late 2386, weeks after Section 31: Control (according to the Historian's Note) or late 2388, three years after The Fall (according to internal chronological clues)
Sometimes, one might find it easier to write a negative review than a
positive one. To write a negative review, one can simply lapse into a
catalogue of grievances, and there's a certain terrible joy in that,
even if it doesn't necessarily make for a good review. A good negative
review, I think, articulates what a book wanted to do and then analyzes
how and why it fell short of that—or perhaps even explains why that
wasn't a good thing to attempt in the first place.
Similarly, a positive review might simply say again and again, "well
here's a good bit about the text." We could start, for example, by
mentioning that Enigma Tales is just a joy to read on a word by word basis; there's none of the purposefully beige prose one finds in most Star Trek novels. In my review of Collateral Damage, I discussed the limitations of that third-person limited perspective that most Star Trek
tie-ins are written in, and thankfully, McCormack sets out her stall
almost immediately in this regard, with a touch of delightful
third-person omniscient about Pulaski and Alden on pp. 7-8: "There was a
pool on the ship (neither of them knew this) as to how soon she would
make him the fourth Mr. Pulaski. There was also another pool (they
perforce knew nothing about this either) as to how quickly she would
divorce him."
But if you do this, at a certain point a kind of tedium sets in. Oh this
was good and this was good and this was good, the end. A good positive review articulates what a book wanted to do and then analyzes how it accomplished that. I'm going to do my best here.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Enigma Tales
by Una McCormack
|
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Published: 2017
Acquired: July 2025
Read: August 2025 |
What did this book want to do? Well, if you ever sit through one
of my lectures about literature (3 stars on Rate My Professor), you'll
know that in fiction, one of the most important things to pay attention
to is when the book you're reading starts talking about books, because
that's usually when the book is trying to tell you how to read it. (See my discussion of Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith for an example I use a lot.) Enigma Tales tells us how to read it quite early on, on pp. 11-12, when we get a discussion of, well, enigma tales from Natima Lang:
In the enigma tale as we have known it [...] we have evidence that
literature—that art—encodes into itself, despite all attempts at
extirpation, critiques of the world in which it is created. In the
enigma tale, these authors tried to address—through the medium of the
puzzle, the riddle—what we could not discuss in public: the nature of
our guilt, its role in our past, and its impact on our future.
[...]
Literature such as this creates within its bounds a microcosm for
society. In the country houses of the Second Republic, the mansions of
Coranum, or [...] the lecture halls and committee rooms of the
university, we see our world writ small. The crimes and misdemeanors of
the wider world, the perpetrators and offenders, were concentrated and
offered for our consideration.
[...]
[M]y question now is—what might the enigma tale look like under our new
dispensation? We have seen how, in the past, the question was not which of the characters was guilty, but how
were the characters each guilty? Is it possible that in the future an
enigma tale might contain a character who is—I can hardly imagine it—innocent?
That's it, that's the book given to you in a nutshell right
there! (The book comes back to this on pp. 53-4 and basically says it
for a second time, so McCormack
really doesn't want you to miss
it.) This book uses the University of the Union as a microcosm of
Cardassian society, exploring the way that guilt and innocence work. As
we see here, the book consistently comes back to an idea from the
Deep Space Nine episode "Distant Voices": "The problem with Cardassian enigma tales is that they all end the same
way. All the suspects are always guilty." "Yes, but the challenge is
determining exactly who is guilty of what." (This itself picked up from
what we learned about the Cardassian legal system in "Tribunal.")
Okay, but so what? Part of the joy of science fiction is that it allows us to explore imaginary worlds, permits us to,
as Isaac Asimov puts it in the introduction to
More Soviet Science Fiction (1962), ask "what if—" and then build up a whole world:
The actual plot of the story, the suspense, the conflict, ought to
arise—if this were a first-class story—out of the particular needs and
frustrations of people in such a society. The author, while attending to
the plot, may well find his chief amusement, however, in designing the
little details (the filigree-work, if you like) of the society, even
where they do not have any direct connection with the plot. (8)
Una is very good at this kind of filigree work; Cardassia
always comes alive in her books, and this one is no exception, filled
with little details about what life is like there in general, and how
it's changed since the end of the Dominion War ten years prior. There's a compelling subplot, for example, about how some of the part-Bajoran
descendants of the so-called "comfort women" raped by Cardassian
soldiers are learning how to live with their inheritance in the open.
In that essay, however, Asimov goes on to say something I find
completely wrongheaded: "such a story has no lesson to teach with
respect to the advanced societies of the here and now" (8). Here, I must
part ways with the grandmaster of science fiction and say that I am
much more sympathetic to the claims of China Miéville in his
introduction to
H. G. Wells's The First Men in the Moon: "Science
fiction is not, whatever its advocates may sometimes claim [...]
