Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining spy game set on 20th century Star Trek Earth
Review: I really enjoyed this book, one that shed a great deal of light on a very little explored aspect of history in the Star Trek universe, that of the late 20th century. Covering events from 1974 to 1989, it does not cover the Eugenics Wars per se, but the events leading up to them, largely centering around the origins of Khan Noonien Singh (and his genetically enhanced brothers and sisters) and of Khan's boyhood and early adulthood.
The first volume at least might be well sub-titled "The Further Adventures of Gary Seven, Roberta Lincoln, and Isis," characters we first encountered in a Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) episode set in 1968 Earth, where Kirk and company encounter a genetically enhanced human operative from an alien world (operating for a mysterious organization called the Aegis), posted on Earth to save humans from themselves (mostly from nuclear annihilation). Readers may remember that Roberta Lincoln was a young woman native to Earth that became caught up in events in that TOS episode and subsequently became an agent working for Gary Seven. Isis is never really truly explained, but is apparently an alien cat that is able to take the shape of a human woman at times and is highly intelligent. Together the three have apparently had many adventures much in the mold of James Bond, playing behind the scenes spy games to save the world countless times. It is in this role that they become involved in the events described in the book, namely trying to discover what is happening to the some of the world's top geneticists (who are disappearing) and rumors of some mysterious organization that is dabbling in genetic engineering and biological warfare.I do not intend my statement that the book focuses on those three as a criticism, as it is understandable that they are the main characters, if for no other reason then that Khan ("Noon" as a child) and his enhanced brethren are children for much of the book. Khan for the main adventure of the book is barely present or marginally involved most of the time, though later in the book becomes more and more important as he grows up and starts to flex some of his tremendous abilities. Genetic engineering is an understandable theme running through the book; Khan and his "supermen," the genetically enhanced nature of Gary Seven, the villainous geneticists in the book, and a framing story set not long after the first encounter with Khan in TOS episode, where Kirk is considering a request by the Paragon Colony on the planet Sycorax request to join the Federation, a human colony long isolated from the Federation and one that had a population comprised entirely of genetically enhanced individuals. The framing story - the "present" of the novel - is interesting though rarely visited, and is a tool for telling the main plot of the novel, as it shows Kirk researching the history of the Eugenics Wars as preparation to the decisions he has to make upon arrival at the colony. I really enjoyed the interweaving of the novel's plot with previously established events in Star Trek history in the past (such as Kirk and company's visit to 1986 San Francisco to look for whales) and in real world history, many of which are quite cleverly made fundamental parts of the storyline, their importance taking on a whole new light. These historical events are addressed in a nice after word at the end of the book. All in all I really liked the book; Greg Cox is certainly one of the best Star Trek writers out there. The writing that produced the previous book of his that I read, his excellent Q Continuum Trilogy, is still top notch evidently, demonstrating a very good grasp of the characters and history of the Star Trek universe. My only minor criticism is the cover has little to do with the events of the novel; it appears to show American forces fighting Vietnam (not a part of the novel) and shows Khan a bit older than he appears in the story.
Rating:
Summary: Delighted to see it start. Hated to see it end.
Review: I resisted the urge not to buy this book, because it clearly said Vol. 1. Nonetheless my despair at seeing it end was overwhelmed by the wonder of the book itself. The years between "now" and the commencement of the Star Trek saga some three hundred years up the road have been a void. Occasionally, someone (usually Spock) will comment about days gone past, but for the most part the past was the past; seldom referenced and certainly never fully explored. Of course, the original series episode "Assignment Earth" changed all that. There, the Enterprise went back in time to Our day and time (at least this was so when the series first aired). I was (and remain) less than enthused about that character, and certainly his sidekick the ditzy Roberta Lincoln. But somehow, author Greg Cox brings them all together. He brings them together with the most compelling guest EVER brought into the series, Kahn Noonien Singh. He was conceived the
Chrysalis Project, an idea spawned by some of the worlds best scientists, led by whiz-bang geneticists. Their goal (like half the bad guys ever born) is to create a race of supermen - better living through chemistry, as the old commercials said. They make it work, creating a pleasingly inter-cultural group of children to take command of the entire planet. The cream of this
genetically improved crop of course is our Man, K.N.S. Most of the plot covers the attempts of Gary Seven (who we may recall is a human trained and used for good by some other advanced aliens). His challenge is to close down the Project, and prevent its progeny from taking over the world. We know, however, form seeing Space Seed a couple of hundred times (thank you, syndication!), than he cannot succeed. Spock tells us that Kahn came to rule some large percentage of Earth in
his day. We don't get there here, (makes me crave Vol. 2), but seeing Kahn's development from life as a young boy is a fascinating read. Some criticize the book because of a lack of characterization and plot associated with Kirk and the crew. I found that they were not missed at all, as the life of young "Noon" was sufficient for me. Unlike another, I enjoyed the interspersion of current events as we know (?) them. It's been years since I enjoyed the original series. I had never read a book related to Star Trek before this one. Now that Vol. 2 is out, I am eager for the next installment.
