STARLESS WORLD, THE

Rating:
Summary: Unnecessary characters, disjointed story make it weak.
Review: While traveling through space, the Enterprise encounters a Federation shuttlecraft from the USS Rickover, lost more than 20 years earlier. Contact is made, and the single occupant identifies himself as Jesus Christ. His real name is Thomas Clayton, a Star Fleet Academy classmate of Captain Kirk's. Clayton was expelled for cheating, having been turned in by Kirk.
An exterior force then takes over the Enterprise, drawing it to a Dyson sphere constructed around a central star. The Enterprise enters the sphere and discovers that a Klingon warship has also been captured. All weapons have been disabled, so conflict is avoided. Despite the enormous size of the sphere and the large amount of vegetation, there is only a very small colony of intelligent humanoids. Contact is made when one of the humanoids is attacked by a large bear-like creature and Kirk beats it off with a stick.
The rescued creature is female and immediately wants Kirk to become her husband. Of course that is not possible and the Enterprise crew immediately attempts to learn about the forces that took control of the Enterprise. That force was the star itself, which somehow has reached the status of a god. Like the gods in Earth mythology, it is a demanding god, feeding on the soul energy of humanoids. It has survived by occasionally capturing ships passing nearby, one of which was the Rickover. Once the god has consumed a certain amount of soul energy from a humanoid, they enter a living dead state not unlike that of the vampire. Extremely powerful, they only come out at night and can barely communicate. Eventually, Kirk and company communicate with the god and it frees them before the sphere plunges into a black hole.
This is not a good story, I found it disjointed and the premises are weakly delivered. There is no explanation as to why the god must feed on the soul energy of humanoids and the presence of the Klingon ship and crew is largely unnecessary. The character of Thomas Clayton is also generally forgotten after the first part of the book, and there is no explanation regarding the builders of the sphere. I have read over a hundred of the Star Trek novels and I consider this one of the worst.


Rating:
Summary: The Starless World
Review: A short novel (more of a novella, at 152 pages) by a young writer, which revolves around a Dyson sphere. A Dyson sphere is a construct of planetary material, such as the entire material of a solar system, in a single sphere around a sun. It has been proposed as a last-ditch method of survival around a dying sun when it becomes a white dwarf. The engineering involved in such a terraforming scheme would be tremendous, and any race that could actually accomplish it could probably migrate to another star system with more ease. However, it presents some interesting theoretical possibilities. In effect, the world would completely surround the star, and be in perpetual daytime. The people would then live on the "inside" of the planetary material, always facing the star, and away from the galaxy "outside." Such a world would be almost immeasurably vast, with room for many continents and many oceans, and so large that you would not be able to see the other side of this "world"---more like a solar system, really.

The Enterprise is on patrol, on heightened alert because of reports of increased Klingon activity. A shuttlecraft is spotted, from a ship that had disappeared some 20 years before. The man inside is not of that starship, but was Captain Kirk's former roommate at the Academy (a sure sign of trouble) who had been expelled for cheating when Kirk turned him in for stealing an exam. The man, Thomas Clayton, insists that he serves the god Ay-Nab, and sounds much like a religious zealot. The Enterprise then finds itself drawn toward an object in space, which as they are drawn closer turns out to be a Dyson sphere, which Clayton represents as the home of Ay-Nab.

The ship is drawn through a gap in the sphere, to the inside of the fantastic world. There are few signs of life, but a Klingon ship is also detected in orbit. The Klingons are represented by a very young officer, who is belligerent but holds no real threat. When life is found down on the planet, Kirk, Sulu, and a total landing party of 6 beam down to the surface, to find some odd natives who also worship the god Ay-Nab, who apparently holds the Enterprise in its present condition. To make things worse, Chekov computes that the course of the sphere will take it into a black hole in four days.

In order to escape, Kirk must find a way to communicate with Ay-Nab, either directly or through his worshippers. When Spock and McCoy are kidnapped and brought to the surface by Clayton, the mystery only deepens. Kirk must race against time to find out who or what is Ay-Nab, and how to free the Enterprise.

It's an interesting story, and although Spock and McCoy are in good character, Kirk is a bit out of character from time to time. Not badly, but as he is the focus of much of the action, the author seems to project certain attitudes onto Kirk that are not normally present. Uhura is given some time here, as her father turns out to be marooned on the sphere as well. However, he is portrayed as a "starman," an early solo explorer, which he would certainly have been too young to have managed. Also, the author depicts an eclipse on the area of the surface the crew occupy as making things completely dark, which given the construction of the sphere is highly unlikely. The "moons" would have to be much larger in diameter than the sun in order to block so much light so effectively. After all, an eclipse on earth makes for dimmer light, but certainly not complete darkness. There is still diffraction of the sun around the moon. So again, we have some bad science.

