Treks Not Taken: What If Stephen King, Anne Rice, Kurt Vonnegut and Other Literary Greats Had Written Episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation? - Softcover

Boyett, Steven R

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060952768 ISBN 13: 9780060952761

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 1998

Synopsis

Parody: The Final Frontier

Now you can cruise the most hilarious sector of the space-time continuum, with this collection of twenty Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes not by the leading lights of the Western literary tradition: James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Jackie Collins...

Steven Boyett transports you into the sort of alternative universes and avid reader or Trekker would love:

• a Clancy-like realm where the Enterprise crew mobilizes to fix Captain Picard's broken watch

• a Heller-esque domain where you can only get out of Starfleet if you're crazy--and, if you want to get out of Starfleet, you're clearly not crazy

• a Collins-ish netherworld where Counselor Demanda Troi sleeps and shops her way around the galaxy

• a Melvillean place where Moby Trek lies in wait

...and many more.

Boldly go where no one has gone before with this stellar combination of high art and high comedy.

About this title

About the Author:

Steven R. Boyett has published several science fiction novels and novellas and numerous short stories. He lives in Burbank, California.

From Kirkus Reviews:

the world may find this book confirming their fearsor showing just how unlikely they are. Here we have a collection of Star Trek: The Next Generation parodies written in imitation of well-known authors, from literary classics (Melville, Conrad, Joyce) to modern masters (Heller, Salinger, Vonnegut) and today's bestsellers (King, Rice, Clancy, Collins). Naturally, the list includes Hemingway and Kerouac, two of the most parodied authors of the century; and Dr. Seuss's fans have not been shortchanged. While the results are inevitably uneven, there is plenty here to amuse both the Trek watcher and the literary readertwo categories that presumably have a degree of overlap. Boyett manages to walk a fine line between broad and subtle; the Melville parody (``Moby Trek'') opens, ``Call me irresponsible''; the Anthony Burgess (``A Clockwork Data'') is salted with pseudo-Russian; and the Ayn Rand (``Fandom Shrugged'') renames the starship the Free Enterprise. And where it must have been tempting to settle for obvious laughs, many of these parodies work on multiple levels: ``The Ship Also Rises'' copies the style and substance of Hemingway works ranging from ``The Snows of Kilimanjaro'' to Death in the Afternoon, meanwhile poking fun at the frustration of Patrick Stewart's stage ambitions in his role as Captain Picard, and fitting both elements into a credible Trek plot line. Boyett's brief introduction takes an appropriately mock-serious look at the meaning of Trek and at its attraction for the famous writers he parodies (some long dead before the show ever aired, but their submissions were too good to exclude just for that reason). Good fun, especially for readers who get both the literary and Trek references. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0060952768
• ISBN 13: 9780060952761
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208