Star TreK The Janus Gate #2: Future Imperfect »

Capt. James T. Kirk's historic voyages have seldom been recorded fro, the vantage point of those who served "below deck" on the Starship Enterprise NCC-1701.

KLIATT

These are the first two volumes of a trilogy featuring the original Star Trek cast of characters. In the first installment, Captain Kirk and the Enterprise find themselves under the control of a mysterious alien device built by a long-dead and forgotten civilization while exploring an abandoned and lifeless planet. The device drains energy from their power cells and uses it to charge a mysterious matter transmission process, transferring beings from crisis points in their lives, especially points where they would have died, to a healing chamber. In this volume, three crewmembers get "saved" by the device Captain Kirk, Chekov, and Sulu. However, the device transports the contemporary crewmember away as it "saves" the crewmember at the point of the crisis. This installment sets up the situation without giving any real information about what it is or what happens to the missing crewmembers. In the second book, some of the mysteries are partially unraveled. We learn, for instance that the Gate has sent Lieutenant Sulu to a future point in a different time line, a time line in which James T. Kirk was never Captain of the Enterprise. Kirk's absence becomes central since the other Captain of the Enterprise humiliated the Gorn in the famous encounter from the television series and the Gorn are now taking their revenge in the alternate time line. By the end of this volume, Spock is able to use the alien device to return Lieutenant Sulu to the proper timeline but has not dealt with sending the alternate time line Chekov and Sulu back to the future and has not recovered Captain Kirk. (Editor's Note: The last book in the trilogy is now available: Past Prologue. Pocket Books. 252p. c2002.0-7434-4596-1. , New Haven, CT