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| Star Trek: Myriad Universes: Infinity's Prism (Star Trek: Myriad Universes) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Christopher L. Bennett, William Leisner, James Swallow
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books)
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $8.55
You Save: $7.45 (47%)
New (35) Used (10) from $7.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 27424
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 1.5
ISBN: 1416571809
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781416571803
ASIN: 1416571809
Publication Date: July 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20081113221647T
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-9 of 9 | | « PREV | | |
 Bravo! July 18, 2008
0 out of 9 found this review helpful
Love, love, love this book! I read it in two days! AWESOME! I want MORE 'alternate universe' novels!
best anthology yet! July 19, 2008
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
WOW! I love this "alternate uni" bit! Writing this when only half way through the book. That is how GOOD this is. I have been collecting/reading every pocket ST title since the mid 80's, and this is by FAR the best thing to come along in ages. Tight charactrization,and a muy cool mishmash of different senarios ST style. I see another one of these next month. If it is as good as this one,I can't wait.Check it out, you won't be dissapointed!
 If Star Trek were Babylon 5 August 24, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
You folks have read the publishers review so I am not going to repeat it. My opinions of the three stories are as follows: A Less Perfect Union is what Star Trek would look like if it were Babylon 5. The Enterprise crew is an amalgamation of both TOS pilot episode crews. It feels like Strangers From the Sky by Bonnano. If you liked that book, you will like this story. The second story was not so good. I just didn't buy the argument that the Voyager crew would be allowed such high access in the Coalition Military. Chapter 12 is brilliant, though. It gives a glimpse of fighting a war in several realities at once. That chapter made me think of Coming of the Quantum Cats by Pohl. I liked that the third story did not come off as brutal as the Mirror Universe stories. I like that only a few of the familiar characters are present. That shows the effect of temporal drift. I didn't buy the argument that most people could trace lineage to the original supermen. That smacks of inbreeding. The story also makes a reference to Strangers From the Sky and it also brings in the son of John Christopher. I can just imagine the war that would be fought if a permanent gate formed between Dark Mirror Universe and this universe.
I hope that sales are good enough to warrant publishing a lot more of these anthologies. This one is a fun read.
Schmaltz Sandwich October 17, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The wonder is not the "Myriad Universes" series itself but that it took this long for such a concept to emerge and be developed, at least beyond the assorted "Mirror Universe" tales. The very notion is pure "fan fic," and as a Trekker of forty years' standing, I say, "It's about time!"
Taking "Infinity's Prism"'s three novellas in order...:
1) "A LESS PERFECT UNION": What if Jonathan Frederick Paxton's verteron attack on Starfleet HQ in 2155 had been successful, and Earth had turned its back on the eventual Federation? William Leisner answers that question in a compelling and largely plausible tale that illustrates that while history can be detoured or postponed for a time, some trends really are inevitable.
HIGHLIGHTS: Realism. Earth doesn't turn "dark" or "evil". It's still a democracy and still advances culturally and technologically. But it's much more nationalist than internationalist. The Interstellar Coalition forms almost as a reaction to Paxton's attack, since their diplomats were all its targets. The two powers never become enemies, but they're far from friends. And the man that begins the process of rapproachment with Earth's local galactic neighbors isn't a starry-eyed dreamer, but a pragmatic businessman motivated by national economic self-interest. I just wish Leisner had used Harry Mudd for the role.
Characterizations. We see many TOS faces in subtley or dramatically different contexts. But the two centerpieces are an elderly, exiled T'Pol, embittered by how humans murdered her husband, Trip, and thwarted Jonathan Archer's Federation dream; and a young Jim Kirk who chose marriage and family over career and almost loses all three to his virulent anti-Vulcan bigotry (the scene where Dr. McCoy challenges Kirk's hatred of Vulcans is absolutely priceless). Yet despite Kirk's animus being exploited by yet another familiar face to try and sabotage Earth's IC membership, it isn't he who ends up doing the ultimate undermining.
