PAPER UNIVERSE  
Star Trek
By Andrew Pang
Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster) - 2000 
ISBN: 0671042157  - Large Format PB (with sheets of origami paper included)
Nonfiction / How-To / Origami

Reviewed by: Rachel Hyde, MyShelf.Com
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Here is a mixture of ancient and modern; the ancient art of origami allied with the futuristic world of Star Trek.  The book indulges in some hyperbole claiming that you can create and command a whole fleet of spaceships and in doing so interact with the worlds from the show and do more, in short, than just watch it on the telly.  This is all a bit extreme perhaps but you can have a whole lot of fun with this book and I particularly applauded the way it came with a nice little envelope full of colored squares so you can start straight away wherever you are.  Fold any one of the various Starship Enterprises, Voyager, the DS9 space station, A Romulan Bird-of-Prey, a Borg cube, Ferengi Marauder, a Cardassian Galor-Class warship and others. 

The most fundamental part of a how-to book though is the clarity of its instructions.  I’ve been doing origami since I was seven but I honestly think a complete beginner would find this book one of the best on the market for explaining with economy of language and some clear, good-sized diagrams the basic folds and bases.  As for the actual models themselves they are a lot harder so a total beginner would be better off after they had learned the basics buying a book with some simpler models in it before tackling these.  The DS9 space station in particular is tricky but having said this any more confident folder would have a ball making these models.  Paste them onto greetings cards, hang them from the ceiling, make a mobile or why not decorate the Christmas tree?

A well-presented practical book for anybody who loves origami and Star Trek!

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