October 23, 1973, was one of the most important days of my life.
It’s not my birthday – that’s August 4, making me one year to the day older than the President, and let me tell you, there is nothing like that to make the average person feel like she has accomplished nothing in her time on this lump of rock we call Earth. It’s not my wedding anniversary – that’s Patriots’ Day, oddly enough, and since I’m divorced, I think of it more as Boston Marathon Day than anything else. It’s not even the day I graduated from college, or my parents’ anniversary, or any sort of normal red letter day.
No, October 23, 1973, is the day I first watched an episode of Star Trek.
Actually, that’s not quite accurate. My first real encounter with the show that became a cult was in the fall of 1967, when I watched the second season opener, “Amok Time,” sitting on my father’s lap. This is the episode where Mr. Spock, the normally cool and logical first officer of the USS Enterprise, goes into the mating frenzy called pon farr and has to return to Vulcan for his wedding. I had no idea what any of this meant, of course, and my chief memory of what Leonard Nimoy has called one of his finest performances was huddling close to Dad as Spock succumbed to his hormones and attacked Captain Kirk with a battle axe. The script, by SF legend Theodore Sturgeon, was a brilliant examination of sex and repression
packaged as space opera to get past the censors at NBC, and of course it all went whisking right over my little seven year old head. And of course after my reaction to “Amok Time,” my parents decided that Star Trek was a little too adult for me.
I’d later read a script in, of all places, middle school English class and seen the occasional clip in reruns, but October 23rd was the night when I was finally old enough and knew enough about science fiction tropes to watch “Operation: Annihilate!” with some idea of what was going on. My parents were out and I was at my aunt’s house, plunked in front of the big cabinet-style Zenith while Betty and her brother Lou cooked dinner, so I had the entire basement – and more important, the Zenith – to myself.
I was hooked. I fell instantly, violently, and eternally in love with everything about Star Trek: the characters, the music, the cardboard sets, the cheesy costumes, the often silly dialogue, the special effects that cobbled together alien berserker weapons out of Sakrete-covered windsocks, William Shatner’s toupee –
Well, not the toupee. But Star Trek (hereinafter “TOS,” for “The Original Series” or just "Trek") hit me the way maybe half a dozen fictional universes have in my entire life. And while my amazingly tolerant parents pretended that their daughter wasn’t obsessed with a TV show that had been canceled several years earlier, I glommed down every single thing I could that was associated with TOS, its actors, and its producers.
I’m not exaggerating. Hugo winner James Blish wrote up each script as a short story, and soon I was collecting those books, one by one. I somehow found copies of Stephen Whitfield’s The Making of Star Trek and David Gerrold’s book about “The Trouble With Tribbles”. I trolled the newsstands after piano lessons on Friday night for any news of TOS or its stars, much to the disgust of my long suffering uncle Lou, who never understood why I had to stop by DiStefano’s every single week to get something. Soon I had a heavy canvas tote bag that contained my Trek books, each one tenderly covered with clear Contac paper to preserve the covers. I even rented a post office box on the sly so I could order the first episode of Starlog, which was all about TOS, without my mother seeing the magazine and possibly exposing my enormous adolescent crush on Mr. Spock.
Inevitably I ran out of adaptations to read and episodes to watch. So I started to write my own.
Yes, gentle readers, I wrote Star Trek fan fiction. Really, really terrible fan fiction about a Mary Sue who captained her very own starship since Starfleet Command seemingly wouldn’t promote a woman to command rank, and had all sorts of implausible adventures before she had an equally implausible romance with Mr. Spock. I wrote in long hand, propped up in my bed with the lights on low after Mum had gone to sleep, and worked on my masterpieces until my eyeballs were ready to fall out. I wouldn’t let anyone see what I wrote, thank God, and if Mum ever read through some of it when cleaning my room, she was wise enough to keep her mouth shut.
