Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh

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!

Rating:
Summary: Gary Seven and Khan in One book!!!!!!
Review: Now I would normally pass up on a trek book due to the sheer crapness that has become of trek fiction, but I saw Greg Cox's name attached to this one, and didn't think that he would disappoint. Thankfully I was right!!!! Cox has a flair with the trek characteres that has been sorely lacking recently. He also has a flair of using favorite characters, and putting them into new circumstances. Now with Eugenics wars which was foreshadowed in his Trek book Assignment:Eternity. Cox reunites the crew of the Classic trek with favorite guest stars Khan Singh, and Gary Seven. The book is action packed, and seems to deliver a message regarding our own endeavors into genetics, and Cox appears in top form. This is one for veteran fan, and newcomer alike. Hope his next book is just as good, and enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Cox's entertaining Star Trek "historical" is fun, thrilling
Review: Of all the villains or foes in the Star Trek canon, few compare to Khan Noonien Singh as far as screen presence, charisma, or memorable moments go. Oh, the Klingons were interesting heavies, particularly in the feature films. The Borg had their moments, but their toneless "Resistance is futile" compares palely to Khan's word duels with James T. Kirk in both the 1967 Original Series episode "Space Seed" and the 1982 feature film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Of course, credit must go to Ricardo Montalban, whose wonderful voice and acting skills made Khan one of Kirk's most dangerous adversaries.

Noted Star Trek author Greg Cox's mu;ti-volume series, The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh is a clever and fascinating Star Trek "historical" novel which not only "fills in the blanks" about Khan and his fellow genetically engineered "supermen," but also tries to reconcile actual historical events with the established Star Trek timeline.

Cox begins Volume One in the 23rd century, during Capt. James T. Kirk's first five-year mission. Assigned to investigate a colony of genetically engineered humans, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are still mindful about their recent run-in with Khan. While en route to this Paragon Colony, Kirk decides to study the history of Khan and the Eugenics Wars of the late 20th Century.

Star Trek "history" tells us that in the 1990s, a group of some 90 genetically engineered men and women took over vast regions of Earth and waged a bloody series of conflicts that became known as the Eugenics Wars. One of the foremost of these "supermen" was Khan, who at the height of his power ruled one-fourth of the planet Earth. By 1996, however, Khan and 80 of his followers fled Earth aboard the spacecraft SS Botany Bay, where they slept in suspended animation until the year 2267, when the USS Enterprise encountered the derelict vessel and Khan was revived.

Cox's challenge as a 21st Century writer was to mesh this fictional history with such real-life events as India's first nuclear test in 1974, the Bhopal accident and Indira Gandhi's assasination in 1984, the Reagan-Gorbachev Iceland Summit in 1986, and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, among others. In these 20th Century episodes, Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln (who first appeared in the proposed pilot for Gene Roddenberry's "Assignment: Earth" series)investigate a secret project code-named "Chrysalis." Led by the brilliant but cold-blooded Dr. Sarina Kaur, a team of genetic experts is tweaking human DNA to bring forth a "superior" breed of humanity...a breed which is destined to supplant the existing "flawed" population of the planet.

Cox adds to the fun by adding cameos by other Star Trek characters, including Gillian Taylor from Star Trek IV, Redjac from the Classic Series' "Wolf in the Fold," and Ralph Offenhouse from The Next Generation's "The Neutral Zone." And while his basic plotline resembles a mix of Star Trek and Tom Clancy novels, he also injects some witty puns and inside jokes which lighten the tone of this chilling narrative set in one of Star Trek's "dark times" of humanity's past.

Rating:
Summary: Wow. . . .
Review: One of the best Trek books I have ever read, Cox writes about the past, and the future with equal skill and grace (before this work, I didn't know that a book could be graceful). I was not able to put it down, and I keep trying to pick it up again so that I can read the rest of the story. I am waiting impatiently for the rest of the set. :)

Rating:
Summary: Very ambitious, and mostly successful.
Review: One of the biggest flaws in the Star Trek universe, for some time now, has been the obvious conflict between the "history" that the series posited for the period 20 years or so in advance of when it was created and what we've since seen; it seems that the Star Trek timeline is more and more clearly not our own. After all, in "Space Seed", it was claimed that there were "Eugenics Wars" in the 1990s, when Khan and his people tried to take over the earth, and failed, only to escape in the "sleeper ship" that they were found in by Kirk and crew. Last I checked, that doesn't match the 1990s history that I remember.

Greg Cox to the recue; the obvious intention of this book is to rationalize away that inconsistency. He's trying to (and mostly, succeeding in) writing a story in which those events actually DID occur, but have remained (so far, at least) top-secret and unknown to us folks not privy to the real behind-the-scenes goings on in world politics. A marvellous concept, and if he continues to pull it off as well as he has so far, I'll be delighted.

So why only four stars? Two reasons, really. Neither of them major complaints, but cumulatively worth a star.

First of all, while I realize that when you buy a book that says "volume one" on the cover, you can expect that there's a reasonably good chance that it won't be a complete story in itself, that doesn't mean that it has to end on a cliffhanger. Cliffhanger endings are annoying, amatuerish, and cheesy. ESPECIALLY when you have two completely separate plotlines going on, each good enough to stand on its own, so there is no NEED to make it a continued story. Tell the two stories separately, and be done with it!

