Lets get into it.<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nPerchance to Dream<\/em> (2000) I\u2019m not really sure how to begin talking about this novel. I\u2019ve tried to put my finger on just why it\u2019s difficult to select an approach, and I think it\u2019s because this novel isn\u2019t especially remarkable. It\u2019s easy to talk about something very bad or very good, very bold or very uncanny. But with a book like this, I feel that the author has some writing chops, and the story is followable, but nothing is especially unique or clever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the book cover advertises Data and Troi and is framed in the beginning with their plight, and in the end with their discovery\u2014 the story\u2019s A plot seems to consist mainly of Picard. It\u2019s Picard\u2019s problem that the away team has gone missing before his eyes on the view screen. One moment it was in the grip of an unknown alien vessel with a belligerent captain, the next moment, it is stolen away within a flash of rainbow energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shuttle crew was on a survey mission, studying the geography of the planet. Aboard are some Starfleet hopefuls including Wesley and two other sixteen year old companions. Data and Troi are there to guide them through the easy geology survey as a prelude to their further training. The kids act like kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beverly Crusher is teased in a few scenes at the beginning of the book, but as the plot thickens, she basically disappears to distract herself in the medical lab, worried about her missing son, but being helpless to do anything about it. Of all the deciscions made in the framing of this story, this one probably discouraged me the most. Crusher essentially decides that Troi is with him whereever he has gone missing to, and that as her closest friend she trusts Troi to look after Wesley. This isn\u2019t entirely awful. As a parent I know from experience that sometimes, especially with your proto-adult teenagers, you have to trust other reliable adults to guide them in life. But Dr. Crusher is a smart woman, and as the story continues, there is ample opportunity to graft her into the search for her son. I can\u2019t imagine not lending all the effort in my power to offer\u2014 even if the solution didn\u2019t result from any of my own striving. Dr. Crusher doesn\u2019t strike me as an indifferent or emotionally distant character, so this was difficult for me to accept in the story. Whether you like or dislike the mother and son Crusher duo, this is simply too reductive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While each standing on their own bridge, tensions flaring over the disappearance of the shuttle, Picard and the alien captain are inexplicably swept away by the same rainbow juju as took the shuttle. Then, in a budget version of the TNG TV episode \u201cDarmok”, the story follows both captains on the planet\u2019s surface where they suddenly find themselves, cut off from contact with their respective ships. Picard tries to reach out to the other captain but she is aloof and elusive. When Picard has some success at spearing and cooking up some fish, his counterpart comes out of the shadows long enough to eat with him. Then, in the night, the ground shifts and almost swallows him, but, in a trust building turn of events, the alien captain makes the difference and saves our captain. (That was close. We almost saw the end of Picard right there. Cue final credits roll.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile the shuttle crew discovers their entire shuttle has been transferred to a cavern. Which is really scary because one of the kids hates caves (it\u2019s been established in the earliest scenes). Troi does comforting counselor things. Data is characteristically unperturbed. Wesley doesn\u2019t seem so annoying because the other two kids with him take the stage with an awkward non-romance\u2026Remind me again, why does it matter to the story that Wesley happens to even be in this episode? He just seems like a poorly given stakes item, hanging in the balance. But other than a one off narrative nod, the connection to the fact that Picard lost Wesley\u2019s father Jack under a previous mission, never really adds any pressure to the issue for Picard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tangentially, the Enterprise is being diverted to the matter of the shuttle, away from the ship\u2019s mission to save some miners in need of emergency care. But that doesn\u2019t add to the stakes either. No one is poorly affected by the diversion of the Enterprise for days over the curious world with the Rainbow strobe effects. We\u2019re not in any rush. Why the author didn\u2019t use this to up the stakes especially for Picard in his leadership decisions, is beyond me. If we wanted to just do something to get Beverly out of the picture, she could show more torment over her son going missing, but Picard could ask her to trust him and need to rely on her to take another shuttle ahead to the mining colony to begin their emergency treatment. See? This isn\u2019t hard to lend stakes and credibility with everything that is already in the pages of this book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somewhere in the middle of the book, we are given some new insight which our intrepid heroes cannot have. The rainbow light shows are the work of sentient beings, and the glowing creatures are curious about these odd things in their creative space which arrived in weird containers in the sky. The story becomes about a planet of powerful earth shapers, and a remnant alien ship desperate to make a home, while our Prime Directive driven crew cannot allow the settlement project to proceed without proper regulatory zoning law having been met to be sure this isn\u2019t already someone else\u2019s planet\u2014 and besides, a shuttle is unaccounted for, and that can\u2019t be waved off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, the light creatures manage to puppet Data and use him to communicate. Which is not a disturbing violation of personhood at all\u2026 and everything is hashed out between them and the newcomers, because it turns out they are lonely just shaping the geology of their world with no one to appreciate their effort. Besides, they sleep for a thousand years between every earthwork at which time their leader is whichever ball of light reawakens first and there\u2019s no chance that won\u2019t work… like with that one dissenting ball of light who thought that the current leader was making a serious mistake checking if these weirdos were legit lifeforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019ll be cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that everyone is settling in nicely on the planet that tried to swallow him in an active rockslide, Picard gathers up the shuttle and the Enterprise zips off to help those miners. The end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know I\u2019m being a little hard on this book. I did enjoy reading it. In fact, I think if I had read it when it back when it had been published, I may have been more enamored. Things I liked about it were that both of the aliens introduced in this book were very alien; the ship of refugees had a description that would have stretched old TNG makeup departments and the other aliens were genuinely made up of light and had a unique society. Data and Troi were juxtaposed well with one another as mentor characters to the teens, and if I had been reading this book as a teen I may have felt a connection to these characters (Gina, Ken, and Wesley) as they were strongly featured. Like wise, the plot would not have challenged me, allowing me to keep up with the story. Even the multiple times that Geordi spouts off clich\u00e9s might have failed to have me grinding my teeth as I did now reading this book in my adulthood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end Picard sums up the question the book’s author wants us to ask: Do sentient beings create only for the sake of creating, or do they create for an audience who gives a purpose to their creative act? <\/p>\n\n\n\n And this is why we are all here for anything Star Trek. To ask the unanswerable questions. Am I writing this review for myself, or for you, “dear reader”? I’m not sure. I certainly get more out of it by imagining a friendly ear in the world, inclined in my direction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had a wonderful experience on vacation this summer, exploring a used bookstore in another state several hours away from home. This place had a whole scifi section and a book case that included several solid shelves full of Star Trek novels. Years ago, in the halcyon days of the 90s, when we didn’t know … Continue reading Review: Perchance to Dream (TNG novel)<\/span>
by Howard Weinstein<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some how, as the kids say now, this book was mid. I didn\u2019t not like it. I think I just wish I could reach through a space-time anomaly to beta read this manuscript and leave some suggestions for the author, immediately after which, I would witness the cover art time-shift to an honest-to-the-content depiction of Picard and Wesley, and pickup the book from my nightstand to give it another chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n