Well, it’s easy to say, you know, Kirk’s a jerk, and obviously it really is like that, since it rhymes, right. But I can sorta see Kirk in this as more the father of sons and daughters, than as a big fat turd, or whatever, you know (complex phraseology, you know: it’s advanced stuff, right). And, I don’t know, I don’t know if I expected it to be about Genesis, to be profound, I guess a lot of fun of mill literary biblical references are kinda sloppy and unconscious, just like a lot of actual Bible commentaries are pedantic and (the technical word is) stupid and pointless, you know, but, I don’t know. It is kinda that middle chilled-over reasonableness, which despite being kinda cookie cutter in more ways than one—it’s whatever people expected, I guess—still makes it more easy fun than easy mind puzzles, which is sometimes what you get from the popular thriller, right. (And I think this is a spacefaring thriller, you know.)

As to the plot, I always wondered about the Prime Directive—basically the “we don’t want to offend the Indian Hunters, so we’ll be vague” name for the Non-Colonial Directive—and what would happen if the rival spacefaring civilization didn’t honor it, which is what happens in this book, and I have to say that that’s a pretty good conflict generator, you know.

I am starting to think that Star Wars is more fun than Star Trek—not that they’re the only two speculative franchises, let alone adventure fiction out there, right—but I guess I am no longer tempted to dismiss James Tiberius Kirk with a monosyllable, right.

…. “Free people made their own choices, and sometimes those choices included hating one another.”

…. The hero is brave and the sociological comments make sense.

…. And the local secondary characters always kinda surprise me, you know.

Anyway, sometimes Star Trek is terrible, but people in general have a better memory for bad things, and you know—this was not terrible.

…. To indulge in the cliche head-to-head: it’s not as good as Star Wars, but sometimes Star Trek is almost romantic, you know.

…. I mean, it’s not a romantic adventure, properly speaking, like say “The Courtship of Princess Leia”—admittedly more feminine than most Star Wars stories, I guess—but Kirk & Company is more romantic than those sorta “Technical Specifications of the Battleship” (Technical Specification of Ships series) type “novels”; even though there’s superficial resemblance it’s far from a rigid observance, you know…. A lot of the plot-and-“science”-centric cavils about Trek plots that Trekkies and such make (I can almost hear them in my head, you know, the anti-literary set: rebel nerd, geek tyrant….) basically revolve around that not understanding what sort of a thing Star Trek is.

It flirts with detachment, in more ways than one, but it was always a little optimistic. Most people can’t really understand the point of chemistry lessons if the chemicals are all made up, you know. It’s just…. Optimism, you know. Romantic-not-romantic.