Rating: 
Summary: Khan: Strong Story Hurt by Multiple Points of View
Review: I suspect that the majority of readers of Star Trek are also inveterate fans of both the various incarnations of the original series and the movie sequels. It is no surprise, then, that Star Trek novels, while containing the standard plot devices of all novels, also feature a myriad of allusions to episodes from the moving screen. In THE EUGENICS WARS (volume one), author Greg Cox brings back one of the most celebrated cinematic villains of all time: Khan Noonien Singh, a genetically enhanced ubermench of the twentieth century. In the original Star Trek episode 'Space Seed', Captain Kirk revives a group of previous earth rulers from suspended animation, each of whom is the result of genetic manipulation that enhanced their strength, intelligence, and viciousness. These supermen are led by Khan Noonien Singh, a brute whose lust for power nearly wrecked a pre-Federation earth. In THE EUGENICS WARS, Greg Cox has written the first of a two volume prequel that fills in the gaps between the time Khan is born and when he next appears in 'Space Seed.' It is very nearly impossible to read Cox's book without keeping in mind the superlative job Ricardo Montalban did as Khan. There was much to admire about the swaggering Khan that even Kirk could admire. Cox takes this multifaceted Khan from the moving screen and, in placing him on the printed page, loses nothing of the fearsome if not perverted strength and allure of Montalban's Khan. Cox uses a writing device often used by dozens of other Star Trek authors--a framing sequence. Here Kirk is discussing with Doctor McCoy the virtues and vices of human genetic tinkering. McCoy reminds Kirk that it was just such a tinkering that led to a ruinous war that exterminated much of earth's 20th century population. Fascinated with the topic, Kirk uses his ship's computers to spin out the complete story. It is this computerized version of history that forms the bulk of the novel. Despite a strong story line and an equally strong Khan as antagonist, much of the power of the tale was reduced by Cox's overuse of a multiple narrative viewpoint and an annoying use of coincidence to make the plot work. Essentially, THE EUGENICS WARS is told from three perspectives: Gary Seven, who is himself the result of genetic manipulation; Roberta Lincoln, who began the televised episode as Seven's secretary but in this book is his trusted assistant; and Khan himself. As I was led from one perspective to another, I had trouble keeping straight as to who the protagonist was meant to be. Was it Seven, who represents the right use of advanced power? Was it Ms. Lincoln, in whose trendy flip women's lib attitudes that the reader should focus? Or was it Khan, whose unwavering sense of destiny stamps him as the world leader that he surely thinks he is? Ironically enough, Khan's criticisms of Seven as one who has the power to change the world but chooses not to do so are not far off the mark. Seven tries mightily to keep the earth from self-immolation, but he clearly fails at critical times. Clearly, Khan and Seven are opposite sides of the same genetically altered coin. As for Roberta Lincoln, she is the weakest of the viewpoints. Her flippant and juvenile remarks about the many villains she faces leads the novel seriously astray. All too often she comes off like a school girl annoyed at a teacher who has given her detention for chewing gum in class. Much of the novel was a delight with its many references to the original series and its many spinoffs: the Borg, Q, Jack the Ripper, and Roswell. I have not yet read the second volume, although I suspect that it recounts Khan's gradual grabbing of the seat of world dominion. Even though I know the end of the Khan saga from both the television series and from the movie THE WRATH OF KHAN, I still found THE EUGENICS WARS a fun read. More than once, Khan's use of his enhanced body brought to mind that great power breeds great ambition, which, if unchecked by compassion and humanity, must ultimately lead to great ruin. The calamity of a ruined earth surely attests to that.