Eventually I outgrew my obsession, but I still love Star Trek in all of its permutations, from the animated series that Paramount has all but disowned to the splendid 2009 movie starring Chris Pine and an eerily Nimoyesque Zachary Quinto as Kirk and Spock. I can't wait for the next JJ Abrams movie, since the alternate timeline he's created promises to be just as much fun as Gene Roddenberry's original, plus it's really nice to see a Captain Kirk with his own hair instead of a series of increasingly ridiculous toupees.
As much as I love TOS, though, I’m well aware that some of it and its culture hasn’t aged well. William Shatner’s portrayal of gallant Captain Kirk grew more and more mannered as the series went on, while the third season contained some episodes that would have primitive by the standards of Hugo Gernsback. Many of the early fanzines were mediocre at best, especially the artwork, and the lack of female characters led almost inevitably to a spate of Mary Sues who either were beloved by all and died heroically, or ended up married to the male character of choice and had his babies. That some fanfiction was actually entertaining, and some fan writers (most notably Lois McMaster Bujold and Jacqueline Lichtenberg) made the jump to the pros, is all but miraculous to those of us who’ve read the typical early 1970s fanzine.
And then there were the professional Trek novels.
Bantam, which had the rights to the Blish adaptations, commissioned him to write a full length original TOS novel, not based on any script. The result, Spock Must Die!, wasn’t great but it was readable, plus Blish knew the characters and milieu well enough the book had an authentic flavor in many scenes. It sold decently, and soon Bantam/Paramount commissioned more, each by a professional SF author: Gordon Eklund, David Gerrold, even Joe Haldemann.
None was a bestseller and none was great literature, but they kept the torch lit until the first Star Trek movies came out in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Other pro novels followed most from Pocket Books, and though none is considered canon, many were written by experienced Trek scriptwriters and fan fiction authors who’d gone on to professional publication.
There are still Trek novels being published today, from William Shatner’s collaborations with Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens to Alan Dean Foster’s adaptation of the 2009 movie to spin-off series about original characters like Mackenzie Calhoun and the Starfleet Corps of Engineers. There might be more Star Wars books in print right now, but the Trek section of Barnes & Noble is far from anemic.
Most of these books are solid, entertaining reads. A precious handful are better than the source material. And some, alas, are Voyages So Bad They’re Good.
There are so many Trek novels, by so many authors, that it's inevitable that some would be a waste of time, money, and paper. There aren't quite enough of the bad ones to fill up an entire year’s worth of these diaries, but a couple of months is certainly possible.
Since that would be boring, I’ve taken the time to winnow the selection down to three. One is thinly disguised slash, one is a crossover with another popular 1960s series, and the third is so hilariously awful that the reader is strongly advised against having potables, comestibles, or the family pet anywhere in easy reach.
The Price of the Phoenix, by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath. Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath were Big Name Fans in the 1970s and early 1980s. They were involved in the early Trek conventions, knew most of the cast and production crew, and edited two volumes of fan fiction for Bantam (some of it badly enough that the original authors disowned the stories). Marshak, along with SF pro Jacqueline Lichtenberg and Trek fan Joan Winston, also co-authored a book called Star Trek Lives! that combines critical analysis, a summary of several then-popular fan stories, and an incongruous love of Objectivism considering that most of the cast, crew, and writers of TOS were liberals or progressives.
Marshak and Culbreath were also among the first writers to explore that controversial and much maligned form called “slash” outside the pages of "adult" fanzines and hand-copied samizdat that circulated from fan to fan.
>Slash in its purest form is a type of fan fiction devoted to exploring the romantic/erotic subtext in relationships between characters of the same sex. It takes its name from the virgule between the characters in the pairing. Usually the characters chosen are straight in the actual book/movie/TV show that spawned them, but that hasn’t stopped enthusiastic fans from pairing such unlikely couples as Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi, or Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey. The only rule seems to be that canonical same sex relationships in a story shouldn’t be called slash because, well, there is no homoerotic subtext between characters who are actually in a relationship.
