Shore Leave is the non-Trek culture arm of the Deep Space Spines website, posted every other Tuesday and made possible by donations to the site’s Patreon.
All Trek and no anything else makes Jess a dull reader, so when I get ahead on site reading (writing being another matter entirely), I see what the more earthbound side of the literary world has to offer. The past two weeks took me in a direction I don’t often go: fantasy.
This week, Kirk disappears while helping a Klingon ship stuck in a storm and wakes up 100 years in the future, where it would seem the Klingons have turned over a new leaf. While they prepare to return him to his own time and groom him for his role in ushering in the Great Peace, Spock calls in all his favors to get to the bottom of what’s really going on. Does Kirk listen to himself when he talks? What does Spock have to do to get some respect around here? How can you make up something called “The Hole” and then not devote fifty pages to it? It’s Timetrap, the book that’s not-so-subtly trying to tell you “drugs are bad, m’kay.”
Today it’s time for Time for Yesterday, the sequel to one of only a handful of books from the earliest days of the Pocketverse that can unequivocally be called good. When stars begin prematurely going nova, an admiral gets the classic power trio back together to figure out why the Guardian of Forever decided to take a lunch break. But when their freelance help’s attempt at telepathic contact gets her Deebo’d, Spock’s best idea is to recruit his son for the job—but he’ll have to interrupt the Guardian’s DVR recording of Game of Thrones to pull it off. Has Spock mellowed out as a dad? Would the Guardian of Forever be a clingy friend? Can I get my name legally changed to Rorgan Death-Hand? It’s the book where our heroes are running out of time, until they aren’t.
Shore Leave is the non-Trek culture arm of the Deep Space Spines website, posted every other Tuesday and made possible by donations to the site’s Patreon.
I’ve gotten far enough ahead on Star Trek reading to feel comfortable checking out some other stuff, and first up came Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller. It’s the future, and climate change has wrecked most of the continents, so now people live on these island cities in the Arctic powered by geothermal energy, such as the one in this story, called Qaanaaq. Of course, it’s the same tune with a different beat—there are still those who are obscenely wealthy and those who are unbelievably destitute doing anything they can to scrape by. But then a woman who can step to all comers shows up riding a killer while and shakes up the social order, and several characters from wildly different walks of life find a connection they never realized they had.
This week, a Vulcan science colony gets rocked by a plague that threatens to flush its reputation for diversity down the sonic toilet. But that’s not all: the local hydroelectric plant is short-staffed and falling apart, and if they don’t get it up to code before the spring thaw, the snowflakes could trigger a flood that will have everyone frantically searching for a safe space. Can Drs. McCoy and M’Benga and some old friends find a cure-all that will cure all? It’s The IDIC Epidemic, the book that makes a Benetton ad look like a Klan rally.
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