You never quite know which one of the holy trinity - Kirk, Spock or McCoy - the female guest characters in Star Trek novels are going to seduce. In the really terrible ones, it's sometimes more than just the one - Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath's Triangle comes to mind - but I'm always most intrigued when McCoy gets to have a "serious" romance.
Perhaps in light of the prevalent attitudes at the time of writing, McCoy can often come across as kind of a dirty old man, engaging in much raunchy banter with Kirk, but when women properly fall for McCoy in the novels, it's almost always depicted in a kind of sensible down-to-earth manner, as if the woman in question, unimpressed by Kirk's overt forwardness and Spock's aloof, alien unflappability and otherness, is simply seeking a grounded romance with a smart, sensitive older guy (the women are rarely McCoy's own age, or even Kirk or Spock's age, for that matter).
The guest protagonist in Kathleen Sky's Vulcan! wrestles with her attraction to McCoy as well as her prejudices toward Vulcans. The prose is well above average, especially Sky's nebulous-yet-vivid depiction of the Vulcan mind meld, and the premise is intriguing enough, but her characters and dialogue are fairly flat, and the book leaves little in the way of any kind of memorable impression. In addition, Sky seems to have made the unfortunate choice of depicting the Romulans as just 'space Romans,' with little creativity expended on their identity and culture. Their secret plan in Vulcan! is still pretty darn crafty though, even if it might not make a whole lot of sense when examined closely.
I did find Sky's explanation of how the Romulan Neutral Zone is defined intriguing, if politically and scientifically unlikely. It's a seldom-raised point in sci-fi that it would be really hard to draw up a boundary clear enough to satisfy two competing interstellar political powers, since everything in space is moving all the time, and Sky at least addresses this in Vulcan! However, I find it hard to believe that the Federation or the Romulans would define their borders based on "magnetic field lines" that allows stars to cross into one another's territory through their own peculiar motion. Surely, all humanoid life would define territory based on the actual solar systems they inhabit, wouldn't they? While such a border would of course slowly morph into a new shape over thousands of years, possibly creating isolated enclave systems on either side of the original line, this doesn't seem like a huge problem compared to the premise of Vulcan!, where an entire solar system is very close to changing hands due to fluctuating magnetic fields.
In any case: Vulcan! A waste of time? No, I honestly wouldn't say that. You could certainly do a lot worse, and Sky's efforts to introduce an interesting female character with her own motivations and story arc are certainly commendable, if not quite enough to make Vulcan! a memorable novel in its own right. In other words: you could do a lot worse. Next time, I'll spend some time discussing Seattleite George Eklund's first Trek contribution, 1978's The Starless World, which similarly touches upon intriguing sci-fi concepts (Dyson spheres, the Galactic Core) without fleshing out a memorable enough story... but that won't stop me from overanalyzing it in another rambling blog post.
Perhaps in light of the prevalent attitudes at the time of writing, McCoy can often come across as kind of a dirty old man, engaging in much raunchy banter with Kirk, but when women properly fall for McCoy in the novels, it's almost always depicted in a kind of sensible down-to-earth manner, as if the woman in question, unimpressed by Kirk's overt forwardness and Spock's aloof, alien unflappability and otherness, is simply seeking a grounded romance with a smart, sensitive older guy (the women are rarely McCoy's own age, or even Kirk or Spock's age, for that matter).
The guest protagonist in Kathleen Sky's Vulcan! wrestles with her attraction to McCoy as well as her prejudices toward Vulcans. The prose is well above average, especially Sky's nebulous-yet-vivid depiction of the Vulcan mind meld, and the premise is intriguing enough, but her characters and dialogue are fairly flat, and the book leaves little in the way of any kind of memorable impression. In addition, Sky seems to have made the unfortunate choice of depicting the Romulans as just 'space Romans,' with little creativity expended on their identity and culture. Their secret plan in Vulcan! is still pretty darn crafty though, even if it might not make a whole lot of sense when examined closely.
I did find Sky's explanation of how the Romulan Neutral Zone is defined intriguing, if politically and scientifically unlikely. It's a seldom-raised point in sci-fi that it would be really hard to draw up a boundary clear enough to satisfy two competing interstellar political powers, since everything in space is moving all the time, and Sky at least addresses this in Vulcan! However, I find it hard to believe that the Federation or the Romulans would define their borders based on "magnetic field lines" that allows stars to cross into one another's territory through their own peculiar motion. Surely, all humanoid life would define territory based on the actual solar systems they inhabit, wouldn't they? While such a border would of course slowly morph into a new shape over thousands of years, possibly creating isolated enclave systems on either side of the original line, this doesn't seem like a huge problem compared to the premise of Vulcan!, where an entire solar system is very close to changing hands due to fluctuating magnetic fields.
In any case: Vulcan! A waste of time? No, I honestly wouldn't say that. You could certainly do a lot worse, and Sky's efforts to introduce an interesting female character with her own motivations and story arc are certainly commendable, if not quite enough to make Vulcan! a memorable novel in its own right. In other words: you could do a lot worse. Next time, I'll spend some time discussing Seattleite George Eklund's first Trek contribution, 1978's The Starless World, which similarly touches upon intriguing sci-fi concepts (Dyson spheres, the Galactic Core) without fleshing out a memorable enough story... but that won't stop me from overanalyzing it in another rambling blog post.
Love it!
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