In today’s episode, Kirk’s new pal Stinky Wizzleteats is going to teach him to be happy, and it’ll teach his grandmother to suck eggs. But when the PAL 9000 unveils its plans for galactic expansion, Kirk will have to figure out how to take the people of Timshel beyond Pleasuredome. What kind of garbage agents is the Federation hiring these days? What the heck is a wampus? And has a smooth operator slid into the Enterprise’s DMs? All this and more in The Joy Machine, the book that’s rubbed elbows with Teddy and Freddy!

The Joy Machine
Author: James E. Gunn, from an outline for an unproduced episode by Theodore Sturgeon
Pages: 264, not counting the sinfully indulgent afterword
Published: September 1996
Timeline: Season 1, between “Space Seed” (S1E22) and “This Side of Paradise” (S1E24)
Prerequisites: None

The planet Timshel might well be described as a sort of Risa Lite: perhaps not as bacchanalian as its Next Generation cousin, but similarly beautiful, unspoiled, and a haven of blissful relaxation and self-actualization. Or it was, anyway—they haven’t let anyone in or out for two years now. Among those caught up in the embargo are two Federation agents: Danielle du Molin, an old flame of Kirk’s, and a man by the delightfully terrible name of Stallone Wolff. Danielle’s only communiqué to escape Timshel reports that every adult there is now rocking a silver bracelet with a big ruby in it. Kirk doesn’t recall that fashion trend from his past experience on Timshel, and decides to slip down all incognito-like and get in touch with his scientist friend Kemal Marouk for some straight dope.

It doesn’t take long to find Wolff and Dannie, since they’re already at Marouk’s. But while Jim and Dannie are swapping spit, her ruby glows, and she excuses herself to plug into a nearby couch and collect what she and Marouk’s daughter Tandy call a payday. It sure ain’t no candy bar, but it is a direct deposit of a sort, except instead of money, she gets a hit of pure, uncut happiness that’s so revelatory and rapturous that she zonks out immediately afterward. It must be pretty great for it to take priority over a round of tonsil hockey with James T. Kirk, but one demo is enough for him to be sure he isn’t a fan.

Kirk learns that a philosopher named Emanuel de Kreef is the one responsible for inventing the payday ruby. He felt Timshel’s way of life was making them soft, but his calls for a return to harder, harsher work were, naturally, quite unpopular. So he made a machine that allows its user to feel pure unadulterated joy—if they accumulate enough points through work to earn it. Kirk slaps on a fake bracelet to avoid suspicion and goes with Tandy and her sister Noelle on a guided tour of Timshel City, through which he sees venues of entertainment and personal growth shuttered and people grinding away at menial labor, the most lucrative and coveted path to a payday. Kirk wants some answers whether the world government building takes walk-ins or not, but it too is abandoned, save for a small computer that takes responsibility for all public services and calls itself the Joy Machine. The machine offers Kirk a job and gives him 24 hours to accept.

It might stand to reason that de Kreef runs the show, but even he is hopelessly high on his own supply. Eventually all roads lead back to Marouk, who knocks Kirk out and puts a real bracelet on him. Spock, Bones, and Uhura beam down believing Jim’s in trouble and get the same treatment. It starts to look like Marouk has them all over a barrel: the Joy Machine has spread its operations across too many areas for destroying the central locus to have any effect, it’s bonded to the nervous system and has outlawed emotions and actions antithetical to happiness, and if the Enterprise tries anything funny, it will project a massive payday wave to incapacitate the crew, which if ripped away will only make them crave more and desert en masse. Seems pretty hopeless … until a band of freedom fighters disables the power grid long enough to break into Marouk’s house and abduct Kirk, proving not everyone is happy with the happiness and considerably complicating an already dire situation.

We’ve had authors of noteworthy pedigree before, but James Gunn (not that one) might well be the most illustrious author to grace the pages of Trek lit yet. As far as stories, he’s best known for the 1962 novel The Immortals,1“Novel” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s more accurately described as a “fix-up”, which is a novel cobbled together from several short stories. but he also penned a lot of short stories and sci-fi scholarship and criticism, and was such an institution that the Center for the Study of Science Fiction, which he founded in 1982, was later named in his honor. After his retirement, he served as professor emeritus of the Center until his death in 2020 at the age of 97. Gunn expanded The Joy Machine into a novel from an unproduced TOS episode outline by his friend and colleague Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon was no slouch himself, having turned in the classic episodes “Shore Leave” and “Amok Time”, though veteran readers of Trek novels and/or this website may also recall his breathless praise of Black Fire, a book that let’s just say didn’t quite live up to such a glowing endorsement.

Though always intended as a Star Trek story, The Joy Machine sometimes feels like an idea that was conjured independently of Star Trek that was then forced to fit that mold. Kirk is the only featured Trek character for, I’d say, a good 80 to 85 percent of the novel. He could be easily replaced here by any journeyman space traveler or hired hand. All other appearances by Trek characters feel strictly perfunctory, seemingly more to remind Gunn himself that this is taking place in Star Trek than the reader. The characters pass a sniff test more often than not, which is mildly surprising give that the barest minimum care necessary was taken to make sure their personalities scanned properly, and because Gunn dropped the dreaded “not a fan” qualifier in Voyages of Imagination.

