Books Read:
Star Trek: Seasons of Light and Darkness by Michael A. Martin
Rose of Jericho by Alex Grecian
Cemetery World by Clifford D. Simak
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
I picked up Star Trek: Seasons of Light and Darkness a while back because Steve Donoghue mentioned it in a BookTrek video. It’s hard to believe that video is a year old. Time is funny. As Steve has said more than once, one of the many appealing things about the original crew films is that the stories dealt with these beloved characters aging. Still heroic, but also mortal.
The novella starts with that familiar Star Trek II scene: McCoy at Kirk’s door with birthday gifts (Romulan ale and antique reading glasses), but Kirk is feeling down, feeling old, not liking the desk job he took. “Get your command back,” McCoy tells him, “before you really do grow old.” From that familiar scene, McCoy takes the Romulan ale to Spock’s place and the two have a conversation that only Spock and McCoy can have. During that conversation, McCoy tells a story from his early days as a Starfleet doctor.
I enjoyed this quite a bit. It hit some feelings I’m going through right now. Aging isn’t just decline; it’s also perspective. Wonderful stuff, that Romulan ale…
Rose of Jericho is the second book by Alex Grecian I’ve read, and I’ve enjoyed them both. This is a sequel to Red Rabbit, but the loose kind of sequel where some characters carry over without requiring you to read the first. Both books are horror westerns. Red Rabbit has a posse hunting a witch, while in Rose of Jericho a character kills Death which, as you can imagine, messes things up quite a bit.
Killing Death is one of those recurring ideas in fiction. The first time I remember encountering it was On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony, which I remember liking in high school. These stories borrow from Greek myth where Sisyphus manages to to chain Thanatos, who is Death personified. While Death is bound, no mortal can die and go to the Underworld. Eventually Sisyphus annoys the gods enough that he ends up pushing that rock forever.
I do like Grecian’s blending of the mythic with the western setting. It’s dusty, violent, and supernatural all at once. And there are ghosts.
I got to visit Clifford D. Simak again, this time with Cemetery World. I keep returning to Simak because his books have a kind, thoughtful feel to them that I like very much. Here, Earth has become a cemetery planet; a place where humans return to be buried. A corporation runs the place, and our protagonist shows up to wander through it.
Aa always, I marvel at what Simak throws into his stories. There are ruins, ghosts, robot wolves, alien races. There’s also a surprising and prescient bit about AI working with humans to create art, which made me stop to consider how often Simak does that.
Simak writes science fiction, but he doesn’t leave mythic stuff behind when he does. That may be why I like him so much. Where else will I find genuine science fictional ideas rubbing elbows with ghosts and goblins? His books are contemplative and contain thoughts about the whole of humanity, not just humanity’s technology.
Last up this time is The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. This book felt like hanging out with a spaceship crew. Not sure why I say “felt like”, because that’s exactly what this book is: a road trip with a crew that sets out to establish a wormhole at a new planet. The story is not so much about the wormholes as it is about the crew getting to know each other on the way to do the thing.
It’s warm, episodic, and full of found-family moments. In the end, though, there was so much sitting around and chatting that I wanted it to move quicker. Still, I mostly enjoyed the trip. I don’t plan to read any more of this series, but will keep my eye out for when Chambers moves on from this and her Monk and Robot stories. I do like her style, and I like her optimism like I like Simak’s.
