Spock Must Die! By James Blish Star Trek Adventures #1
118 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published February, 1970
Star Trek Adventures # what? Number one, that's right. This novel is very interesting to me because it is quite the artifact. My copy is of the first paperback printing and it is one I randomly found in a free library box in Portland years ago. Already beaten up I didn’t feel any need to protect it. I was interested as it is the first Star Trek written for adults, the only novel that predates it is the strange ‘Mission to Horatius' by Mack Reynolds which was published by Gold Key comics.
These two original novels are the only ones written while Star Trek was on the air. I was interested in part because most Star Trek novels have been written with years of episodes, movies, and books to inform the characters and canon.
I am already a James Blish fan. A Case of Conscience won the 1958 Hugo and in many ways makes an interesting pairing with The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell Which is considered high art, that the author doesn’t consider genre. Blish’s novel is the true SF spin on the concept. His glorious novel Cities in Flight is one I pay serious homage to in my SF novel Goddamn Killing Machines.
James Blish was an OG in Science Fiction, who was a part of the same Futurians crew that included Pohl, Asimov, Judith Merrill, Kornbluth, and Wollheim. Apparently, Merrill and Blish were known for debating political issues, and what I wouldn’t give to be a fly on those walls.
In 1964 Blish’s second marriage to artist J.A. Lawrence got him a new home in England. At a gig that gave him some stability that his own novels never gave him. At a time when home video didn’t exist, it was smart world-building business for Roddenberry and crew to create books based on the Star Trek universe.
Gene Roddenberry and his team all grew up reading Astounding and Amazing Stories. They knew the pulps so it is interesting to me that he hired James Blish to do all these. He was a smart choice, as Blish took the science seriously enough, keep in mind he is known for coining the term Gas Giant. At the same time, he wasn’t above flights of fantasy like cities turned into spaceships.
In the late 30s and 40s John W. Campbell had a stable of writers who kept employed Like Heinlein, Hubbard, Kuttner/Moore, and Asimov. In the 50s Wollheim had his Ace authors Brackett, Brunner and PKD were that stable of authors. In the late 60s, Roddenberry was positioning himself to do the same in TV, if Star Trek had been a bigger success out of the gate that was the plan.
Blish knew this. He wrote about it in a journal entry… 26 July 66 An apparent opportunity has arisen to do a book of 8 short stories derived from scripts of the forthcoming TV series Star Trek for a flat fee of $2000. This creates a dilemma. I need the money and could do the work quickly. On the other hand I don't like this kind of work and it's bad for the reputation to get involved in that sort of hacking.
I suppose the best out is to do it under a pen name- and bear in mind that it might help to work for the show directly- especially since the producer will be at the Tricon [1966 World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland]."
Roddenberry screened a 35 MM black and white print in Cleveland and by all reports had to tell Issac Asimov to shut as the screening started. Blish was just some of the SF royalty at that screening. Frank Herbert, John Brunner, Harlan Ellison, and Norman Spinrad to name a few. Roddenberry was pitching writers at the convention this turned into a slew of treatments that the producers at Star Trek got from many legends like AE Van Vogt and newcomers like Spinrad and Sheckley.
James Blish however got the gig for writing the Star Trek books based on early treatments (and some scripts) but The Cage was the only episode he had seen since they didn’t air in England when he started. Spock Must Die was the first novel for adults written based on Star Trek. It was the first written while the show was still on and even more odd Blish was envisioning this while he had never seen Kirk and McCoy on screen. Amazing to think he was building this based on treatments and early scripts.
He received an advance of $3,000 for this book (Spock Must Die!)- $1,000 more than the sum he was paid for each of the Star Trek collections. According to Blish: "...no serious Blish student...should take anything in Spock Must Die! seriously. It was a potboiler, and to keep myself interested I threw into it at random anything that occurred to me whether it made sense or not."
Well, I will take it seriously for a bit. It is not exactly one of the finest moments for this Hugo award-winning author. It is also not a super great example of a Star Trek novel as they evolved in quality over the decades that followed. That said it is the neat artifact I was hoping for.
Blish beat the show to serial storytelling by building his novel off the events of a story that happened before in the timeline, something Trek really wasn’t doing yet. Blish included * that would direct readers to his adaptations of episodes that gave break ground to moments he was writing about.
This episode is a sequel to the episode Errand of Mercy, that one was about war with the Klingons that was stopped by an advanced race of aliens called the Organians. Spock Must Die has smart use of A and B storylines. The peace with Klingons forced by the Organians has ended and the Enterprise believes this means the powerful beings of thought must be gone. Kirk wants to investigate but in a bit of Blish plotting as a true SF author, they are months away in another sector.
Scotty comes up with an idea using tachyons (wow 1969 Blish) he thinks he can beam Spock across the sector but it is a dangerous experimental trick. In contrast to Star Trek Into Darkness had Khan beaming across the quadrant with no consequences as to what that would mean. What results is similar to Star Trek Voyager’s still debated episode Tuvix.
The experiment doesn’t work and they end up with two Spocks. At first, they look identical but over time it is revealed minor differences, and one of the Spock’s maybe up to something. This storyline kinda sorta doesn’t work but hey I was entertained.
There are things I liked. Blish gives depth to the crew beyond the leads, now that I have read the DC Fontana papers it is a battle she had with Gene Coon and Bob Justman. Blish makes sure Sulu, Scotty, and Uhura are damn good at their jobs. It is a little detail but I like when ST takes space seriously. Like the captain’s log on page 40 when Kirk drops that they have been sneaking around Klingon space for three months because that was the fastest route.
Blish takes science into account, one of the clues about the fake Spock is that he can’t process food, did we need to know how he breaks down amino acids, while McCoy figured it out and gave us details because he is a Starfleet doctor.
As far as canon goes there are attempts to match it to the scripts. Kor and Koloth are involved, the latter still stinging from the Sherman’s planet biz and ending up with a ship full of Tribbles. At the same time Blish with only the stuff in scripts to work with talks in the last chapter about the Grand senate of the Klingon Empire.
There are better Blish novels, Cities in Flight and A Case of Conscience is where I suggest readers start. There are hundreds of better Spock or Star Trek novels. But this is an interesting artifact.
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