The very first slash was written in 1968 or thereabouts in England, or so fannish legend has it, but it didn't really become popular until a few years later in America. The very first characters slashed with each other were Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. And despite the improbability of a ladies’ man like Kirk getting involved with a lover who could only respond to him every seven years, Kirk/Spock fiction is still being written, illustrated, and enjoyed to this day. There are literally hundreds of web sites and thousands of stories devoted to this pairing, some of them serious, well written, well plotted stories that explore the possibilities of a friendship that becomes something more.
And then there is The Price of the Phoenix.
Star Trek Lives! had devoted much ink to exploring the show’s characters and the fan fiction they inspired. Though slash couldn't be mentioned by name, there was enough mention of the strong, close friendship between Kirk and Spock that it was pretty clear that the authors knew about slash and tacitly approved. And though an explicit relationship between two tough, manly television characters never would have gotten into print in 1977, Marshak and Culbreath came pretty durn close in this book and its sequel, The Fate of the Phoenix.
The Price of the Phoenix starts with a bang: Captain Kirk is killed trying to rescue a family trapped in a burning building. The ruler of the planet where this takes place, a superhumanly strong, intelligent, etc. fellow named Omne, sends his crispy corpse back to the Enterprise, then tells Spock that he's used his advanced scientific knowledge to complete an exact replica of Kirk, down to his memories. He wants Spock to get Vulcan to pull out of the Federation in exchange for the replica, who is called "James" instead of "Jim." Spock agrees, then reneges on the agreement when he learns that Kirk is actually alive. The Romulan commander from third season episode "The Enterprise Incident" shows up and agrees to help Spock rescue Kirk AND James the replica, and much mayhem, quasi-masochistic suffering, and a whole lot of weirdness involving mistaken identity, clones, and plastic surgery results.
It's a dense, melodramatic, and frankly not very good book. What elevates it to being memorably bad is a homoerotic subtext that's so blatant, and so sentimentalized, that one expects Spock to break down sobbing over Kirk's charred remains, or to swing one (or both) of the Kirks up into his strong Vulcan arms and pound him/them through the nearest Starfleet-issue mattress.
For those who think I might, just might, be exaggerating, here are a few quotes from early in the book, when Spock is invited to "inspect the merchandise" that is James-the-replica by performing a mindmeld:
The mind-touch was a lowering of personal barriers. If it did not require privacy, it nonetheless cried out for it.
Spock slipped in easily at the level of warmth. He had been here before. It knew how to accept him.
"He had been there before." Um....
"Jim?" he called, "James." It was a name he never used.
Kirk's head lifted. "Yes?"
"I am going to - mark - you now. It will be - my way back to you, for I think that he will keep you from me."
"Keep - me?" Cheeks moving to swallow. Jaw firming. "Mark me, Spock?"
"Mark me, Spock?" Oh dear....
They left him still standing naked amid candles and flowers. But Spock felt a slender bond stretching between them like a strand of steel and gold.
Read that last quote. Then read it again. And again.
Need I say more?
The Price of the Phoenix and its sequel, The Fate of the Phoenix (this time it's James the replica who's in danger, even after the Romulan commander has him surgically altered to look Romulan so she can take him home to be her boy toy), sold well enough to be reprinted as late as 1993. Alas for the fans, Paramount eventually figured out that naked Kirks surrounded by candles, flowers, and steel/gold bonds with Mr. Spock were not precisely the sort of wholesome, family-oriented Trek the studio wished to promote, and so both books quietly went out of print. Now they're collector’s items, especially the first editions, which are treasured by Trek fans with long memories and a high tolerance for the overblown and the ridiculous.
As for Marshak and Culbreath, they basically vanished from fandom in the early 1980s after writing some much less slashy Trek tie-ins (as well as some fan fiction in Jacqueline Lichtenberg's Kraith universe, which was very influential in Trek fandom). I have been unable to discover what they did next, but it's hard to believe that they could have topped either of their early masterpieces.
Ishmael, by Barbara Hambly. Barbara Hambly’s name should be familiar to any reader of genre fiction. She’s probably best known for fantasies like The Ladies of Mandrigyn and her Benjamin January historical mysteries, but she’s produced everything from romances to thrillers to horror. She’s a good plotter and has a decent era for dialogue, and her books are consistently and reliably entertaining.
