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Constellations
Celebrating 40 Years of Star Trek

by Marco Palmieri (Editor)



      Celebrating forty years since its first appearance in 1966, Star Trek is here to stay (even if currently that just means in print). Here is a book of short stories by various authors, all dealing with the original series and featuring an introduction to remind us what it was all about. Reviewing a book of short stories is never easy but would-be readers will be glad to know that there is a fairly even standard to the tales, with nothing dire and nothing outstanding. Although the introduction reminds us of the time when the original series was made, it is interesting to note that all the stories look at the series very much through 2006 eyes, rather than the rather innocent and less complex eyes of 1966. None of the other series had been made then, but now they all have and it shows, as does a distinctly post 9/11 feeling that is out of tune with the more utopian (at least on Earth) period the show was set in. This makes for more sophisticated stories, but, in my opinion, it would have been even better to have celebrated the more optimistic and sometimes naïve way the show looked at the future. Perhaps only the final story - a manga strip from Tokyopop - gives us a fairly simple story akin to those in the original series with a life lesson to be learned, but with the sort of adventure that made the show so popular. What is lacking in all the stories is the sheer sense of wonder that every episode gave us, and thus made it one of the most popular and most enduring shows of all time.

The Book

Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster)
September 5, 2006
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9780743492546
ISBN10: 9743492544
SF/TV Tie-In
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Excerpt
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The Reviewer

Rachel A Hyde
Reviewed 2007
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