Star Trek, The Official Guide to Our Universe : The True Science Behind the Starship Voyages by Andrew Fazekas

In my college years I had the audacity to call Star Trek "boring", which caused a Trekkie to say defensively "What's so boring about an optimistic future?" I had grown up as more of a Star Wars fan, but as an adult I've grown to appreciate the Star Trek franchise for its striking optimism and imagination. Star Trek writers have a boundless outlet to comment on human nature and the universe at large by extrapolating a future that's built on the best aspects of our present. In this book, Andrew Fazekas uses the fictional voyages of the TV series and movies as a jumping-off point to explore real-life astronomy and physics.

To be upfront, this isn't a book that I can "review" as it's pretty much a reference book and isn't intended to be read cover-to-cover (though I did). Published by National Geographic, The Official Guide to Our Universe contains beautiful space photography from NASA (some with necessary false colorization) and information about celestial objects such as stars, black holes, and nebulae. Each section begins with a summary of a Star Trek episode or movie in which the crew encounters the object in question ("____ in Star Trek"), with the following page talking about the real-life equivalent ("____ in Our Universe"), and a few pages later a guide detailing how to spot it in the night sky ("Stargazing"). The stargazing pages includes what area of the world from which the object is best viewed, the best time of year to gaze upward, and a map that shows the nearest constellation. In between chapters, there are pages about Star Trek technologies like starships, weapons, and communicators, but these pages kind of feel like filler that would be better used in a more fan-targeted reference book.

As science fiction, Star Trek certainly tries harder to be accurate to the science than some of its genre brethren, but of course sometimes it just tosses out cool-sounding space words in the name of compelling stories. For instance, in the Original Series, Kirk and company get up close to a quasar, but as explained by Fazekas, in reality that's something that could only be found at the center of a galaxy other than our own. The book is careful to distinguish the fiction from the facts, and it's pretty interesting when the two overlap.

There's one paragraph in each chapter of this book that takes a quick look at how close real science is to reaching the technology that's been depicted on screen, and some of it is closer than one might have considered. Although we won't be traversing the galaxy at warp speed any time soon, we've come close to replicators with 3-D printers, and virtual reality is advancing quickly, just not to the extent of holodecks. We've come a long way in the fifty years since Gene Roddenberry's original series premiered, and continuing innovation at this pace for another couple hundred years, who knows where we'll boldly go. Stargazing has been limited to an Earth-centric point of view, but someday we might see our solar system, or even our galaxy, from the outside. The Official Guide to Our Universe will appeal to any Star Trek fan, and/or anyone with an interest in astronomy, and it may increase your interest in either subject.

The Autobiography of James T. Kirk: The Story of Starfleet's Greatest Captain

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek coming up this September 8, I read The Autobiography of James T. Kirk. Exactly what it sounds like, this is a first-person account of the life of the character most famously portrayed by William Shatner, and more recently by Chris Pine. However, from the start it's made clear that this won't take place in J. J. Abrams' alternate timeline, since this Kirk grew up with both of his parents and an older brother. There is but a single nod to the new films in the fact of George Kirk being stationed on the USS Kelvin.

Kirk tells us about his childhood on Earth and then his first venture into space, including a stint on the planet Tarsus IV where he witnesses the massacre perpetrated by Governor Kodos. This comes back into play in the events of the Original Series episode "The Conscience of the King". Then Kirk spends some time talking about his time at Starfleet Academy, giving some explanation of the backstory explored in the episode "Shore Leave", and his quick rise to captain of the Enterprise at a young age.

The book continues to recount a lot of events from the TV series and films from Kirk's point of view, which some reviewers have dismissed as "recaps," but I think it's worthwhile to be inside his head and know what he was thinking at the time, and what decisions he regrets. He turns out to have a good reason for being a womanizer; a series of failed relationships and unexpected tragedies made him wary of getting close to anyone.

We come to realize that he carries a lot of guilt about the countless crew members he has lost during his missions, and about not being a present father for his son. It worked as a dramatic twist in the film The Wrath of Khan to reveal Kirk had an estranged child, but when we realize David would have been conceived during the events of the show but was never mentioned before, it feels like a cheat. So I found it especially interesting that this book delves into the relationship between James Kirk, Carol Marcus, and their son David in greater depth, and attempts to explain why they could not be a family unit.

Another value of this book is the imaginative way it fills in the gaps of established canon, showing what the crew was up to between the end of the series and the first Motion Picture, as well as some events between the films. Though sometimes it takes liberties that will certainly not become canonical themselves, such as the depiction of the reviled Star Trek V: The Final Frontier as merely a movie from a world parallel to ours, instead of events that Kirk actually participated in.

As a casual fan of Star Trek, I enjoyed this book and it gave me new motivation to watch more of the Original Series, and perhaps rewatch the films, since it puts so many of those stories into new context. It would probably appeal most to long time fans of the franchise, but I think even someone who has never seen Shatner on screen will get some enjoyment from it, and the footnotes help to explain some of the important concepts such as the Prime Directive. For insight into the more subtle references, I recommend searching Memory Alpha.

Since the book makes an effort to remain "in-universe", it and "editor" David A. Goodman do not have a specific webpage that I can link to, but you can buy the book at startrek.com.