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!
Tag: old flame Page 1 of 2
This week, the Enterprise gets totaled, and worst of all, they can’t even sell it for scrap. But Picard is determined to get it back in one piece, and it’ll take more than some hairy mud to stop him. Meanwhile, Data helps ease a socially awkward girl into the complexities of contact with the most frightening creature of all: men. What’s the benefit of being voluntarily overweight in the future? What does Riker really get out of playing the trombone? And is there any Earth sport Worf won’t treat like gladiatorial combat? All this and more in Grounded, the book that demonstrates the real reason for technobabble.
This week, three children from a previous episode contend with the most dangerous alien force of all: puberty. But their joyride in a stolen starship takes an alarming turn when the Federation realizes there’s also an experimental cloaking device prototype on board. It’s bad enough for Kirk to have to cancel a meeting with a council of Contra-teens (which isn’t going so hot anyway) and call in some favors from an old friend—and I do mean old. Are the kids in fact alright? Is Kirk still carrying a gross torch for Miri? Wouldn’t you have an itchy trigger finger if you were a redshirt? It’s the book that, sadly, isn’t just 300 pages of Dr. McCoy dunking on basic white people.
This week, Spock is honored to host a delegation of scientists who are in the neighborhood for the Nobel/Z.Magnees Prize ceremonies. It’s not long, however, before he subsequently gets framed for their attempted murder. To clear his friend’s name, Kirk will have to work on the sly to avoid ninja Vulcans and a commodore who never met an insubordination charge she didn’t like. What’s with all the robots? How freaky is Pathfinder porn? It’s the book that still couldn’t manage to make Mira Romaine interesting.
How Much for Just the Planet? serves up blue orange juice and inflatable rubber starships straight out the gate and only gets weirder from there. If you’re looking for the wackiest, goofiest, zaniest, most out-there Star Trek there is to be had, then you can stop drillin’, ’cause you struck oil. The only previous novel it has anything even remotely in common with is Ishmael, and even then, that’s only in the sense that there is absolutely no way, in this day and age when publishers are supremely and exclusively concerned with The Brand, that it would ever get published today. John M. Ford’s second and final Trek book is daring, clever, silly, wildly original, and like no Star Trek adventure before it or since.
I also do not like it very much.