates. The book as a whole assumes some familiarity with the show,  which is understandable given that it’s written for fans of the show who want to take a nostalgic look back ten years after the story began. Lay readers can piece together the details of what happened with the Equinox from the two stories that feature their difficult integration with the crew, but they’d be better off looking up the episode in question. There are no disappointments here, and even though I had no intention of reading the book this week, I found putting it back down once I’d read the introductory story to be difficult; I read most of the book through in one sitting.

Although not essential for enjoying the Voyager Relaunch books, Kirsten Beyer did build on certain elements introduced in this collection when writing Full Circle and Unworthy. The collection is also perfectly enjoyable on its own, both for general Trek readers and those with a particular fondness for Voyager.

Some stories of note:

  • “Command Code”: when Captain Janeway is put out of action soon after integrating Chakotay and other Maquis members into her crew, the newly-appointed First Officer Chakotay and Tuvok have a face-off on the bridge amidst a crisis when Tuvok doubts Chakotay’s judgment and suspends his just-minted command access.
  • “Letting Go” takes place across the opening seasons Voyager, as the loved ones of Voyager’s missing and presumed crew try to adjust to the thought of their spouses, friends, and children being gone forever — and try to move on with their lives.
  • “Eighteen Minutes” gives the Doctor’s side of “Blink of an Eye”, wherein in the course of eighteen minutes he experiences years of life on the surface of a planet wherein time passes a bit differently. 
  • “Isabo’s Shirt” explores Janeway and Chakotay’s friendship and gives J/C shippers something to squee about. 

Related:

  • Prophecy and Change, Deep Space Nine’s own ten-year anniversary anthology which also features some of the authors that worked on Distant Shores, including Christopher L. Bennett. I think maybe I’m going to be re-reading it in the future.
  • Distant Shores on Memory Alpha
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Rapt

Posted on October 15, 2010 by smellincoffee

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
© 2009 Winifred Gallagher
256 pages

 You’re sitting comfortably in your favorite chair, reading, when out of the corner of your eye your brain registers movement, and you automatically turn to look for its source. You spot a green anole lizard, which crept in through an open window. You try to pick it up, and it scurries from the arm of the couch onto the end table nearby.  When you focus on the lizard in an attempt to sneak up behind it, you realize that the lizard’s tail is brushing your lost keys — keys which are sitting in plain sight, but which have escaped your passive gaze for hours.

Such are some of the curiosities of attention. The book’s title caught my eye while browsing the library catalogue, and such is my interest in the workings of the human brain that I checked it out. The author introduces the book by pointing out there are two different kinds of attention: “bottoms-up” attention, wherein your instinctive brain automatically focuses on an objects that may be a potential threat (as in the moving lizard) and top-down attention, which we ourselves consciously control what our brains are focused on (as when tracking the lizard and noticing the keys as they entered the sweep of attention).

Rapt is more a social science work than hard science, replete with studies but no neurological maps. Instead, the author addresses attention’s role in morality, creativity, personal relationships, and health. Buddhism and cognitive theory are present, and both Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus are mentioned by name.  The author believes that people can move toward greater health and happiness by being mindful of what we pay attention to — taking charge of our own minds —  and practicing mental focus through exercises like attention or by engaging in leisure activities that encourage it (painting, say).

This is easily one of the most interesting books I’ve read this year. I was disposed to enjoy it, of course, given my interests in Stoic philosophy. I know full how attention can alter our mental state, but the chapters on art and morality were pleasant surprises. Gallagher is quite readable, and if you’re interested in psychology or mindfulness I recommend it.

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Booking through Thursday: Rewrite

Posted on October 14, 2010 by smellincoffee

Booking through Thursday (via Joy) asks: If you could rewrite the ending of any book, which book would it be? And how would you change it?



