Glass Empires

Star Trek Mirror Universe:  Glass Empires
© 2007 Greg Cox, Kevin Dilmore, David Mack, Dayton Ward, and Mike Sussman
458 pages

The original series episode "Mirror, Mirror" visited an alternate universe where familiar characters and institutions existed, but as vulgar perversions of themselves: the Federation was a cruel empire that  bullied smaller powers into subordination,  its members preyed on one another for promotion-by-assassination, and man's animal passions rather than the better angels of his nature ruled the day.   Deep Space Nine revisited this universe, revealing that the Empire had collapsed and that humans were now slaves to a Klingon-Cardassian alliance, and leaders of a new resistance.  Glass Empires is a trilogy set throughout the rise, fall, and aftermath of the Terran Empire -- opening with the reign of Empress Hoshi Sato, who leads the Empire's expansion, continuing with the tale of how Emperor Spock single-handedly destroyed the Empire in an attempt to reform it, and ending with Jean Luc Picard and Vash's tale of resistance as they are forced to choose between the appearance of cybernetic creatures called the Borg, and the hated Alliance.

Action-wise, I enjoyed all three novels thoroughly.  I was more interested in the characterization than the plots, since the conclusion of  the first story was a given and I'd already read the full novel-sized version of the second story. The third was the only major unknown for me.  A few of Trek's more interesting characters are here (Shran, the Soong family), and it's amusing to see once-familiar characters behaving somewhat badly.The Enterprise characters become more interesting in general when they're evil, unlike the DS9 characters who were just silly. (At least, in the show: the Niners are noshows here.) The collection has some continuity bugs, though, not surprising given how many authors contributed. One story alludes to the family of Khaan Noonien Singh as the original imperial family, but another story mentions that genetic engineering was forbidden, almost as if the writers forgot this was the mirror universe. Maybe Khan and his family forbad genetic engineering to make sure they had no rivals, but if so that should have been mentioned.  Secondly,  as much as I liked the idea of an alternate Wolf 359 where a Klingon-Cardassian fleet is trashed, why were the Borg there? In the original TNG run, Picard was introduced to the Borg by Q, who wanted to punish him for his arrogance;  the Borg then became interested in the Alpha Quadrant after reading the Enterprise's databanks and began sniffing around.  Here they just show up and start assimilating, as if it were preordained.  The problem with the mirror universe of DS9 and much of these stories is that it's just not different enough:  the only distinction is that humans created an empire instead of peaceful federation, and interstellar affairs have developed differently as a result.  We'll see if things improve..


Related:

• Dark Mirror,  Diane Duane. Easily my favorite Mirror Universe novel, this was published before DS9 ever revisited the mirror universe and builds on the same premise as the original: the Enterprise-D exists, but all of our favorite characters are corrupted and evil.  Humanity itself is darker at its core: when the "real" Picard browses his counterpart's library, he is appalled at the directions mirror-Shakespeare had taken in his work. 
• The Sorrows of Empire, David Mack. A full-length version of the middle story here, about Spock doing his Hari Seldon impersonation. 

Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures

Star Trek Enterprise, Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures
© 2013 Christopher L Bennett
356 pages

 The Romulan War is over, and with it, Michael Martin’s authorship of the Enterprise Relaunch.  The newest Enterprise novel, Rise of the Federation: A Choice of Futures, is penned by reader favorite Christopher L. Bennett,  whose previous novels are steeped in scientific enterprise. A Choice of Futures is grounded in politics, with a bit of crime and a scientific thread woven in to great effect: though initially minor, it features prominently in the novel's conclusion and allows Bennett to fly the flag of Star Trek optimism by asserting that the Federation's success is stemmed in its pursuit of knowledge, diplomacy, and peace -- not empire and force. That can't be taken for granted with this fledgling Federation; its predecessor, the Coalition of Planets, collapsed, and the tensions which kept it which like lingering animosity between the Vulcans and Andorians are still present. Managing the multitude of problems inherent in creating a government which consists of planets occupied by widely-varying species, languages and cultures, amid a conspiracy by Shadowy Criminal Forces engineering problems, could break or harden such an idealistic polity. All that provides enormous tension to keep a reader riveted, and that's before character drama comes into play, like Trip Tucker’s continuing involvement with Section 31 and Malcolm Reed’s  coming-of-age as he takes command of his own ship.  Trip's line is in fact that only hindrance to readers new to the series or Trek literature in general. Otherwise, A Choice of Futures is a clean slate for the series, and its future looks bright if this first work by Mr. Bennett is any indication. He deftly combines mystery, action, fresh treatments of older characters, and a little science into a fairly exciting read. Its chief flaw is the cover, which is about as exciting as steamed beets.

Beneath the Raptor's Wings

The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wings
© 2009 Michael A. Martin
450 pages (Trade Paperback)

Humanity's enthusiastic expansion into the Cosmos and Earth's leadership in forming the Coalition of Planets have earned it an enemy in the Romulan Star Empire. Ambitious, sinister, and ruthless, the Romulans  intend on striking down all those they cannot control. After repeated failed attempts to sow discord between the Coalition allies,  the Star Empire decides on a more direct approach: war.  Armed with fleets of their own and the ability to hijack the computers of other ships,  "those who march beneath the raptor's wings" are intent on crushing humanity beneath them.

