Showing posts with label Star Trek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star Trek. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Uhura's Song (Star Trek: The Original Series #21), by Janet Kagan

Pocket Books//Star Trek, September 2000

I'll admit upfront this is a nostalgic favorite. I think it's also very good.

Early in her career, Lt. Uhura met a young diplomat from the world of Eeiauo. The two women bonded over music, singing, and the songs of their respective peoples and cultures. The graceful, catlike Sunfall of Ennian even shares songs with Uhura, and the Old Tongue they are sung in, that are not to shared except with other bards, 

Years later, Uhura is now communications officer on the USS Enterprise, which is on a mission of mercy to Eeiauo, where a terrible plague has broken out. The infected individuals become weak, their fur (or hair, as they make the unhappy discovery it also affects humans), become stiff and achy, fall into comas, and die. One of those dying is Uhura's old friend, Sunfall.

Friday, July 14, 2017

Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek, by Manu Saadia (author), Oliver Wyman (narrator)

Audible Studios, August 2016 (original publication June 2016)

We don't ordinarily think much about the economics of Star Trek when watching an episode or a movie, but when we step back from the stories themselves, it's a pretty interesting question. How does the Federation's economy work? Although there are references to a currency called simply "credits" scattered through The Original Series, that's later retconned to "just a figure of speech." As explicitly stated in Next Generation and Deep Space 9, the Federation operates without money.

How does that work? Can it work?