The story is nonetheless enjoyable, especially if you can find it for a low price, or even better for free in the library.

Rating:
Summary: The Starless World
Review: A short novel (more of a novella, at 152 pages) by a young writer, which revolves around a Dyson sphere. A Dyson sphere is a construct of planetary material, such as the entire material of a solar system, in a single sphere around a sun. It has been proposed as a last-ditch method of survival around a dying sun when it becomes a white dwarf. The engineering involved in such a terraforming scheme would be tremendous, and any race that could actually accomplish it could probably migrate to another star system with more ease. However, it presents some interesting theoretical possibilities. In effect, the world would completely surround the star, and be in perpetual daytime. The people would then live on the "inside" of the planetary material, always facing the star, and away from the galaxy "outside." Such a world would be almost immeasurably vast, with room for many continents and many oceans, and so large that you would not be able to see the other side of this "world"---more like a solar system, really.

The Enterprise is on patrol, on heightened alert because of reports of increased Klingon activity. A shuttlecraft is spotted, from a ship that had disappeared some 20 years before. The man inside is not of that starship, but was Captain Kirk's former roommate at the Academy (a sure sign of trouble) who had been expelled for cheating when Kirk turned him in for stealing an exam. The man, Thomas Clayton, insists that he serves the god Ay-Nab, and sounds much like a religious zealot. The Enterprise then finds itself drawn toward an object in space, which as they are drawn closer turns out to be a Dyson sphere, which Clayton represents as the home of Ay-Nab.

The ship is drawn through a gap in the sphere, to the inside of the fantastic world. There are few signs of life, but a Klingon ship is also detected in orbit. The Klingons are represented by a very young officer, who is belligerent but holds no real threat. When life is found down on the planet, Kirk, Sulu, and a total landing party of 6 beam down to the surface, to find some odd natives who also worship the god Ay-Nab, who apparently holds the Enterprise in its present condition. To make things worse, Chekov computes that the course of the sphere will take it into a black hole in four days.

In order to escape, Kirk must find a way to communicate with Ay-Nab, either directly or through his worshippers. When Spock and McCoy are kidnapped and brought to the surface by Clayton, the mystery only deepens. Kirk must race against time to find out who or what is Ay-Nab, and how to free the Enterprise.

It's an interesting story, and although Spock and McCoy are in good character, Kirk is a bit out of character from time to time. Not badly, but as he is the focus of much of the action, the author seems to project certain attitudes onto Kirk that are not normally present. Uhura is given some time here, as her father turns out to be marooned on the sphere as well. However, he is portrayed as a "starman," an early solo explorer, which he would certainly have been too young to have managed. Also, the author depicts an eclipse on the area of the surface the crew occupy as making things completely dark, which given the construction of the sphere is highly unlikely. The "moons" would have to be much larger in diameter than the sun in order to block so much light so effectively. After all, an eclipse on earth makes for dimmer light, but certainly not complete darkness. There is still diffraction of the sun around the moon. So again, we have some bad science.

The story is nonetheless enjoyable, especially if you can find it for a low price, or even better for free in the library.

Rating:
Summary: Kirk and the Klingons go to meet a god.
Review: This is one of the original Star Trek Novels first put out by Bantam in 1979. It does not follow the same formula length that the Pocket books maintain.

The original Bantam series is a bit rarer than the Pocket novels of today. They are a reasonable next generation avenue of reading for the Star Trek fan.

Rating:
Summary: Good, solid sci-fi, just not a good Star Trek story
Review: While exploring in the direction of the Galactic Core, Captain Kirk and the starship Enterprise are surprised to find themselves hailed by a shuttlecraft from a long-lost starship. However, when the pilot turns out to be a long-lost friend of Kirks, one now suffering from some sort of extreme religious mania, it simply raises more questions. The Enterprise is soon seized by an unknown power, and dragged to a Dyson Sphere world (a habitable globe surrounding a dwarf star). There's a deep mystery here, and with this world headed for a deadly collision with a black hole, there's little time to solve it!

OK, first of all, let me say that this is an enjoyable story, not great, but well written. The fatal flaw here is that the author does a very poor job of capturing the Star Trek characters that fill his story. Quite often while reading, I would be shocked at the way a character would react or talk - it was as if the author had read a description of the Star Trek characters, but had never actually watched the show. Overall, it gave the story a rather disjointed (dare I say "out of phase"?) feeling.

So, am I saying that you should skip this book? No, in fact, I did enjoy reading this book. It's a good, solid sci-fi story, just not a good Star Trek story. If you take the book on those terms, I think that you will enjoy it. I give this book a rather guarded recommendation.