Though the Coalition Compact supposedly guarantees Earth  support from her allies,  the Vulcans are reluctant to be drawn into a conflict with their long-seperated cousins, whose very existance embarrasses them. Andor and Tellar are far more enthusiastic, but when their flagships are turned into Romulan playthings,  they, too question the use of coming to Earth's defense.  Earth, defended only by a handful of NX-class starships and a dozen or so older Daedaluses, stands alone against enemies whom they've never seen face to face. Captain Archer and his fellow captains must hold the line in the wake of multiple defeats while political intrigues and episonage abound.

The TOS episode "Balance of Terror" set a few elements of the Earth-Romulan war in stone. It was a primitive affair, fought with nuclear bombs and missiles, and fought expressly between Earth and Romulus. Martin manages to reconcile this with the much more modern feel of Enterprise and the existence of the Coalition, while at the same planting seeds for the idea of a stronger union -- the future Federation. Beneath the Raptor's Wings is a busy story: though Archer and Tucker's separate stories constitute most of the book, they're joined by more than few other plot threads and viewpoint characters, including Romulans. While this isn't disjointing, the frequent thread shifts (there are 85 short chapters) did take some getting used to. As is common with most Trek books in this generation, Martin seeds continuity references and in-jokes all over the place.

The book is essentially a combination of war story and espionage thriller with a good bit of politics thrown in. It kept me reading -- I think I read most of its 450 pages in one day, which was rather wearisome but I did not want to stop.  (It was well after midnight when I finished, and I came close to going to sleep on the floor where I was reading.)  Though I know the war eventually concludes in a rough draw (which established the Neutral Zone), Martin still managed to make me feel concerned about Earth's extensive losses, and I could never predict the course of the action.

Treklit readers, especially Enterprise relaunch fans, will find it worth their while.

Related:
Starfleet: Year One, Michael Jan Friedman. This book is set in the last part of the Earth-Romulan war, though it was published before Enterprise and is sadly not reconcilable with the modern canon. That's a shame, too, because this book along with the first Stargazer book sold me on Friedman, and offers a compelling look into the founding of the Federation and the formation of Starfleet and its mission goals. It's also very much in the feel of TOS -- a believable predecessor.

While Daedalus are treated as obsolete buckets from yesteryear in Raptor's Wing, in Starfleet: Year One, they're the cutting edge and every captain in Earth's space fleet wants to sit in the prototype's captain's seat. 

Kobayashi Maru

Star Trek Enterprise: Kobayashi Maru
© 2008 Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels
482 pages

"This is the Kobayashi Maru, nineteen periods out of Altair VI. We have struck a gravitic mine and have lost all power..."

The Kobayashi Maru has a special place in Trek lore,  featuring prominently in both Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek (2009).  A training-command scenario based on the ship's destruction tasks a cadet with effecting the rescue of the Federation fuel transport disabled in enemy territory against impossible odds -- literally impossible, for the simulation is rigged. No matter what brilliant tactics and deft maneuvering ordered by the commanding cadet,  there are always more Klingon ships to contend with: their every choice leads inexorably to death. That is, of course, the point of the scenario -- the "no-win" scenario. It forces the student in command to face fear, defeat, and death.

Authors Martin and Mangels set the original ("historical") Kobayashi Maru in early Federation history, shortly before the Romulan war. The Federation as we know it does not yet exist, and its predecessor -- the Coalition of Planets -- is still young and fragile. Its four founding members are strong-willed, driven by separate ambitions. They don't hesitate to deal behind the others' backs to gain an advantage, but such disunity is dangerous. The Klingon Empire is strong and mighty, its warships formidable and intimidating even to Vuclans. Skulking in the shadows are the Romulans, who live by Julius Caesar's "divide and conquer": having failed to prevent the coalition alliance from forming in Enterprise's fourth season, they are nonetheless still at work attempting to sow division between their rivals until such time as the Star Empire is ready to rule them.

As Earth, Vulcan, Tellar, and Andoria grouse amongst themselves, seemingly anxious to go poking dozing Klingons with sticks,  Captains Johnathan Archor and Ericka Hernandez ply the trade routes looking for foes in the wake of recent attacks against Coalition shipping rumored to be the work of Klingons. Archer sees the string of mysterious attacks as the work of Romulans, and is anxious to prove it -- but his best friend and former chief engineer Trip Trucker is still working as a covert agent inside Romulus,  hoping to prevent the Star Empire from creating a warp-seven capable starship. Drama mounts throughout the book as attacks on Coalition interests increase and Trip's 'Romulan' comrades become more paranoid. Archer, feeling increasingly alone as the only commanding officer in Starfleet working to keep the peace with the Klingons and urging the Coalition to take a harder look at Romulus, is left without his first officer and best tactical hand when two of his senior staff steal a shuttle and attempt to infiltrate enemy territory The drama reaches its climax around the same time that Archer receives a distress call from the Kobayashi Maru, a fuel freighter stranded in enemy territory, forcing Archer into a difficult decision.