Given the era of Gunn’s prime, it’s easy to spot a lot of hallmarks of 50s and 60s sci-fi manifested here. The first half is very Twilight Zone-ish; it’s very easy to envision Rod Serling holding a cigarette and saying, “Imagine, if you will, a society where men and women toil endlessly not for money, but for the promise of pleasure…” Scenes depicting Joy Machine propaganda and the effects of its brainwashing are appropriately eerie and uniformly rank among the book’s strongest. The second half is more of a straightforward action romp, but the main conflict derives from Cold War–era anxieties about the atomic bomb, as Kirk races against the clock to find a middle ground between conceding victory to the Joy Machine and letting the rebels blow everything sky high. On occasion it recalls some of the more eye-rolling qualities of horseshoe theory, but if Star Trek is about anything, it’s about finding that third option, and since that’s captured well enough, it’s forgivable. It also can’t seem to let go of that old chip on the shoulder about sci-fi not being perceived as Real Literature; there are enough quotations from Shakespeare, poetry, and the Bible to reek of significant overcompensation.

This is one of those times where it sounds like I have nothing but complaints but actually thought it was okay. Those were simply the aspects I felt I could best speak to. But if you’re looking for some things I genuinely enjoyed about it, I liked how the Joy Machine resembled the HAL 9000 but was more well-intentioned and confused than actively malicious. Also, with the party makeup being what it is, the climax bears more than a passing resemblance to “Yet There Is Method in It”, the final mission of my beloved Judgment Rites. (There’s even a non-Starfleet extra tagging along.) (And hey, more Shakespeare!) I won’t be so uncharitable as to say yOu CaN TeLL wHy ThEy DiDnT mAkE tHiS oNe An EpIsOdE, but it definitely shows signs of a specific vintage, and you may feel inclined to grade on that curve while reading.

MVP & LVP

• My MVP for this book is the ship’s computer. Throughout the book, there are hints of ongoing communication between the Joy Machine and the Enterprise computer, which has a profound impact on the latter. Without giving away too much, the resolution of the story feels a bit too easy … but just as you begin to wonder about it, the computer offers up an actually fairly satisfying reason for why that is. It also gets a fun scene verbally sparring with Scotty that makes you wish there had been a lot more of that. To top it off, it gets a moderately heartwarming Flowers for Algernon–esque sendoff at the end. (Don’t worry. That makes sense when you see it.)
• A dual LVP this week, for Danielle du Molin and Stallone Wolff. Section 31 these folks ain’t. They’re both extremely pathetic in very different ways. Wolff is more than happy to dropkick his loyalty to the Federation into a trash can for a small-time gig as a two-bit cop, and enjoys his work with the sick glee that’s sadly all too typical of the profession. Dannie, on the other hand, is in the thrall of the Machine worse than anyone except maybe de Kreef, and it’s painful to watch. Actually, maybe the LVP is whoever hired these two as agents. Step up your vetting process!

Stray Bits

• The sonic appliance revolution continues apace with the mention of “an ultrasound dishwasher” on page 112. I feel like we’re very close to being able to furnish a completely waterless home from 23rd- and 24th-century gadgetry, if we aren’t in fact already there.
• Among the more interesting works cited is a sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay entitled “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare”, available to read from any number of sources. It’s an excellent poem. Reading it, you can see how it would speak to someone like Spock for sure. (p. 228)
• Speaking of quotations, this is the second Star Trek novel in a row to quote Robert Browning—and it’s even the exact same one as last time! (Except quoted more fully here: “A man’s reach should e’er exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”) (p. 263)
• Gunn does something in the afterword that for some reason has always driven me nuts hearing it in interviews, which is that he refers to Theodore Sturgeon and Frederick Pohl as “Ted Sturgeon” and “Fred Pohl”. It’s just a sort of insider unctuousness that feels very gross to me, like when an actor humblebrags about getting to work with “Bobby DeNiro” and “Jimmy Caan”. Like, I will never be in a position where I get to call those guys anything but Robert and James, and it feels like it’s being lorded over me. I don’t know, maybe I’m weird and/or grumpy, but I can’t deny that it grinds my gears.

Final Assessment

Average. Another case of an author of more general and/or harder sci-fi not really grokking that distinctly Trekian je ne sais quoi, though not as disastrous as that sometimes turns out. Gunn’s talent is evident enough here, though the story is mottled with concerns and qualities that are less relevant to modern readers than they would have been to audiences of the 50s and 60s, and it often feels like it wasn’t originally written with Trek in mind. Still, it’s capable enough and deserves at least mild curving.

NEXT TIME: McCoy feels an Aftershock in his Bones