Rating: 
Summary: Good premise peters out
Review: I'm a firm believer that the only real Star Trek is the original series, so I was really excited about this book and bought it the day it was released. There is some pointless bookending with Kirk and crew that frankly could have been dropped all together, though that surely would have upset many of the more rabid Star Trek fans. The setup for the Eugenics Wars by Greg Cox was well thought out and believable (within the context of Star Trek). The use of Gary Seven was a very good idea and Cox does a good job with his characterizations of both Mr. Seven and his agent Roberta. The major failing with the book is that, inexplicably, in the last two- or three chapters a number of references to characters that weren't created until TNG/DS9/Voyager, etc., are introduced. I can only guess that a Paramount honcho was reading this and said to Cox, "I don't understand, where are the Star Trek characters?" Star Trek to this honcho being anything other than the original series. The first volume in this series is defintely worth a read (though you'll get pretty irritated with the last few chapters if you're a true Star Trek fan). Unfortunately, the second volume doesn't hold the same allure. I would have given this a five but for the references to non-Star Trek characters.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Start!
Review: I've read both books in this two-parter, and Book 1 was an excellent, scarily plausible historical "backgrounder" to the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s. I liked the liberal interspersing of characters from "Trek lore" in this book, such as Ralph Offenhouse from the NextGen episodes and later "Debtor's Planet" where he reveals that his business connections were part of what helped the genetic-engineering consortium create people like Khan Singh, or Gillian Taylor of Star Trek IV (the movie) fame.
I didn't mind the focus being on Gary Seven and his associates, since Khan Singh prior to about 1989 wouldn't really show his dangerous megalomania until post-1989 (and you can see some of that hubris show through in the way he savages Gary Seven's office), and so Seven's attempts to steer Khan Singh into more worthy pursuits are well-placed even if they were, as we know, ultimately futile.
As a nuclear chemist I liked the added touch where Cox explains specifically how the geometry (and by implication, the uranium being used) of the nuclear plant's power rods were designed to provide the necessary critical mass for a nuclear bomb, as real-life nuclear reactors do not, either by deliberate design or simply by the nature of their construction, have the necessary amount of uranium or the right geometry to explode catastrophically like a nuclear weapon if they "go critical".
Rating:
Summary: Depends if you are a Trek fan.
Review: If I had to give this book a brief description, I'd call it "eye candy for Star Trek fans". Have you ever watched an episode of a television series and thought "I wonder what will happen to those characters?" regarding guest stars? This will answer at least part of that question regarding characters from the Star Trek episode "Assignment: Eternity", as we see Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln after they met the crew of the Enterprise. The main point of the book is to give the reader a view into the life of Khan Noonien Singh before the episode "Space Seed". I thought it was reasonably effective in that regard. If you are a Trek Fan, I strongly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Double-Oh-Extraterrestrial
Review: James Bond should be this good. The original Star Trek series introduced in the episode "Assignment: Earth" two brilliant characters, extraterrestrial secret agent Gary Seven and his assistant, Greenwich Village hippy Roberta Lincoln, in a sadly failed attempt to spin them off into their own show. Author Greg Cox has an eye for what 1960s television execs missed, and presents the pair - with their added helpmeet, Isis the cat - in another excellent story to follow up his first (Assignment: Eternity). In The Eugenics Wars, Cox credibly ties the Star Trek universe's own 1960s to 1980s time-bound characters together, in an immensely satisfying spy/adventure yarn. Gary Seven - extraterrestrial secret agent with a mission to keep Earth from destroying itself in its crucially developmental period of the late twentieth century - stumbles upon evidence of a dangerous project in 1974. Famous genetic researchers have been mysteriously disappearing from public view, and shipments of biological warfare elements and plutonium-grade fissionable material have been making their way out of the country. Roberta Lincoln goes undercover as a geneticist in a successful attempt to get herself hired onto whatever project the vanished scientists have been recruited for, and Seven tracks his weapons shipments to the same location: a massive underground eugenics program in India called the Chrysalis Project. There, leading world geneticist Sarina Kaur is breeding a future generation of supermen for world conquest - the most promising of which is her son, Khan Noonien Singh. Bringing Kaur's mad project to an end, however, is only the beginning of a much longer, and even more involving, story. Seven monitors Khan's progress over the years, eventually recruiting him as a pre-teenager to help him and Roberta with their benevolent mission on Earth. Khan, unfortunately, is not so easily trainable. A product of his environment, the young Khan is horrified at atrocities occurring in his native India (a smallpox epidemic and the notorious Bhopur chemical spill) that Seven, with all his superior extraterrestrial technology, cannot anticipate and prevent. The aging mentor and his brilliant protege come to a parting of the ways, followed by overlapping missions of mutual interest, and develop into uneasy allies-cum-antagonists. The plot and characterizations alone make this book a superior read in the spy-suspense genre, but Cox makes the experience all the more enjoyable by including references to numerous other Star Trek elements - from original series guest characters to Next Generation personages to occurrences in the movie series - and with a prodigiously researched panoply of true-life historical incidents brilliantly interwoven into the story. This book, and the equally excellent Assignment: Eternity, are well worth the time and money to read. Hopefully, Cox will succeed in turning Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln into their own successful book series. They really are fabulous characters, and he writes them extremely well.
