Have Tech Will Travel: SCE Omnibus [Mass Market Paperback]

This book was composed of four mid-length stories (longer than "short stories", but not novel-length) each written by a different author, which together follow a continuous time-line and thus more or less make up one book's worth of story. The writing is surprisingly even, given the different authors; the handoffs from each author to the next are seamless, and the writing itself is quite good. The characters are well-developed, a good mix of minor characters from various episodes on TV and new characters (although the first book begins with the Enterprise-E and crew for an introduction, and Geordi LaForge continues through the first three stories.) The plots, while not the MOST original I've ever seen, are good, workmanlike concepts, and the basic SCE concept is in many ways a marvellous return to early science fiction concepts, where there may be action and combat, but the ADVENTURE is in the discovery and the science.

So why is the rating only four stars, given how much good I have to say about the book? (And in fact, I thought harder about whether to knock it down to three than I did about granting it five.) Because the "ending" ISN'T one; they cut the last story off in mid-action in order to make a "tune in next week" cliffhanger to attempt to manipulate the reader into continuing to buy the following books of the series. I will do so, because I enjoyed the book as a whole, NOT because they left me hanging. I consider that a sufficiently cheesy scam to be worth the loss of AT LEAST one star, and demonstrates that they had no confidence in the quality of the series themselves (or they wouldn't have needed to use such a cheap scam.)

What put me off originally besides the techy sounding title was the fact that it was compiled into novellettes, billed as short stories by different writers. I really don't like short stories because, you know, they just get interesting and then they end. But the way it's put together it's really rather seemless and continues the character's stories into each new novelette even if the situtations change.

Each story was wonderfully surprising, high quality adventure Trek, with things to think about. I was surprised by each new twist in each story, kept on the edge of my seat and fell in-like with each new/old character. The decisions that each character maked is logical and the captain is admirable. I like that Scotty shows up in each story, even if it's just on the viewer, though I'd absolutely love to see him get more involved with a few storylines. These authors can write Scotty and LaForge so well you can hear their voices in your head.

Speaking of that, I loved the way the creators of the series and the writers used familiar characters to introduce new ones. I was very happy with the way Picard's adventure was turned over to Captain Gold. I liked that the new characters actually live up to the admiration of the original characters like Picard. When the old characters commented on how much they admired so and so, it wasn't just to lend credibility to a shallow character, but because the characters were so good any way the comments only added to the depth of the new characters.

Geordi gets "stuck" helping the da Vinci crew for three of the stories. It was nice to have "ensign" Commander Gomez be a little warry of her old commanding officer. This added a little depth to her character.... and well we all know everyone loves Georgi, so it was nice to see this little twist where he has to earn her trust back. Cool.

Hats off to the creators and writers of this, what should have been the newest tv series Trek. But I"m glad that its not seeing what they've done with Enterprise so far!

I am headed to the library tonight after work to get the second book. ...

Thanks,

Rosewelsh

What really irritated me was that when I finally started to get into a story, the last one, 'Interphase', about attempting to recover the Defiant from the TOS episode the Tholian Web it suddenly stopped (with a cliff hanger) and says it will be continued in the NEXT volume. I'd like to see how it turns out but I wasn't impressed enough by the other stories in this volume to buy another.