Disposable Lit Reviews

HarperPerennial, 1998
191 pp.
ISBN 0-06-095276-8

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Tell me if this doesn’t sound like a great fanboy book idea: What if various popular and literary luminaries — Kurt Vonnegut, James Joyce, Stephen King, Anne Rice — had written stories for Star Trek: The Next Generation? You can already see it now, can’t you? How Wesley Crusher would narrate a story as written by J.D. Salinger. How Tom Clancy would get into all of the logistical details. How Jackie Collins would turn the entire bridge crew into a bunch of power-mad, sex-obsessed connivers.

And the ease with which you can conjure up your own parody pastiches in the style of famous authors is exactly why this book, which seems such a work of genius in the abstract, is such a trainwreck in print: It’s SO obvious.

Because you can write all the jokes yourself, can’t you? There’s a chapter as written by Anthony Burgess; you already know that everything’s going to be described as “horrorshow.” There’s a chapter written by Michael Crichton; you know that the normal levels of technobabble are going to go through the roof, with footnotes. The Anne Rice chapter plays up homoerotic subtext between La Forge and Data. Cormac McCarthy? Run-on sentences without punctuation about the manliness of space. James Joyce? Random association bilge with overflowing literary pretension. Herman Melville (abridged, naturally)? Shucks, you could practically cut-and-paste it from all the Moby Dick allusions from the series and First Contact. And the Stephen King chapter entitled “The Trekking” is obviously going to involve Ten-Forward, a haunted holodeck, and a warp core breach. Every chapter reads exactly as you would expect it to read, which makes the act of reading unnecessary and even tedious. Every joke is telegraphed from the table of contents.

Well, not quite every joke. There are some random flashes of inspiration beyond the dictates of the particular pastiche. The Ken Kesey “One Beamed Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” chapter is narrated by Miles O’Brien. Why? Because he’s the chief. And the Joseph Conrad chapter, “Trek of Darkness,” relies on some intra-franchise interaction and a fortunate bit of similar nomenclature. But even then, the book’s a one-note party game that runs far too long, through twenty chapters.

And trust me, a simple google search will turn up a half-dozen amateur-produced Dr. Seuss Trek pieces better than what’s included here.

Just take the premise, use your own imagination, and forget about the book. Twice as entertaining, and a lot cheaper.

Nathan Shumate