The Human Adventure continues on the Book Shelf this week with some more non-canon Star Trek adventures. And for the first time in a long time, this was a Trek book I enjoyed. Dillard has a knack for the characters, and while some of the beats may not have been completely inline with Trek, I…
Category: The Book Shelf
Dune (1965) – Frank Herbert
Arrakis. Dune. Desert planet. It was time for a revisit to Frank Herbert’s science fiction classic. I had journeyed there twice before. The most recent trip had been in the early 90s when my friend Dennis had convinced me to read them again, as they were some of his favourite books. I had worked my…
Marvel Spider-Man: Inside the World of Your Friendly Neighborhood Hero (2017) – Matthew K. Manning
Spider-Man. For a lot of kids, myself included, Web-Head is our first introduction to the world of superheroes. Over time some of us may leave him behind, some of us stay with him our whole lives, and some come back to check on him time and again, like an old friend. I think, whether we’re…
Star Trek: Pawns and Symbols (1985) – Majliss Larson
Ok. It’s just about time for someone to step in and rein in some of these stories. I know it can’t be far off, but at this point, some of them are really starting to annoy me. This week’s Book Shelf lets me visit a non-canon adventure of the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Let’s…
Ur (2009) – Stephen King
Stephen King leaped aboard the digital reader revolution back in 2009 when he wrote this tale that was available only online as a download for said readers. The story follows an English teacher, Wesley, at a mediocre college. His relationship with Ellen, one of the college’s coaches is on the rocks, caused by a lack…
The Talisman (1984) – Stephen King and Peter Straub
There are very few Stephen King novels I haven’t read, and even as I revisit the occasional one, I realised that I had never finished The Talisman. A copy of this book was a Christmas gift to my Mom the year it came out. She read it first, and I was next in line to…
Star Trek: Dwellers in the Crucible (1985) – Margaret Wander Bonanno
Before Star Trek V: The Final Frontier came along four years later with the concept of the Planet of Galactic Peace, Margaret Wander Bonanno presented a similar idea in her non-canon Star Trek novel, Dwellers in the Crucible, which finds its way onto the Book Shelf this week. Set before the events of Star Trek…
Star Trek: Killing Time (1985) – Della Van Hise
Hey look, it’s another non-canon Trek novel that features villains altering the timeline to change history, and allowing the author to play with established characters in their own way, with heavy slash tendencies (in this case, a Kirk/Spock romance… again). If you can get your hands on an ultra-rare first edition, there is actually more…
Star Trek: Ishmael (1985) – Barbara Hambly
My journey with the non-canon Star Trek Pocket Books continues. And this novel from 1985 demonstrates what was happening in Trek pages before Paramount took a stronger stance on what the novels could be about. Previous to this we’ve encountered Trek novels with slash overtones between James T. Kirk and his science officer, the Vulcan…
The Book of the Dead (2007) – Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Pendergast is back! Picking up where the previous novel Dance of Death ended, Preston and Child plunge us back into the world of Aloysius, D’Agosta, Smithback, Kelly, Hayward, Constance and Pendergast’s villainous and genius brother, Diogenes. This novel serves as a climax of the previous two books, wrapping up the storyline of the two brothers,…
The Mind Reels 