The Kobayashi Maru

by on July 22, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Julia Ecklar wrote a number of short stories (in Analog, and a few anthologies), but no novels, which might explain why this Star Trek novel is more of a short story collection. However, she did later write other TOS novels under the name L.A. Graf (the pseudonym seems to be from slightly after my time of active Star Trek reading).

We have a framing story of a disabled shuttlecraft stuck in an extremely messy system with plenty of gravitational anomalies. As usual, you have much of the command crew going to check a scientific outpost that has gone silent, and Enterprise is hanging back to stay clear of an area far tougher for a big ship to get through. Disaster strikes, and the shuttlecraft is disabled, with Kirk and Sulu badly injured, and everyone is left waiting while Enterprise tries to locate the shuttle for rescue.

The actual problem that caused the accident is briefly identified as a gravitic mine, which reminds Sulu of a command simulator test involving a freighter that has been disabled by one. So Kirk, Sulu, Chekhov and Scotty trade tales of the Kobayashi Maru to pass the time….

While a good setup for those stories, the resolution of the framing is all about the rescue (which actually is enough). We never find out what happened to the scientific outpost, nor any hints as to who thought this system needs mining in the first place.

Kirk tells his story first, and it is a step up from the version we get in the reboot movie. Both assume that he reprograms the scenario into an easy win, which doesn’t really feel correct for him, and TWOK only says he ‘reprogrammed the computer so it was possible to win.’ My feeling has always been that he just took out any “cheats” the simulated Klingons got, and otherwise set it to a more normal, if tough, scenario.

Chekhov and Sulu’s stories are next and more focused on other events with Kobayashi Maru merely being a side element. Sulu’s story is the best of the lot, with a lot of personal development of a young Hikaru, and having to deal with an actual death while at the academy. Scott’s tale is good on the personal side, and has the right idea and structure. It also features the actual titular test more prominently, with Scotty getting to pull out number of engineering “miracles” to stave off defeat, while showcasing more of the ‘bad’ form of the test which is popular in conceptions of it, but not how I think it’d work. I also have problems with the idea of one bit, but like the idea that Scott knows it doesn’t work, but knows the math says it should, so he bets the simulator will let it work is dead on to what’s needed.

So, it’s good, decently structured, does well with the characters, but the writing doesn’t get to the level of what could have been done with the high concept.

└ Tags: , , , ,
 Comment 

The Well of Ascension

by on July 14, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

My copy of this book is enhanced by an interesting preface, where Brian Sanderson talks about the particular challenges of writing this book. Apparently, he’d been writing various books for a while, finishing them, moving on to the next book. The Final Empire had a very definite hook to a sequel. But it was also the first book that he sold, and got published. Otherwise, apparently, he would have moved on to a new project. Now, he had to write a sequel, which was a new challenge for him, even though writing a novel was something he was already practiced at.

As far the finished novel is concerned. It does have some problems. Sanderson does do a very good job of finding new character arcs lying underneath the big lessons learned in the first book. But, it suffers from being slow moving (not necessarily a problem), and having a clunky relationship between two main-plot worthy elements that get very unequal treatment.

Our main plot, for almost the entire book, is a political crisis. It’s been a year since the Lord Ruler was killed, and the Final Empire has broken up into feuding warlords from the nobility. Our heroes have instituted a representative government in Luthadel, the former capitol, that could turn into a stable government… if not for the hostile army that has just arrived.

The city’s defenses aren’t that good, the available army is barely trained, there’s little in the way of food stores for a siege…. And the noble part of the assembly is largely willing to bow to the current warlord on the spot, and hand over the city. They’ll be relatively safe. The skaa (serf/slaves) that are just getting some taste of freedom on the other hand….

So, internal political maneuvers are a large part of the book, complicated by two other armies that show up shortly after the opening of the book. Add in the high-power magic of the mistborn and assassinations, doppelgangers, and more, and you have a good action/political thriller, and most of the book works well with this.

The end of The Final Empire promised that more would need to be said about just what happened a thousand years ago, and just what the Deepness was/is. And this forms the second main plot in this book, which lends itself to a more investigative style plot, perhaps lending itself to more Indiana Jones-style action. But it remains a vestigial side note for most of the novel.

This is a problem I’ve seen elsewhere, and I’m am surprised that I can’t think of a book trading off between two different main plots smoothly. In all cases (most definitely including this one), the trade off is abrupt and ill-timed. (Maybe the successful books just do it smoothly enough to not notice to the change of destination.) No matter how much I was enjoying the main plot of the book, I always had this thought in the back of my mind of, “What about the other major plot? What’s going on there?”, and waiting impatiently for it to get its fair turn in the sun.

Of course, the switchover does happen. And there are some interesting bridges going on between both tracks towards the end. But, they come up so late that there’s no chance for it to really affect the plot structure. Vin figures out important things to implode the first main plot, but no one else gets a chance to learn of this, to work out implications; so far Vin and the reader are left alone with esoteric knowledge.

