My life in books

Like many science fiction fans of my generation, the appearance of Star Trek on my television screen in 1966 was a pivotal moment (these days, people call it ST: The Original Series, but for me there is only one Star Trek, which cannot ever be confused with The Next Generation, or Deep Space Nine, or any of the others). I watched it faithfully. I and several of my friends began writing fan fiction, something that had never occurred to any of us before then, but which was something we could no more not do than we could choose not to breathe. Something about Star Trek demanded that we join as co-creators, that we find ways to explore the consequences of what we were watching in the universe where they had happened, that we give those mesmerizing characters more to do, that we put ourselves into the world of Kirk and Spock and Scotty and Uhura and all the others.

So I wrote genfic and Mary Sues, and slash, and all the kinds of fanfic that everyone in fandom knows about today - but were almost completely new in the late 60s.

And something else happened then - other people started writing new stories set in the Star Trek world and getting them published. And I read those just as avidly as I had watched to show itself.

Every once in a while, I still get in the mood to read - or re-read - official star Trek novels, though I'm rather picky - I only read novels set in the original Star Trek setting. The Star Trek novel-reading itch hit me again in early 2011, and these are the books I picked to satisfy it, almost all of them re-reads:


Dave Galanter, Star Trek: Troublesome Minds
Melinda Snodgrass, Star Trek: Tears of the Singers
Barbara Hambly, Star Trek: Ishmael
Margaret Wander Bonanno, Star Trek: Strangers from the Sky
Jean Lorrah, Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders
A.C. Crispin, Star Trek: Time for Yesterday
Diane Duane, Star Trek: Doctor’s Orders