Though it started out slow,  I liked Kobayashi Maru more the deeper I ventured into it. Drama abounds, mostly political and character-driven. Though I knew how the book would end (I bought this at the same time I bought its sequel, Beneath Raptor's Wings: the Romulan War),  Martin and Mangels still managed to provide plenty of tension, sending Archer to Quo'nos to be manhandled by insulted Klingons and sending Trip on a path so perilous that he sighs in text at the prospect of having yet another disruptor leveled at his head.  I didn't expect the plot twists in Trip's thread of the story.  The authors pepper the text with humor and little tie-ins to other Trek books and episodes, though the frequent uses of "Jesus Christ!" as an expletive were jarringly anachronistic. This is, unfortunately, not simply a trait of Martin and Mangels: I've noticed it in other authors, as well.  While I'll cop to being plenty biased (I like the predominant secularism of Roddenberry's Federation culture) the all-too-frequent use of contemporary expletives, Jesus Christ among them, make the characters seem more 20th century than 24th. I will admit, though, that Archer's silently mouthing "Whiskey...tango...foxtrot" got a smile from me. The only major flaw of the book is that it seems strangely-titled: while the Kobayashi Maru appears at a climactic moment, it's really more a moment of personal crisis for Archer than a question of strategy. The ship's legendary appearance is overshadowed completely by the diplomatic crisis that leads us straight into the Romulan War miniseries. 

While I generally disdain quantitative scales in regards to books, rating my reads on Shelfari has broken down my resistance somewhat. I'd probably call this a 3.7- 3.8 out of five, or a "pretty good" on the vernacular scale. 

The Good that Men Do

Star Trek Enterprise: the Good that Men Do
© 2007 Michael Martin and Andy Mangels
464 pages

There's a man who leads a life of danger

 To everyone he meets he stays a stranger

 With every move he makes another chance he takes

 Odds are he won't live to see tomorrow!

 Secret Agent Man! Secret Agent Man!

 They've given you a number and taken away your name....

No series finale and few episodes of any of the various Star Trek shows are treated with as much loathing as "These are the Voyages", the series finale of Enterprise. The reasons are numerous, but the useless death of a major character and the episode's framing device are particularly despised. The episode is treated as a holographic recreation of one of Enterprise's missions -- the mission that caused the aforementioned useless death, and Commander William Riker is viewing the historical events as a way of drumming up courage to confess something to Captain Picard.  The device effectively turns the last Enterprise episode into various scenes tucked into TNG's "The Pegasus", but its portrayal as a holographic recording allowed Martin and Mangels to reinterpret the story with  framing device of their own.

Late in the 25th century, Captain Nog of Starfleet makes his way to see his best friend, the famous author Jake Sisko. While reviewing recently declassified files from Starfleet's early history, he's stumbled upon something that would make a compelling novel in the hands of a gifted author -- historical records that indicate that the accepted history of the Federation's beginnings is fabricated. A Starfleet commander was declared dead, even though new records indicate that he played a far more active role in historical events yet to come than would be expected of a dead man, and new records make the official story look painfully fabricated. And so the two old friends spend an evening viewing the records together, finding out what really happened in the days before the birth of the Coalition of Planets, the Federation's progenitor.  The novel is in essence a ret-con of "These are the Voyages", one sanctioned by Paramount and CBS, that turns one of the series' most badly received episodes into a fantastic novel of politics, espionage, and war. For the sake of the Federation's survival, one man will fake his own death so he may steal into the shadows and infiltrate enemy territory to prevent a war from endangering the lives of billions.

The Good that Men Do redeems "These are the Voyages" while giving attention to my favorite character from Enterprise, Commander 'Trip' Tucker. In addition to undoing some of the episode's 'mistakes', Martin and Mangels also iron out all the various oddities of the episode, but The Good that Men Do can stand on its own. It is the introduction to the Enterprise relaunch, and in recounting Tucker's story makes  the Relaunch's first major arc obvious: the mysterious Romulan Star Empire is ambitious and paranoid, and sees in Earth's attempts to unite the worlds of Vulcan, Andor, Tellar, and Coridan a major threat against its future plans of expansion. War seems unavoidable, but Tucker -- aided by a mysterious and autonomous intelligence department within Starfleet -- intends to make Romulus' job as difficult as possible.  Martin and Mangels tackle the Tucker/T'Tpol dynamic well, though I'm surprised Archer agreed to Tucker's plans so readily. In any case, I want to read more of these guys and look forward to Star Trek's new "007"'s adventures.

Related:

• "Journey to Babel",  in which the Enterprise carries delegates from Vulcan, Andor, and Earth to discuss Coridan's entry into the Federation. I wonder how much work their make-up artists went through...(The episode introduced Sarek, Spock's father.)
• Cloak, S.D. Perry; Rogue, Martin and Mangels; Abyss, David Weddle and Jeffrey Lang;  and Shadow, by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. All four novels deal with the same autonomous intelligence department, although by the late 24th century it's degenerated into a far less innocent organization. 
• The Good that Men Do on Memory Alpha
• Martin and Mangels on Memory Alpha
• Enterprise Relaunch on TvTropes