And then there’s Ishmael.
At first glance this book is reasonably standard Star Trek: Spock is captured by Klingons, stripped of his memories, and sent back to the 19th century. He finds himself in the Pacific Northwest and is befriended by a wealthy local businessman named Aaron Stemple. Stemple decides to pass Spock off as his nephew, Ishmael, and does his best to assist him as he struggles to regain his memories and return to his own century. Along the way Spock encounters a variety of colorful characters named Jason Bolt, Biddie Cloom, Jeremy Bolt, and Captain Clancey, and gradually the reader comes to realize that she’s heard these names before, though not in connection with Star Trek.
About halfway through, light dawns over Marblehead. And the dulcet tones of a late 1960s hit sung by a young and talented heartthrob waft through the memory…
The bluest sky you've ever seen, in Seattle.
And the hills the greenest green, in Seattle.
Like a beautiful child
Growing up, free and wild.
Full of hopes and full of fears,
Full of laughter, full of tears,
Full of dreams to last a year
In Seattle.
That's when it hits you: Ishmael is not merely an authorized Star Trek novel. It’s Here Come the Brides fan fiction.
Here Come the Brides, for those born after 1970, was a popular series roughly based on the story of the Mercer Girls, a group of New England women who were recruited by Seattle businessman Asa Shinn Mercer to come West as mail-order brides. The series starred singer Bobby Sherman, a young David Soul, and a tall, saturnine Broadway and TV veteran named Mark Lenard as Aaron Stemple. Lenard had appeared on numerous TV shows and had something of a cult following for his skillful acting, aquiline good looks, and beautifully modulated voice.
He had also played Mr. Spock’s father in the second season TOS episode “Journey to Babel.”
That’s right. Barbara Hambly wrote a Star Trek novel that doubled as fan fiction for a series starring the actor who had played Sarek of Vulcan. Even better, she has Spock discover late in the book that Aaron Stemple married one of the titular Brides, had a family, and eventually became the ancestor of Spock’s human mother, Amanda Grayson.
And if that isn’t enough, Hambly, who wrote the first third of the book as a fan novel back in the 1960s and seems to have enjoyed herself immensely updating and expanding it, has just about every popular TV Western character traipse through Seattle at some point, from Paladin to the Mavericks to the Cartwrights to the Virginian. Oh, none of them are named, but it's hard to miss the references based on the characters' descriptions and behavior. Even better, there are cameos by Apollo and Starbuck, Han Solo, and both the Patrick Troughton and Tom Baker versions of Doctor Who.
Ishmael proved surprisingly popular, especially after word about all the other pop culture references got out; according to Hambly herself, Mark Lenard and other veterans of Here Come the Brides had a wonderful time passing Ishmael from hand to hand and laughing themselves silly. And if one can overlook the insanity of having Aaron Stemple mentor his half-Vulcan multiple times great-grandson while the cream of episodic television, two Colonial pilots, a couple of Time Lords, and the man who made Kessel run in under twelve parsecs cavort in the background, the book is, like the usual Barbara Hambly offering, a well written, entertaining read. It’s now out of print due to the publisher finally figuring out exactly what Hambly had done, but unlike most of the books I discuss in these diaries, it’s actually worth reading if you can find it.
But be warned: have a bottle of aspirin nearby when the pop culture references start to fly. You’ll need it.
Spock, Messiah!, by Theodore Cogswell and Charles Spano, Jr. - This is, without a doubt, the single worst Star Trek story I have ever read, either fan or pro. That includes both the books listed above, a truly awful fan novella called The Beast, the bland mediocrity of most of the Pocket Books run, a long, overwritten piece of slash that involved Kirk, Spock, and the bathtub in a New Orleans B&B, and the peculiarly earnest uniqueness that is Jacqueline Lichtenberg's fan universe Kraith.
