Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Star Trek: Game of Thrones Edition

Vanguard #2: Summon the Thunder by Dayton Ward, Kevin Dilmore

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Earlier this year I reviewed book one in the Star Trek Vanguard series. Long story short – it’s a series set in the time of the original Star Trek tv show. It’s about the Federation and the rest of the known universe encountering technology that is simultaneously very old and very advanced. While I liked many of the ideas in the book, the writing felt a little hammy and dated. Summon the Thunder is book two in the series. While some plot points carry over […]

Set your phasers on cheeeeese

Vanguard #1: Harbinger by David Mack

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A subreddit of nerds recently lamented the end of The Expanse – both the nine-book series and the tv show. Someone in the subreddit helpfully mentioned that if readers like ancient foreboding space tech in the vein of The Expanse’s protomolecule or the Halo’s Forerunners, they might enjoy the Star Trek: Vanguard series of books set in the time of the original Star Trek tv series. The whole Vanguard series was on sale on Kobo, so I bought them based on that recommendation. At the […]

Where No One Has Gone Before…

The Fifty-Year Mission – The Next 25 Years – From the Next Generation to J.J. Abrams by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross

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The second lengthy volume (over 800 pages!) of Star Trek’s fifty-year mission isn’t as exciting as the first tome. That first extended work dealt with the original Star Trek series and the subsequent movies and was quite interesting. This volume, like the first, is a series of quotes from the key players involved in Next Generation, its subsequent movies, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise. There’s also a brief section on the new Star Trek movies and some series which never made it to air. […]

To Boldly Go…

The Fifty-Year Mission - The First 25 Years by Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman

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I’m ashamed to say that I, lifelong Trekkie that I am, had not heard of these Mission books until Cannonballer narfna pointed them out to me. At 560 pages, Volume 1 is a great big book. I bought both volumes from ebay and doubted I’d get either of them read in time for this year’s Cannonball. Although I wasn’t sure about the format, I found it an amazingly fast read. The two authors do little writing; the book is quotes from everyone who ever heard […]

Baby’s first tie-in Star Trek novel.

Imzadi by Peter David

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This was supposedly a huge bestseller back in the day (1992). I gotta say, I don’t really get it. I think I missed the boat here. A while back I went looking for people’s favorite Star Trek novels and then found some of them in my local used bookstores. This was one of the three I ended up picking up, and as my first Star Trek tie-in novel, I could probably have done better. Or, maybe I’m just missing the cultural context. It’s thirty-years old […]

Star Trek’s God Has Feet of Clay

Inside Star Trek - The Real Story by Herbert F. Solow and Robert H. Justman

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Seeing recent memorials to Gene Roddenberry on what would have been his 100th birthday reminded me of the darker side of Star Trek’s early beginnings and the damaged man whose television program had such an impact on my life and the lives of so many others. There are numerous books out there about Star Trek’s beginnings, but most of them are written from the fans’ perspective and place Mr. Roddenberry on a very high pedestal, but this book is written by Executive in Charge of […]



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