“Star Trek : Mission to Horatius” * Mack Reynolds

[defcons_treklit]

A bad novel.

Even if you keep in mind that this is the very first Star trek novel it’s inexcusable how bad this one is. The novel is extremely chauvinistic, every shown “race“ is stereotyped : The people who refuse technology automatically become savages, people with German heritage automatically build up a Nazi like society and a religious society can only function if the people are drugged and oppressed. The really bad thing is, that the planet bound parts are the better ones in this novel (and they are still awful) , the plot on board is just ridiculous. I found it rather disgusting to see the Crew try to kill a living being with gas in a story which has a nazi like group in it, even if the being in question is only a rat.

Overall a chapter in the history of Star Trek novels which should better be forgotten again.

”Defcon’s TrekLit” Rating :

Story : * of *****
Characterization / character development : * of *****
Originality : ** of *****
Writing style : * of *****
Cover : * of *****

Overall : 20 %

Comments

[steve-roby.livejournal.com]

I disagree darn near completely, but I admit nostalgia plays a part of that. It's kind of hard to be perfectly objective about the first Star Trek book I ever read, back in the early 1970s.

There's also a bit of "you had to be there" with this and the Bantam novels. If you've grown up with the movies and the newer TV series, if there's always been a whole lot of Star Trek out there for you to explore, you can't experience this stuff the way those of us who read it decades ago did. The experience of reading Star Trek is incredibly different now; I've been reading it for more than 30 years, and though I've changed, so has everything about Star Trek. It's not the same experience at all.

[defcons-treklit.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean with not being completly objective with the first ST books you have read. My first ST book was "Enterprise: The First Adventure" by Vonda N. McIntyre, and although I know now it isn't one of the best, it has a special place in my heart nonetheless.

Since I'm only 26, I wasn't there for the first run of Star Trek or the first printing of "Mission to Horatius", and although I had seen the TOS series before, my ST "career" really began with TNG and DS 9, so the nostalgia effect diesn't really work for me with TOS stuff.

[steve-roby.livejournal.com]

It isn't just nostalgia, though, it's historical context, too. When Mission to Horatius was written, the Star Trek universe was a very different place. Starships, especially starships named Enterprise, didn't go running back to Earth every couple of weeks, and they couldn't phone home whenever they wanted to. Mission to Horatius and the cafard subplot in particular recapture the early TOS feel, of a ship way out there on its own. The show gradually made things feel more cozy, with more Starbases and messages from Starfleet Command and diplomatic missions and what have you, as well as lots of nearby alien neighbours, but Reynolds wouldn't have seen much of that sort of thing. He might well have seen episodes like "The Man Trap" and "Mudd's Women," with their isolated and low tech human colonists and explorers.

Have you read Spock Must Die yet? That one really suffers these days, because the Trek universe went in a very different direction, and you just can't fit it into series continuity at all.

[defcons-treklit.livejournal.com]

Well, the thing with the space sickness (I have read the german translation, so I don't know how it is called in the original) itself could have been interesting if done different in my opinion, but the plot with the rat was just too silly.

Spock must die! ist the one with the duplicate Spock, right? I have only read it a few years back and had problems with that one, too, like you said mainly because of the inconsistency with most post TOS stuff.