First, a quick update. My new son, Michael, came into the world on April 30th. Everyone is doing fine. See my profile page for the latest pictures.
So, in honor of the birth of my son, who is now a bonafide Rush and Star Trek fan, I thought I would shoot out a review on a relatively rare Star Trek book.
Along with my fanaticism for the rock band Rush, I'm an equally huge fan of the ever-growing world of Star Trek. Now, you'll never find me attending conventions, wearing Spock ears (Well, once I did, but that's another story) or collecting everything there is to be collected with a Star Trek connection. However, I do (obviously) watch the shows and I have been building a collection of Star Trek related books. With nearly 700 unique books in my collection, I believe I have one of the largest Star Trek book collections in the country, if not world-wide.
Man, do I need a life.
So, that being said, I wanted to discuss a recently obtained, significantly rare book that Epinions just happens to have listed. Whoopee for me!
Ships of the Star Fleet Volume I - Cruisers and Frigates is not officially sanctioned by Paramount Pictures, the 'owners' if you will, of the Star Trek franchise, so this book makes no mention of the words 'Star Trek'. However, it does focus directly on the established entity known as 'Star Fleet' within the Star Trek Universe.
One of the more popular genre of books in the Star Trek universe are reference manuals - listing information from ships, personnel, space stations, weapons, planets, exploration facts, etc. There is certainly a plethora of original novels related to the various Star Trek incarnations, but for my money, the reference manual spawns true originality.
To that end, Ships of the Star Fleet Volume I - Cruisers and Frigates focuses its attention on some of the known star ships in the fleet and then extrapolates what other star ship models may exist. Using a clever combination of both original series (TOS) and movie ships, Todd Allan Guenther (the author) puts together a nice blend of ships that shows how they may have evolved over the years. For those of you familiar with the Star Trek universe, you know that the original Enterprise from the 60's television show changed significantly as Star Trek hit the silver screen back in 1979 and into the 80's and 90's.
Ships of the Star Fleet Volume I - Cruisers and Frigates shows how some of that transformation may have occurred over the course of the 15 year gap between the original show and the first movie. To that end, this reference manual is very impressive, especially with its endless detailed schematic drawings of the Enterprise and other related ships of the Fleet.
However, where there was clearly some solid creativity in developing that natural evolution of the ships, there was a unfortunate lack of creativity in developing the other types of star ships that may have also existed in the fleet.
Ship reference manuals of this type are certainly not bound by any Star Trek bible, however for all intents and purposes, there is a bible known as the Star Fleet Reference Manual. This manual was the first of the Star Trek reference manuals to be created (back in 1975). It too looked not only at the Enterprise, but several other model star ships that, while never seen on the TV or silver screen, were accepted as unofficial 'official' ships of the Star Fleet. In fact, future reference manuals cited these new models and improved on them - updating them to the sleeker movie versions of the Enterprise et al.
But with Ships of the Star Fleet Volume I - Cruisers and Frigates, the variation of star ships differ so slightly that you get the feeling you're looking at the same ship with each turn of the page. Yes, the ships are detailed beautiful both with information and schematic drawings, but the differences between each, and the sometimes haphazard approach to the design factors leaves a somewhat bad taste in my mouth.
Ok, I may be taking this all too seriously - I think we already established that - but instead of just repeating on a theme, I would have preferred to see more dramatic changes to Guenther's view on new ships, rather than just a slight - and I do mean slight - change from ship to ship.
Still, as reference manuals go, this one has a nice blend of schematics and data with some fold-out drawings of some of the models.
Listed as Volume I, there actually is a Volume II in the series, but sadly that's not included in Epinions database.
Yet.
Not a Star Trek fan? Obviously, don't bother with this book.
Star Trek fan? If you're fortunate enough to actually find a copy, grab it. It's likely worth around $40-50 now and, since it's been out of print for a decade, the value will certainly increase.
For me, it was a no brainer. It was a Star Trek book I didn't have in my collection.
I remedied that when I found a copy worthy of that collection (Good to fine condition).
Ok - back to changing dirty diapers.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
-John
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