Treks Not Taken: What If Stephen King, Anne Rice, Kurt Vonnegut, and Other Literary Greats Had Written Episodes of Star Trek : The Next Generation?

[Probably only of interest to Trekkies][All three of them that read this.][And it's time for you three to go to bed now.]

Treks Not Taken is a parody of both Star Trek:  The Next Generation and an assortment of writers.  It's a collection of short stories, each written in the style of a different famous author - for instance, "Fandom Shrugged", about the voyages of the starship, Free Enterprise (in the style of Ayn Rand).  "A Clockwork Data" has enough of the style of A Clockwork Orange to remind me why I stopped reading the original book. 

The stories themselves aren't all that good as short stories, but they're good for a laugh here and there.  One of my favorite passages is from "Moby Trek" (abridged)(for non-Trekkies, it helps to know that William Shatner wears a toupee):

"Aye!" Piquod called back.  "The white hole!  That damnable pulsing quasar of the cosmic depths!"  He pointed to his hairless pate.  "'Twas such a one took off my hair, my hearties!  We rammed, and were bombarded with neutrinos and tidal forces tore the Type A apart, and overnight my hair grew white, and within a week had all fallen - prematurely - out.  Yet I wear not a rug, nor a weave, as some lesser skippers have been known to do."  He raised a fist.  "Aye!  The Great White Hole!  I'll chase her 'round the Coal Sack and the Crab Nebula 'afore I give her up...

and later:

The bulkheads groaned as the tidal forces rended us asunder; with a wrench the Saucer separated from the Engineering Section.  On my screen I saw Piquod railing profoundly at the nemesis that filled his own screen.  "Fie!"  he declaimed.  "Get thee to a nunnery!  Not Montalban nor Shatner but I shall speechify at thee, foul quasar!  Aye, very like a hole!  Shine on, thou crazy diamond!  Set the controls for the heart of the sun! Atom-heart mother! Astronomy domine!  But I suffer a momentary lapse of reason!  In the history of the Cosmos thou and I art mere footnotes yet on thee I would make my mark.  On my mark - engage!  Cold - I shiver - How now?  Top of the world, Ma! Rosebud!"

The Vampire LeForge (in the style of Anne Rice) is actually the best story, and the authors got the style also.  I won't tell any more of that one in case you read it.  Jurassic Trek (spoiler alert) involves an energy beam which makes everything on the Enterprise devolve (it also involves a lot of Michael Crichton-type technical detail).  The rest of the crew leave, but Data remains to try to reverse it.  Eventually, all that's left in that area of space are "a cloud of toasters, can openers, refrigerators, and widgets/doorstops that had been the Enterprise..." and "...a wooden marionette with a long nose and dressed in a feathered cap and an odd Alpine outfit."

The cutest one (of course) is Oh, The Treks You'll Take (in the style of you-know-who):

The whole thing began
In the Transporter Room
When the Transporter Chief
Beamed up a ZLAGOON!

We shot it with phasers
And sang a cantata
But it didn't stop
Till we fed it raw data!

It detoured into
The Ten Forward Lounge
And drank every bottle
Of booze it could scrounge!...

Comments

[DebD]

I am a Trekkie. Sounds like a fun book.

[M Light]

It is a fun book, and a neat idea.