No happy ending. After over a century of separation, hostility, and suspicion, one would not reasonably suppose that Earth could just join the I.C. overnight. It would take time to work out the details and build up the necessary trust. Leisner doesn't succumb to the Roddenberry to tack on a happy ending, but leaves matters believably unresolved - though if you're looking for the "hope of better days," the epilogue doesn't disappoint.
2) "PLACES OF EXILE": Not really an alternate timeline story at all, but far more of an "alternate present". Janeway never makes her "deal with the devil" (i.e. the Borg) from the "Voyager" episode "Scorpion," the Borg are not present to defend Janeway's ship from Species 8472 attack, and the fluidic space critters cripple Voyager, killing Paris and Tuvok in the process and rendering the Starfleet survivors refugees taken in by a species called the Vostigye, there to spend the rest of their lives in the Delta Quadrant.
Eh. The ensuing story wasn't a bad one, at least by "Voyager" standards. I did very much like Harry Kim's technobabble explanation of Species 8472's duplication predicament and how it fleshed them out into three-dimensional (and less rote villainous) characters. It was also interesting to see a Dominion ship hijacked to the Delta Quadrant by the Caretaker and the wild card that introduced into Janeway's (eventual) attempt to build a surrogate Federation in the Delta Quadrant.
What I didn't like was...Janeway's (eventual) attempt to build a surrogate Federation in the Delta Quadrant. Even less that it succeeded. I didn't buy that she would eventually accept defeat on the core mission of getting her crew (what was left of them, anyway) home. And the comprehensively syrupy ending made me want to hurl.
3) "SEEDS OF DISSENT": Standard "What if Hitler had won?" tale, only with our old friend Khan Noonien Singh as the ruler of Earth and, by 2376 (and posthumously), much of the galaxy as well. It flip-flops the "Botany Bay" device by putting "basic" humans in the role of escapees from the Eugenics Wars who are found by a Khanate starship. Several of them we recognize - Shaun Christopher, the son of John Christopher from TOS's "Tomorrow Is Yesterday"; Rain Robinson, the astronomer chick from "Voyager"'s "Future's End"; and Shannon O'Donnel, Janeway's look-alike ancestor from "11:59".
But they and their "secret weapon" are just the pawns in a long-running sting/contest between a staggeringly different (in character terms) Ezri Dax, a Trill deep-cover agent who has spent three centuries trying to overthrow the galactic Khanate, and an Augment Julian Bashir, who commands the vessel that finds the Botany Bay and is the glib bad guy that really believes his side's propaganda and eventually has his eyes opened by the efforts of Dax, eponymous "Bajoran terrorist" Kira Nerys, and Captain Christopher's crew.
Pluses: The Dax characterization is excellent. She is masterful, resourceful, intelligent, tough, and beats Bashir at his own game, yet not unscarred by the multi-lifetime ordeal, but rather bitterly and supremely motivated by it. The Rain Robinson character is her sadder but wiser "everywoman" reflection. And like "A Less Perfect Union," I appreciated that there was no grand resolution at the end, but tantalizing loose ends and jumping off points for future sequels.
Minuses: I wasn't quite convinced that Khan could have conquered Earth so easily; I was thoroughly unconvinced that he could have conquered the entire Alpha Quadrant at a stroke. Genetic enhancement could only take the Augments so far.
Also, while I suppose it made the story more accessible to have DS9 characters in the prime rolls, really, neither Bashir nor Miles O'Brien or Jake Sisko (or Benjamin Sisko and Jean-Luc Picard, who are referred to in the dialogue) could exist in a timeline where "Basic" humans were exterminated centuries back. And I'm just not buying a Ducat-Kira romance under any circumstances; their relentless kissy-facedness gave me the giggles from the first depiction.
"A Less Perfect Union" makes "Infinity's Prism" worth the price all by itself. As to its two companion novellas, read at your own risk.
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