- Title:
- The Rings of Time
- By:
- Greg Cox
- Pages:
- 370
- Rating:
- 3
When a mining colony on an endangered moon is threatened, it’s a race against time for the Enterprise crew to find a solution in this original novel set in the universe of Star The Original Series.
The U.S.S. Enterprise responds to a distress call from a vital dilithium-mining colony in the Klondike system. The colony is located on Skagway, a moon orbiting Klondike-6, a gas giant not unlike Saturn. For unknown reasons, the planet’s rings are coming apart, threatening the colony and its inhabitants. Kirk and his crew need to find a solution—fast.There are more than 3,000 colonists, including hundreds of families, on Skagway, which is more than even the Enterprise can take on, and there are no other rescue ships or habitable planets anywhere in the vicinity.
Meanwhile, an approaching comet that may be the source of the crisis turns out to be a mysterious alien probe. Sensors indicate that the probe is incredibly old and running low on power. Suspecting that the probe may have something to do with the threat to Skagway, Kirk has the probe beamed aboard the Enterprise . Suddenly after a blinding flash, Kirk suddenly finds himself floating in orbit above Saturn in our solar system, drifting in space wearing a twenty-first century NASA spacesuit. What just happened…?
No, no, no. You can’t end a novel with a mysterious unveiling and expect your audience to be happy about it. I’m sorry, but between the Preserver’s and the Q Continuum we’ve got far too many omnipotent uberspecies kicking about without adding another to the mix.
The writing was pretty good, despite the ending, and the way in which the 2 vessel commanders thoughts are so clearly different was very neat indeed: there was never any doubt as to who we were with, even when physically it was less clear than it might’ve been! I did wonder if there weren’t perhaps a few too many drops into the future (Sulu’s command, Kirk’s mountaineering), just because a novel is written today it doesn’t mean it has to bow down and suck in everything that’s happened since.
I found the religious tolerance allegory, with Zaldana’s veil, utter ridiculousness, and the blase certitudes of precision time travel rubbed me a little, too.
Still, for all those irritations (and the ending did verily piss me off) I found myself hooked. So it’s not a book I’d read again, but I did rather enjoy the story.