Some of these are bad enough that you're probably wondering this particular book is so bad. Why is it worse than Marshak & Culbreath? Or Jean Lorrah's The Vulcan Academy Murders, which not only is mediocre Trek but a mediocre mystery? Why is this the book that has come to epitomize everything that is rotten in the United Federation of Planets, at least for me? Why is this so much worse than Kirk, Spock, and a New Orleans bathtub?
Let me count the ways -
- A complete disregard for physical details, like making Scotty a redhead, giving Kirk brown eyes and a "taut, muscular body," and dumping the famous sonic showers in favor what appears to be the very latest in 1970s adjustable needle-spray shower heads by Kohler, Moen, or some other high end plumbing company.
- A story allegedly set on the finest ship in the ultra-liberal, ultra-tolerant, multiracial, multi-ethnic United Federation of Planets repeatedly refers to African characters (most notably Dr. M'Benga, the Vulcan medicine specialist, and Lt. Uhura, the communications chief) as "the black" or "a black," while Lt. Sulu is repeatedly called "the Oriental." It's almost enough to make the reader glad that George Takei was still in the closet to forestall the inevitable references to "the homosexual" or "the gay man."
- Kirk and McCoy not only do not stop a female officer from giving herself an untested psychic implant that gives her a mental bond with a nympho prostitute that turns her into a sex-crazed whore, they laugh about it. While getting drunk in Kirk's quarters, home to the aforesaid needle-spray shower that Kirk uses to clean his taut muscular self. They also call Spock a "Vulcan iceberg" and Kirk teases McCoy about his true feelings for the First Officer (cue up the slash jokes!).
- Ensign Nympho Sex-pot Sara George sabotages Spock's untested psychic implant and hooks him up to the equivalent of a ranting, unwashed street preacher to crack his emotional wall so she can have some sexy-time fun with him ("We were like two rutting cats," she says, even though Spock seemingly doesn't go into pon farr and immediately grab Kirk and/or McCoy for sexy-time fun, disappointing every slasher within spitting distance). She later does a strip-tease that Kirk and McCoy find hilarious to the point of making g-string jokes.
- Spock is now so deeply in thrall to his untested psychic implant that he thinks that he's God, or Muhammad, or Hitler, or all three, and ends up doing his best Paul Muad'dib across most of the sorry little planet the Enterprise is allegedly studying. And because of the alleged bond formed during the aforesaid feline sexy-time incident, Kirk decides that Ensign Nympho Sex-pot George is the perfect person to bring on the Away Team instead of doing what an actual military officer would do and court-martialing her sex crazed sorry self for misuse of Starfleet property, sexual harassment, assault on a superior officer, and generally setting the cause of women's rights back about a millennium.
- Chekov is bitten in his taut, muscular gluteal area by a weird lizard thing called a neelot, which is the local equivalent of a horse. And of course it's funny because, you know, it's Chekov. He also later gets impaled during a fight, but McCoy fixes him right up even though the nuclear wessels are still safely on Earth two centuries earlier.
- There's a climax involving mistaken identity not rutting cats, thank God and the angels, tractor beams, Spock making lewd remarks about Nurse Chapel, and the Vulcan deathgrip that is so utterly ridiculous that whichever editor approved it should have thrown him/herself bodily out a window the instant the Linotype operator started working on the plates.
This book isn't just bad, it's shamefully bad. That Spock, Messiah! not only sold, but sold well enough to be reprinted with a brand new cover depicting Spock in what is evidently Messiah garb and Ensign Nympho Sex-pot George wearing what appears to be a cleverly reconfigured blue plastic ice cube tray on her head, shows just how desperate Trek fans were for more adventures of their beloved ship and crew in the dark, horrible time time between the cancellation of TOS in 1969 and the premiere of Star Trek, The Motionless Picture a decade later.
***
So, gentle readers...what is your favorite lousy Star Trek book? Is it an early stand-alone novel? A Pocket Book mediocrity? A badly illustrated fanzine moldering in the garage? The slash you wrote and never dared show anyone? It can't possibly be as bad as Spock, Messiah! so don't be shy....