On the action side, the book is largely satisfying, with appropriate action bits scattered throughout, and the early ones appropriately introducing new readers in what is going on. The end has two big action sequences, and we have a promise things that need doing for the next book. I hope they’re allowed to support it more fully there.

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 

The Lays of Beleriand

by on June 8, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The third part of The History of Middle Earth is much rougher going for me, as it mostly a couple of very long poems, which I never do so well with.

It does gain interest for a couple bits of real-world activities that intrude on the book.

The main attraction here is part three, the “Lay of Leithian”, which is a poetic rework of “The Tale of Tinúviel” from book two. This made it to over four thousand lines before dissolving into a mass of unfinished notes and plans for continuing the tale. However, this is also when Tolkien was getting more interested  in a wider audience for his writings, and part was presented to the Inklings. C.S. Lewis did an extensive commentary on the existing part of the poem, which is also included here.

Since this is still a fictional older myth, Lewis continued the fiction in his commentary, acting like there were several slightly different versions surviving from antiquity, and doing textual analysis on them. This let him couch a bunch of suggestions for revisions as alternative versions of the text, with various fictional modern commentators giving their impressions as to the ‘truest’ version. This was certainly to help take some of the sting out of Lewis’ criticisms, and also an interesting writing project while critiquing. Tolkien certainly took some of the advice to heart.

The very end of the book looks ahead by about a decade (the materials here were generally written in the 1920s) to the initial submission of the Silmarillion in 1937 for publication. This gets mentioned in a couple places, including Tolkien’s foreword to The Lord of the Rings, but Christopher Tolkien here teases out some further details. The handed the publisher of The Hobbit a pile of material without properly outlining what it all was. By Allen & Unwin’s accounting the fourth item was “The Gnomes Material”, which would itself be a number of different items, including well known parts of the Silmarillion (such as “Ainulindalë”). It seems only a couple parts were turned over to their prose reader, including the “Lay of Leithian” (described as “The Geste of Beren and Lúthien” retold in verse). Not having any background in what had been handed him, didn’t know who it was by, and that was only fictionally historic in origin.

This leads to the rejection of the Silmarillion, and that project never being finished, but leads to the writing of a proper sequel to The Hobbit.

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 

Fire on High

by on May 31, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This is the same length as the other New Frontiers books, but it feels just a bit meatier, and more than just a longer episode.

Also, the subplots feel more natural to the overall plot this time. There’s still odd bits sticking out, but not nearly to the same extent.

A surprising amount of this book is still dealing with the MacGuffin of the previous book. This does provide some suspense and action in a series that definitely trends towards the soap opera side of things.

Being Star Trek, we have new MacGuffins here. Or, two related ones, basically all-new, and then another which is a return of previous one. And that’s the strong part of the format here. The books are nominally independent, but not only do things continue from book to book, but older threads resurface in new forms. And we get treated to a multi-layered ending section with good tension because of it.

So, this one flowed better than book 5, and the characters are continuing to round out. The various plotlines work out better here, and the sex-comedy side feels relevant with a humorous chapter that really works.

└ Tags: , , , ,
 Comment 

Lincoln at Peoria

by on May 23, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

By the description, this is a through examination of one particular speech Abraham Lincoln gave at the start of his second career in politics.

That’s actually a very incomplete description. This book is much more about all the history surrounding it.

Lehrman’s contention is that a speech Lincoln gave in October 1854 should be as well remembered as some of his later speeches, like Cooper Union, and the Second Inaugural. That’s not really going to happen, but he does have good things to say about how it is foundational to most anything he said later.

The book is generally at its best recounting the history directly related to Lincoln and his speeches in the 1850s. You get the set up with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and all the political conflict that set in motion. Something Lehrman is quite clear about, but lets get a little overshadowed in other parts of the book is that the speech discussed here was given, apparently in largely the same form, just a few days before in Springfield. His words there were not recorded, and there’s not enough to even begin to reconstruct exactly what he said there, and it’s assumed that Peoria was basically a repeat of it. I’m tempted to think that Springfield may be more of first draft that had been polished afterward at Peoria. But we’ll never know. We do know that Lincoln was directly involved in making sure this version got out for people to read.

And while it’s not as well known, it has been read, and Lehrman leans a lot on existing commentaries on the speech in his book. Enough so that this book is not really able to into a very deep dissection of what Lincoln said, instead presenting more of what others have said. Which is fine enough for me, as that kind of textual analysis beyond my endurance. At the same time the second strength of this book is his look at where the thoughts presented in Peoria would echo in many further statements from Lincoln.

Despite the limited scope, this is not a fine combing over of the subject, and more of a general introduction to it. That is certainly fine for me, and it was a reasonably good read, if tending towards long-form repetition, and ignoring things just outside the spotlight.

└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment