#252: Martyr (NF #5)

In today’s episode, when Captain Calhoun fits the profile of an ancient prophecy, he decides to lean into his celebrity status a bit. But when he disappears under mysterious circumstances, he leaves behind the horniest crew in the Beta Quadrant. Do Starfleet officers underrate yelling as a means of getting things done? Are Vulcans technically childfree? And what happens if you shut down a tricorder while it’s updating? All this and more in Martyr, the book that has some official pronoun updates for us.

#251: Trapped in Time (DS9 YA #12)

In today’s episode, when a temporal physicist invents a stable portal to the past, it’s fair to say he did Nazi a twist coming. Now Jake, Nog, and Chief O’Brien must stop the time tamperer before he can put Reich what (he thinks) once went wrong. Is O’Brien exempt from suffering in kids’ books? Should this changeling be more melty? And is it really necessary to look at your dump before you flush it? All this and more in Trapped in Time, the book with a bold what-could-have-been in the casting department!

#250: Vengeance (DS9 #22)

In today’s episode, if you don’t check the veracity of scary new rumors, you’ll look really bad later if they turn out to be true. But no matter how you slice it, while you’re away, the Klingons will play, and you’d better hope the folks you left home are up to the job. Does anyone in 2023 find the Garak/Bashir ship “puzzling”? What does the reading list to just be able to understand humans look like? And is this the fall of the house of Quark? All this and more in Vengeance, the book with the cover appearance so egregious it made me coin the word readbait.

Side Trekked #3: Brent Spiner, “Fan Fiction”

The great film critic Gene Siskel used a clever litmus test to justify a movie’s existence. He would ask, “Is this movie more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?” Fan Fiction, a “mem-noir” nominally written by Brent Spiner, calls for a slightly modified version: “Is this style of writing more interesting than just a straightforward memoir?” The answer in this case, I think, is no.

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