Secondly, the two stories alluded to above make a "frame story"; there are goings on with Kirk and the Enterprise that cause Kirk to decide to refresh his memory of the events of the Eugenics wars, and what we see of that history is apparently supposed to be what he sees as he brushes up on that part of history. But the events we see are almost exclusively things that WOULDN'T have made it into history books; Gary Seven's activities would certainly nver have been publicized, nor would several of the activities of Khan that we see here. It is POSSIBLE that Cox may have an explanation of this latter complaint (Star Fleet/Federation history may be more thorough than one would expect on the subject; perhaps Gary Seven allowed his notes to be opened after some specific date) (presumably, AFTER the point in their own timeline when Kirk and company originally encountered him, otherwise, they'd have been prepared to encounter him in the first place -- can you say "temporal paradox"?) but it will take some really fast talking to make any such explanation plausible.

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Where was the editor?
Review: Padded and overwritten, this book is virtually unreadable. I can't believe someone didn't suggest that Cox seek professional help to overcome his life-threatening adverb addiction. If this novel is 100,000 words, about 10,000 of 'em must be adverbial modifiers. By page ten it's just too damn distracting to ignore. I wasn't expecting Hemingway from a Star Trek novelist, but come on, this is embarrassingly bad stuff.

Cox takes forever to get this thing going, probably so he could leave room for the sequel. I haven't read the sequel, nor do I plan to, but I can virtually guarantee that a compentent editor could have combined the two into one novel, possibly even a decent novel at that. 200 pages into this one, here's what's happened so far: Roberta Lincoln and Gary Seven have infiltrated the bad guys' underground lab and Seven has been captured. That's it. And believe me, it's even less exciting than that synopsis.

Lack of plot is acceptable if the writing is good and the characters are interesting, but here we get amateur writing and cardboard characters to go along with the fact that absolutely nothing is happening.

The intriguing premise drew me to this one. Don't make the same mistake. Avoid it at all costs.

Rating:
Summary: The Untold Story
Review: Simply put: I really enjoyed this book! Reading more like a thriller novel than your classic Trek story, Greg Cox has created a feast of reading pleasure. Taking all the way back to 1974, Cox gives us the story of Khan Noonien Singh -- quite possibly was the best Trek villian ever created. Using snippets of the Star Trek chronology created by Gene Roddenberry in the classis Trek episode "Space Seed" and further in one of the best Trek films, Wrath of Khan, Cox gives us the history of the Eugenics War starting in 1974 and moving forward to story we've heard many times before. I will say this for Greg Cox, he captures the spirit of the times -- the 1970s through the middle 1980s -- accurately and he brings the character of Khan Noonien Singh to life so well you can almost here Ricardo Montalban speaking the words. In addition, the characters of Gary Seven, Isis the cat, and Roberta Lincoln are spot on. Cox has always been a fantastic Trek writer, and his Star Trek: TOS stories are among THE BEST written. This novel is a must-read for any Trek fan.

Rating:
Summary: ST: The Eugenics Wars Volume 1
Review: Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars Volume One, The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh by Greg Cox is a novel based on alternate history with a sprinkle of TREK to spice up a storyline. This book is NOT a Pulitzer. It is written to fill in the history of one of Captain James T. Kirk's archtypical fiends Khan Noonien Singh. Along for the story are the characters of Gary Seven and his perky sidekick Roberta Lincoln with the perfect companion Isis the shape-shifting ephemeral cat.

If you are looking for action/adventure with a TREK twist... well you'll have to look elsewhere as there are only a scant few areas in this book where you can get engrossed in the story. This is a character driven book with the main focus on its main character Khan and how he got to be. The book starts out with a TREK-typical situation, Kirk et.al. are on their way to a planet called Sycorax.

Sycorax has petitioned the Federation for membership. The planet is close to the Klingon/Federation neutral zone and they have been working on genetic augmentation for the last two hundred years and the Klingon's are wanting this knowledge as well. Enter another of Kirk's fiendish vilians, Koloth of "The Trouble with Tribbles" episode. But, this also brings Kirk to remember a past experience with Khan who was a product of Earth's eugenic past.

Now, the storyline begins as we find out about the Chrysalis Project where the best and the brightest minds are being recruited for the ultimate result... geneticly superior human beings. Of course, the heros in this book Gary Seven, Roberta Lincoln and Isis are trying to find out about this mysterious project and are closing in to stop the project. We find Khan as a precosoius five year old child at this point in time with other children of about equal precocial abilities. As you can see, the author is spinning a tale well tied to other TREK events and storylines.

In the afterword section of the book, we see the real events of history mentioned in this book as they really occured. The book takes Khan upto the 1980's as a twenty year old headstrong and rather self endulged full of himself person who is the only one who can save the world. As Kirk is on Sycorax faced with a crisis, the book leaves us wanting for some clarity and resolution of the character's collective problems.

As this is not the best of TREK, it is a good fill in and fleshing out of characters from events past in the TREK history. A trip down memory lane with entertaining sidebars resulting in a story that could be believed.