Star Trek: The Destiny Era Prelude: From History's Shadow

So, at a certain point I started to fall behind when it came to Star Trek novels. While I used to read them avidly as they came out, I slipped further and further behind, especially when it came to what I've come to think of the "Destiny Era" books, those novels set after Nemesis, the chronologically final part of the canon. Though I have read almost a hundred Star Trek books over the past seven years, the last Destiny Era novel I read was Titan: Synthesis by James Swallow, way back in February 2010! I've been keeping a list, of course, and now I'm nearly fifty books behind. I've read the set-up of the Typhon Pact in Destiny: A Singular Destiny, but never actually read the Typhon Pact novels themselves; I basically left off just before they got started.

Now, finally, I'm going to start tackling that list. I said I'd be starting with the Typhon Pact novels, but that's not quite true. There are some books set before Typhon Pact: Rough Beasts of Empire that I think will provide some context and set-up and otherwise tie into the Destiny Era stuff, so I'll start with them, beginning with:

Mass market paperback, 388 pages
Published 2013
Acquired December 2016
Read June 2017

Star Trek: The Original Series: From History's Shadow
by Dayton Ward

1947-96, 2268
There are certain subgenres of Star Trek episodes: the studied-by-omnipotent-aliens story, the planet-of-the-hats story, the estranged father story. One I'd never really given much thought to before picking up From History's Shadow is the "secret history" subgenre of Star Trek: Vulcans giving us vel-kroh (Enterprise's "Carbon Creek"), aliens guiding us through the 20th-century Cold War (the original's "Assignment: Earth"), 29th-century technology giving us the microprocessor (Voyager's "Future's End"), and so on. From History's Shadow, like its literary predecessor The Eugenics Wars by Greg Cox, expands on those episodes to present a whole story of 20th-century secret history. For James Wainwright, this novel begins just after the events of Deep Space Nine's "Little Green Men" in 1947 and ends with the events of the original's "Tomorrow is Yesterday" in 1969 (plus a 1996 coda based around "Future's End"), threading its events into episodes like "Carbon Creek" and "Assignment: Earth" in between. It's not all references, though, as Dayton Ward works in a new alien race, the Certoss Ajahlan, who are combatants in the Temporal Cold War working to rewrite Earth's history in order to prevent their own destruction.

On the one hand, it's clever and fan-pleasing how From History's Shadow weaves all these references together, emulating what The Eugenics Wars did with the later parts of the 20th century. I appreciated the return of Mestral ("Carbon Creek" is one of the better Enterprise episodes) and I've always loved Roberta Lincoln andvI find the Aegis tantalizing. And the intricacies of the Temporal Cold War always have a certain appeal as well. Ward comes up with a compelling, seemingly unified history. Also interestingly, this book almost creates a secret history's secret history, revealing that behind-the-scenes there was more going on in "Assignment: Earth" than we were told on screen.

But I found that the story often lacked energy. Big chunks of time periodically pass, and I don't think they always do so in elegant ways; there are a number of scenes where Wainwright sits around thinking about things that have happened, things which sound more interesting than the things that are happening. The rise and fall of his department seems key to this story, but it's glossed over more than it's explored. I particularly wanted more of Wainwright himself. This is a man who's dedicated himself to a cause for over twenty years that's wrecked his personal life, but up until the very end, I had little sense of his own inner drive. His emotions and motivation always seem muted. A determination to discover the truth could have provided the unity that this kind of transhistorical epic needs. But the novel lacked cohesion, coming across more as a series of disparate incidents. I did really like Wainwright's last two scenes; his confrontation with Captain Christopher and his recognizing Voyager on the television give us a window into a man obsessed and pushed around too long, but up until then there'd been little hint of what made him go.

I'm also uncertain about the 23rd-century interstices on the Enterprise. I get why they're there, but at the beginning of the book they lack incident (it's a lot of Kirk and Spock talking to people) and dissipate momentum of the main story. They also give away some of its revelations: it's okay for a reader to be ahead of a character, but information from the frame story puts the reader too far ahead of the characters on some occasions. If we knew as little as Wainwright did, this might have made his investigations a bit more compelling. I did like how the Enterprise segments wrapped up, but it took too long to get there.

Continuity Notes:

• Some post-foreshadowing here: Kirk and Spock mention a mysterious Commodore Antonio Delgado in connection with the Temporal Cold War. I assume we will hear more about this man in time travel stories going forward.
• Probably some savvy fellow could put or has put together a Gary Seven/Roberta Lincoln timeline. This novel predates Roberta's trip to the 23rd century in Assignment: Eternity, but here she seems a little more au fait with the Aegis agent lifestyle than I remember from Eternity.

Other Notes:

• Much of the action in this novel takes place at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, which is just over an hour from where I grew up. I have fond memories of the airplane displays there, which I saw many times as a child. I never noticed any Ferengi shuttles or Vulcan probes, however. There's not really any local color beyond names, though. (Does Jim Wainright like Skyline chili? Or is he more of a Gold Star man? Does he root for the Reds? Or does he stick to the more local Dayton Dragons?)