Rating:
Summary: An Absorbing Adventure...
Review: Khan is one of my all-time favorite Star Trek characters because he represents the height of the scientific thought and ambition that humans are capable of performing...regardless of whether we should be performing it or not!! "The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonian Singh" captures you from the beginning with the return of Gary Seven and his sidekick Roberta Lincoln using their advanced knowledge and training to uncover a human genetic engineering experiment that threatens to produce "super-children" whom Seven knows will have superior ambition if allowed to remain with their creators. I could actually see Khan growing in his ambition to reunite his genetically engineered brothers and sisters as well as in his frequent encounters with Seven and Roberta over the years. I would have liked to see more of Khan's childhood explained in more detail, but I could not put this book down and I cannot wait until volume II comes out in April, 2002.
Rating:
Summary: Average, should have been better
Review: Leaving out the typos that should be all the proof one needs that spell and grammer check are no replacement for a human proofreader I was unhappy with the seeming complete incompetence of the Gary Seven character.
This is a man who was sent to earth by an advanced alien species to save us from ourselves and yet in this book he doesn't complete one mission without messing up. His desire not to hurt anyone passes compassion and reaches the utterly ridiculous.
It's almost painful to watch as the author has the poor guy stumble around and make the same mistakes over and over. He's supposed to be so intelligent and advanced yet he gets bested over and over and over again by big thugs and guys with guns. The really sad events take place when Gary Seven having blown another mission has to be rescued by Khan. Khan then proceeds to demonstrate a simple little principle that Geo W. Bush understands but apparently Gary Seven doesn't; that powerful evil must be met and destroyed by even greater determination and force not just principles alone.
In the end it's small wonder then that Khan gets disgusted with Gary Seven and decides to go into business for himself. I did enjoy reading the book only because of the original story but I winced every time I felt the author shoving his pacifist views at me.
....also what's up with this utter distrust of technology and scientific achievement? With this Gary Seven running around the planet stopping every important scientific experiment he can learn about...how could we ever develop a warp drive or a transporter?
Rating:
Summary: A missed opportunity
Review: My first inclination was to give this book only 2 stars, but I had to give it the extra point because I'm not the target audience. This book was clearly written for young teens, and that audience should delight in this book. Cox' writing flows, even when the storyline lags. One can almost forgive his misuse/abuse of a thesaurus. One element that makes this book disappointing for adult readers is the superficial use of historical events. There is no sense of political and social undercurrents; you just feel as if the author had a checklist of events that were marked off as the book was written. I can't help but wonder if the research was limited to a few queries on his favorite web search engine. On the other hand, it's just this simplicity that will keep a young teen's eyes from glazing over. When they grow up, they can graduate to real historical fiction authors like Turtledove. Another other irritant -- to me, at least -- was the completely random and irrelevant stream of improbable encounters with characters who appeared in various episodes. Again, this had the appearance of a checklist that Cox went through. None of these encouters moved the story along or served to explain anything. They were just distractions, and not very imaginative ones at that. While the shallowness of the history makes me believe that the book targets a young audience, the barrage of inane cameos had me looking at the back of the book to make sure that the book wasn't WRITTEN by a kid. When I think of character development, I just want to cry. That Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln are two dimensional cutouts doesn't bother me all that much. In fact, I would have gladly done without either. But Khan is such an interesting character to be so reduced to a flat and textureless cliché! *sigh* To summarize, if this book is purchased for a reader around the ages of 10-14, I think it will be a hit. Older readers who haven't developed a taste for serious science/historical fiction could also enjoy it. I really don't recommend it for adults or anyone who reads for intellectual stimulation as opposed to filling in the time during long commutes. The sad thing is that I'm sure that Cox could be a fairly good author if he just gave up his checklists and concentrated on original content. If he can make this readable, imagine what he could do with a plot and real characters!
| 
