From Publishers Weekly
The latest entry in Shatner's Quest for Tomorrow series opens with an explanation that this installment is set in an alternate universe, one in which hero Jim Endicott did not murder his father. To save his son from his enemies this time, Carl Endicott sends teenage Jim off on a multi-generational ship, the Outward Bound, en route to colonize a distant galaxy. Once aboard, Jim loses his cache of gold, and falls in with the "Stone Cowboys," a gang of space street thugs vying for control of the colony ship. Soon, the shrewd Jim is bedding Sam, the sexiest of the Stone Cowgirls, and reluctantly dealing the psychoactive sex drug Heat. Suspicious of Heat's side effects, which cause users to turn homicidal, Jim and the Cowboys learn that Ur-Barrba, their alien drug connection,has supplied the drug to stop the Outward Bound in its mission. Jim and his buddies storm Ur-Barrba's starship, and trick its occupants into eating food laced with Heat. Afterwards, the former gang members depart the colony ship aboard Ur-Barrba's rig, which they've commandeered and renamed the Endeavour, while turning their attention toward selecting a captain and setting off on, presumably, a series of new adventures. While the first three installments of Shatner's saga centered on the evolution of humanity into a "superbrain," his current offering of a more pedestrian tale with its "just say no" theme and gratuitous swinging space sex never quite reaches warp speed. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The fourth of Shatner's efforts to ape Heinlein's classic sf juveniles is set in the alternate universe of
Step into Chaos. Instead of killing his putative father, Carl Endicott, Jim Endicott has killed the SWAT team sent to capture him. He still carries the genome vital to linking the human race together in an organic computer, and the stakes of success are high, because humanity is no third-class power but an aggressively expanding empire. Fortunately, such imperial expansion offers Jim a safe way off Wolfsbane, and beyond reach of the authorities, aboard the intergalactic colony ship
Outward Bound. On it, he falls in with a Prole-born gang of drug dealers, wrestles with his conscience, falls in love, survives gang wars and the suspicion that he is a police spy, and finally discovers that the drugs are being supplied by aliens to sabotage the ship's voyage. When that discovery is revealed, a shipboard revolt results in Prole control, and Jim is one of the new leaders. The action is speedy, and the ship is a well-drawn setting, though one wonders at what point the new universe is going to be linked to the old one. One also suspects that the series' new setting and situation are a Shatner device for scaling back Jim's powers and accomplishments, thereby putting some suspense back into the fights he gets into. If it is, it is successful. Moreover, Jim is more sympathetic, approachable, and real than before, though he faces no less danger and difficulty.
Roland Green