John Grisham’s The Appeal is notable for its disheartening ending. The novel’s subject is political corruption: more specifically, a company in legal troubles over its criminal negligence (poisoning a community’s water table to the point of increasing cancer rates by a substantial amount) decides to buy a judge. They find a candidate and bankroll his election campaign, slandering his opponents as being too soft on Democrats, intellectuals, and homosexuals. They win; their boy dons the black robes and gets the case.  This kind of corruption is depressing by itself, but The Appeal is cruel in making the reader think the judge’s moral crisis (following the death of his son from another company’s negligence) will see him turn against the business, or at least step down. But no. He throws the entire community under the bus despite having sufficient motive to do the right thing.


I’d like to see it rewritten so the ending is…..at LEAST ambiguous. Have the judge declare a mistrial and step down — give us hope of SOME kind.  







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Unworthy

Posted on October 14, 2010 by smellincoffee

Unworthy
© 2009 Kirsten Beyer
384 pages

These are not the friendly stars of the Federation. The unknown and the unexpected are the everyday.

Not five years after the good ship Voyager returned home from involuntary exile in the Delta Quadrant, Starfleet wants her to return to the stomping grounds of the Kazon, Hirogen, and other such ferocious species. She won’t be going alone this time, but accompanied by six other vessels. Their mission is to see what, if anything, remains of the Borg collective,  mend fences Voyager had to leave broken in her haste to return home, and seek out new life and civilizations. Although the Voyager family has felt the strain of recent years — most of the ensemble has gone their separate ways — the Delta Quadrant is destined to bring them together again.

The first sight anyone from the Voyager family sees upon arrival in the Delta Quadrant is a massive cube, hanging in space as if expecting their arrival. Onboard are the bodies of various species from throughout the quadrant — offerings made to the Borg by a culture that reveres them. Contact with this multi-species civilization is destined to be interesting. Unworthy offers mystery and is clearing laying the foundation for several more books to come, but Beyer shines most in character development and related drama, and there’s much to be had. Seven is still adjusting to life as a post-Caliar ex-Borg,  Tom and Harry are on the outs,  and at least four characters struggle to find their place  on this new Voyager. While I tended to find the televised version of Chakotay a bit…uninspired, Beyer’s Chakotay is believable and sympathetic. Beyer’s provocative Counselor Cambridge* (introduced in Full Circle)  is especially adept at drawing this out of his patients.  Cambridge is also the source of much of Unworthy‘s humor, not that it lacks elsewhere: Beyer incorporates more humor into her novels than any other Trek author I’ve read, recently or in the past.

Unworthy makes me hope that PocketBooks and CBS keep Beyer in the captain’s chair of the new Voyager.  The characters are strong and the path ahead promising. Although the book’s sequel is not yet published, Beyer contributed a story to the Voyager anthology Distant Shores, so I’m looking forward to that.

Related:

  • Voyager Relaunch at TvTropes. I recently discovered that Tropes, one of my favorite websites, has extensive articles on the Trek lit universe.
  • Unworthy at Memory Alpha
  • Kirsten Beyer at Memory Alpha

*According to TrekBBS, Beyer had Laurie in mind when she wrote Cambridge.

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These Weeks at the Library (28 Sept – 13 October)

Posted on October 13, 2010 by smellincoffee

Two weeks ago at the library, I…

  • …started with Spook, Mary Roach’s investigations into tales of the afterlife.
  • Stephen Fry in America, the titular British humorist’s account of his state-by-state tour of the United States, followed that. 
  • Christine by Stephen King proved to be a fun horror story about a possessed car. 
  • The Life of Greece brought up the rear. The book was second in Durant’s Story of Civilization, and covered Greece from its original settlers to the death of Alexander and rise of Rome. Heavy on literature and poetry, and reminded me how little people change in politics.

