Book Review: Star Trek: Corona by Greg Bear

Star Trek: Corona by Greg Bear

Paperback, 192 pages

Published August 2000 by Pocket Books (first published 1984)

I don't always write full reviews for media tie-in novels. This one was one I felt deserving as I have a few things to say about it. There are a few really good reasons why I choose to read this Star Trek novel. It is a bit of lost novel that came out in 1984 around the time of the Search for Spock. The thing is I wanted to read because it was written by a very respected science fiction writer with a Hugo and Arthur C Clarke award and he went to college at SDSU here in town. As an author of 44 novels, he is very respected for high concepts.

I have also found myself wanting to read these old school Trek novels written by respected SF writers like Joe Handleman(Forever War), James Blish (Cities in Flight) and this one. The thing is these novels written even before The Next Generation are less hampered by the massive canon. There were just Kirk and the enterprise. In the case of Corona, it was the really big cool ideas at the heart of it.

Bear takes the science as seriously as he can in this novel and that was fun for me. The Enterprise is sent on a rescue mission after the Federation receives a distress call that took ten years to reach them. The Enterprise has to push the engines at maximum warp for two weeks and cross hostile territory to get there. Just that detail was something I liked. It gives the ship and space travel more tactile feel that just we give an order and bam were there.

The distress call was sent by Vulcan scientists who were studying the early universe. Not too different from what Dr. Brian Keating of UCSD is doing measuring the cosmic background radiation. (See my interview with him on the Dickheads podcast). What they discover is creatures that exist at the moment of cosmic expansion. In other words, they feed off the earliest moments of big bangs that ignite new multi-verses. This is a cool concept and paid off my interest in it. Modern Trek needs more stuff like this.

The book is short, Bear captures the character really well. Spock and McCoy act as you expect them. I had fun reading this quick and fun high concept science fiction novel that just happens to have characters and settings I recognized.