The Captain's Table review by Gary Mugford

Casting about for some light reading a couple of weeks back, I finally decided to jump into The Captain's Table, an omnibus collection of all six books in the series of the same name, set in the Star Trek universe. I had been given the big 1200-page book as a birthday present and, as it was nearing the anniversary of that gift-giving, part of me felt guilty about not reading it until now.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the first tale, one involving captains James Kirk and Hikaru Sulu written by L.A. Graf. Despite a herky jerky narrative between both character's points of view and a third communal telling at a local tavern, I felt comfortable in a fictional universe I'd visited many a time before. It was quickly obvious that the setting of the series, The Captain's Table, was a tavern sitting outside of time and space, readily available to one and all from all time, as long as they could be called captain. The Tavern's bar-keep and a little gecko would be the commonalities between all of the adventures.

My one problem was that the book weighed somewhere between five pounds and a ton. THIS is why folks invented electronic books. Off to Fictionwise I went, and at this page I discovered the book was available for just $2.99 (discounted eventually to $2.54!!). Aw right!!! Back to reading!

The Jean Luc Picard tale by Michael Jan Friedman was very solid and felt like it was a typical tale told at a tavern. I could HEAR Patrick Stewart doing the dialog and see him too. This is a major reason why Star Trek books are such easy reads. A lot of our imagineering has been done for us. The third story was a Benjamin Sisko story by Dean Wesley Smith and K.K. Rusch. It was yet another step up in quality and got Sisko out of Deep Space Nine and onto a ship's helm. Again, the voice of the characters and the imagery was outstanding. Ten thousand key clicks in and I was feeling pretty good about this whole series thing.

Then I hit the Kathryn Janeway story penned by Diane Carey. Admittedly, I'm not the biggest fan of that particular Star Trek series, but I found the book unreadable. Fourty key-clicks in, I went off and read a paperback mystery by Nancy Bartholomew. I enjoyed that. Thus it was with some trepidation that I returned to The Captain's Table. Skipping the rest of Carol's contribution, I discovered, happily, that the author next at bat was Peter David. He's rarely-disappointing and an experienced Trek scribe who was showcasing Mackenzie Calhoun, the captain in the New Frontier sub-series. I'd read a dozen of those, so I had a good feel for the character. And David did not disappoint, writing a haunting story that leaves you sad and melancholy. The one flaw was a failure to do much with the tavern setting. It was pretty well a straightly-told tale. The omnibus finished with a Christopher Pike story by Jerry Oltion.

The Pike piece is an odd duck. It's out of time-sequence, as it occurs from a timeframe just after Pike handed off the Enterprise to Kirk. Call this Early Kirk while Graf's lead-off story would be Late Kirk. And I've not read any other Pike books, although I'm sure there are some, since any character with at least two appearances on Trek surely must have his/her/its own book by now. But this book, Where Sea Meets Sky, is the single most imaginative book in the series. If you fail to see how whales in space could be interesting AND horrifying, you will after this book. And the series editor obviously felt this tome would be best to use for the closing exposition for the series. even getting in a little gecko viewpoint writing. It was a delightful read and I will be looking for Oltion's work in the future.

Twenty thousand clicks under the sheets. It was a long, but quick read. I can delete the 2.7M book and get back the space on my free-space-challenged Clie. It was worth the inconvenience.