This week, I started off with:

  • Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars, a playful history of human space flight and which is replete with information on how humans adjust to living without gravity, blue skies, and flushing toilets.
  • Full Circle,  the first Voyager book in a few years, introduced a new author to the Voyager Relaunch series, closed off the old plots, caught Voyager’s family up with Destiny, and set the little ship that could off to new adventures in the Delta Quadrant. 
  • Caesar and Christ by Will Durant followed that. I didn’t think I’d finish it so quickly, but I do like my Romans. The book is dominated by Rome’s political history.
  • My last complete read was The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, enjoying “Self Reliance” in particular. The book is of most interest to those interested in Emerson and Thoreau’s Transcendentalism. 
  • I also  read from Full House: the Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould. Gould was one of the United States’ big names in popular science, but I’ve never read from him. The central premise of this book — that increasing complexity in evolution is not the norm, but rather an exception and that modern animals are merely the results of evolution so far, not the fore-told promise of life — is one I’m familiar and agree with. My interest started waning during an extended section on baseball statistics. 

Selected Passages:
“And I know Admiral Nechayev agrees,” Janeway went on, ‘though frankly I was incredibly shocked when we arrived at our meeting stark naked.”
“Right.”
“Admiral Montgomery didn’t seem to notice,” she went on. “I guess things at Starfleet Command have changed quite a bit since we left…”
“Hm-mm,” Chakotay murmured, then paused as her words finally pierced his internal musings. “What?” (Full Circle, Kirsten Beyer. )

“Power dements more surely than it corrupts.” – a paraphrase of Will Durant, Caesar and Christ.

“Protestantism was the triumph of Paul over Peter. Fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ.” – Durant, Caesar and Christ.

“Historians divide the past into epochs, years, and events, as thought divides the world into groups, individuals, and things; but history, like nature, knows only continuity amid change: historia non facit saltum — history makes no leaps. ” (Will Durant, The Life of Greece)

Civilization does not die, it migrates; it changes its habitat and its dress, but it lives on. The decay of one civilization, as of one individual, makes room for the growth of another: life sheds the old skin, and surprises death with fresh youth. Greek civilization is alive; it moves in every breath of mind that we breathe; so much of it remains that none of us in one lifetime could absorb it all. We know its defects — its insane and pitiless wars, its stagnant slavery, it s subjection of women, its lack of moral restraint, its corrupt individualism, its tragic failure to unite liberty with order and peace. But those who cherish freedom, reason, and beauty will not linger over these blemishes. They will hear behind the turmoil of political history the voices of Solon and Socrates, of Plato and Euripides, of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Epicurus and Archimedes; they will be grateful for the existence of such men, and will seek their company across alien centuries. They will think of Greece as the bright morning of that Western civilization which,  with all its kindred faults, is our nourishment and our life. (Will Durant, The Life of Greece)



Potentials for Next Week:

  • Unworthy, the follow up to Full Circle by Kirsten Beyer. I just finished a few minutes ago, actually.
  • Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, which I’m a dozen or so pages away from completing.
  • The Roman Way, Edith Hamilton. Reading Durant’s Roman book reminded me that I’ve never read The Greek Way’s ‘sequel’. 
  • The Good Guy, Dean Koontz. A friend has reccommended the author to me several times, and after looking up the plot summaries of my library’s Koontz holdings, this novel about a man who is mistaken for a hitman and paid to kill a stranger sounds the most interesting. 
  • The World is Flat, which appears to be on the effects of globalization. I thought about reading this on Columbus Day just for laughs — a persistent fiction that Columbus probed to the intellectual elite of Europe that the world was around lingers in the United States — but was more interested in my Romans. 
  • The Seventy Great Mysteries of the Natural World, which is a big ol’ book on science I would’ve missed had I not been sitting on the floor looking for an obscure introduction to Latin. It’s a gorgeous-looking book, and I expect great pleasure from reading it.
  • I also have The Age of Faith checked out, but it’s a right monster of a book (1100+ pages of elegant prose  in a diminutive font)  and I’m taking a brief recess from the Story of Civilization to give my mind a break before I start reading about the Byzantine empire, medieval Europe, and the rise of Islam.
  • I’m also going to be perusing Teach Yourself Latin, largely out of interest for its rules of grammar. Durant often quotes the Latin and English translations side by side, and the different sentence structure makes me curious.
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