Why the hate for SM? I read it so long ago I can barely remember the plot, but what was it that raised it above (or lowered it below) all the rest of the Trek novels?
It’s been just as long for me, but I just remember really hating it. It’s not as bad as The Pandora Principle, which was a Pocket Book novel, though.
My faves: several of the stories in the Star Trek: New Voyages collection, including “The Face on the Barroom Floor” (Kirk gets in trouble while trying to remain anonymous on shore leave), “Mindsifter” (Kirk is kidnapped and tortured by Kor) and “The Enchanted Pool” (Spock is intrigued by an ethereal woman while trying to find a lost Starfleet superweapon), which are very different stories but each satisfying and a lot of fun in their own way; Diane Duane’s Dark Mirror (a great Mirror Universe tale set in the ST:TNG era, later contradicted by DS9, but what the hell, you can always say it’s yet another alternate universe), and Peter David’s Imzadi (a great Troi/Riker love story and time-travel puzzle), Q-in-Law (romantic comedy with Q and Lwaxana Troi) and Q-Squared (Q, Trelane and an alt-univ Picard cross paths).
I think I remember Star Trek: New Voyages, I picked it up at a book club in school. The Spock story had him chasing a fairy for a kiss IIRC 
Well, she was chasing him, but it actually all made sense in context (with a nice juxtaposition of his logic and her illogic). A nice, lighthearted romp. 
Ooky means “disturbing in a sexual fashion.” I don’t think there’s any way to read the two Phoenix novels other than Omne wanting Jim Kirk to be his bitch in the crassest sense: he wants Kirk to be his sex slave.
You’re saying these folks are perverted or something?
I just finished the novelization of the movie and there was an explanation for the Kirk joyride that I wish had made it into the film. Apparently the restored car actually belonged to Jim and George Kirk’s dead father. Their stepdad (nice enough when mom was around, but an ass as soon as she takes off for space again) ordered the kids to get it washed up so that he could sell it. George had enough and decided to run away from home. Jim decided to do the same, but used the car instead. Driving it off the cliff read like it was half spur-of-the-moment rebellion, half having only a vague idea of where the brakes were. I like this a bit better…keeps Jim Kirk as a troubled kid feeling the loss of his dad, but less of a jerkass.
“When I use a word, it means what I want it to mean. No more and no less.”
You know…I’m gonna have to be one of those people who says that only things on screen count.
That’s altogether ooky.
No, it’s in just a little bit carrolly.
Perhaps so.
But this is altogether ooky.
This makes me want to seek out the novelization.
Hence my wish that it had made it into the movie.
Ya know, it’s a bit of nitpickery, but it occurs to me…
Kirk is told to enlist in Starfleet. It comes up multiple times. Enlist, this is your last chance, the ship for enlisting is about to leave.
Well military history is and always has been you’re either enlisted or you’re an officer. If you attend the Naval Academy, Military Academy, etc., as a student you graduate and are commissioned as an OFFICER. You’re not enlisted, and your career path is much different from that of an enlisted man.
Kirk did not enlist in Starfleet. He attended Starfleet Academy to become an officer.
I don’t think it’s a small nitpick. It’s emblematic of the way the film shows no regard whatsofuckingever for any sort of logic.
It’s possible that he earn’s his commission as an officer only after successfully completing the academy. During the time he’s in the academy, he technically holds an enlisted rank (but addressed as “cadet”).
I’m okay with “enlist” meaning “join”, though it’s technically incorrect for officers seeking commission. I kinda object to Kirk getting commissioned as a Captain, though.
On the one hand, there’s precedent in canon for the (remarkably stupid) idea that all Starfleet personnel are “officers.” (Though in that case, the term “officer” no longer means anything.) And the language may have changed in consequence, so that enlist merely means join up.
But I’m still not willing to buy it. I’ve seen it twice now (as Mrs. Rhymer wanted to go this past Wednesday) and hated it each time. The movie has insufficient goodwill with me for me to cut the writers any slack.