'about' the future. It is, like any worthwhile literature, 'about' now,
using a technique of rationalized (rather than free-for-all) alienation
from the everyday to structure its narratives and investigate the world"
(xvii). So, if we believe Miéville, this filigree work (and everything
in the novel) shouldn't be telling us stuff about the totally made up
world of Cardassia, but also the world
we live in.
Again, Una's book lays this out for us from the very beginning. Sure, we
get the (confusing) Historian's Note telling us the book is set in late
2386, but the very next page of the book tells us that's not true, that
Enigma Tales is "[a] novel about the past, the future, and
everything in between"—i.e., the present. The book came out in July
2017, shortly after the election of Trump. I would guess the
manuscript was probably entirely or at least mostly finished before
that, but of course the book certainly was being written during the
election campaign. Probably more relevant from the perspective of a UK
author would be the Brexit referendum, in June 2016.
Just like Una's
The Fall: The Crimson Shadow, it unfortunately feels like it
is
about the future, in that the book's discussion of nationalism and
authoritarianism are even more relevant in 2025 than they were when the
book was written. One suspects that Una probably feels like Emily Tesh,
who said this of her novel Some Desperate Glory:
"It still shakes me that so many people have picked up the book I
started in 2017 based on the worst things I could see in contemporary
politics, and responded: yes, this is what's happening right now. I
would rather the book were an irrelevant historical curiosity. I hope it
becomes so one day." Alas, that hasn't been the case. As an academic in
Florida, it was pretty tough to read the discussion here of what
happened at the University of the Union when Dukat and the Dominion took
over: "Directives came down stating what could and could not be
studied. Some teachers complained and were promptly suspended. The
shelves in the library thinned once again. Outlandish topics such as
[Elima's] were sidelined, with the grants and prizes going to more
traditional accounts of great guls and battles won" (p. 70).
In Una's hands, "everyone is guilty" is not just a joke about how bad
Cardassians are, though, but a commentary on what it's like to live
under an authoritarian regime. In such a society, everyone
is guilty, because there's no way to survive without doing
something
wrong. (Shades of the oft-repeated maxim "There is no ethical
consumption under capitalism." Shades also of Audre Lorde's line, "the
master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," which is
slightly misquoted on p. 215.*) In the book, this appears primarily in a
subplot about whether, when serving on a U of U appropriations
committee during the old regime, peace activist Natima Lang approved
some horrific experiments on children (p. 107). Did she? Even if she
did, was it wrong? Lang is a little bit guilty because there is no way to
not be a little bit guilty.
So,
Enigma Tales is (as per what Natima Lang herself told us on
pp. 11-12) is not just about the U of U and Cardassia, but "the crimes
and misdemeanors of the wider world"—that is to say,
our world.
We all do things to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Unfortunately,
in the world we live in, we will increasingly see this everyday. Even
if Lang didn't do what she was accused of, she wasn't always the best
she could be; she didn't return when the civilian government briefly
took power on Cardassia (2372-73) because she was afraid.
But
Enigma Tales offers us hope, too. At the beginning of the
novel, Lang asks, "Is it possible that in the future an enigma tale
might contain a character who is—I can hardly imagine it—
innocent?"
This
enigma tale does. As comes out in a conversation late in the novel, we
can't only focus on guilt. Everyone might be guilty to some degree...
but this also means we're also
innocent to some degree. This develops a line of thought McCormack began in
The Crimson Shadow:
all we can do in an unethically constructed world is attempt to act
ethically ourselves. Of course, this is a sentiment baked into the
detective novel, as highlighted by Raymond Chandler: "Down these mean
streets a man must go who is not himself mean." Natima Lang may have
been guilty.
Garak may have been guilty. (He certainly was!) But
also they were innocent, and they can be innocent. Even Garak can be
innocent, as he reflects that for once, he was (pp. 343-4). Maybe it's
hard to imagine you really can be innocent. But as Garak himself notes,
that's why we read enigma tales, that why we read
Enigma Tales: "Garak [...] savor[ed] [...] the joy of a fiction in which innocence was not only possible but brought reward" (p. 347).
It also offers us hope in the future. A recurrent theme throughout the
novel is that rise of the new generation of Cardassians, who carry with
them hard work and determination to not repeat the crimes of their
ancestors. Garak will give way to Natima Lang someday, but Lang in turn
will give way to people like Elima, who spent their childhood under the
old regime but most of their adulthood under the new, and thus can see a
way to make it better. Elima, in turn, will give way to her own
children, who will never know a world where a part-Bajoran Cardassian
couldn't openly wear a Bajoran earring. This, too, is the hope we see in
our world, a hope that the future will be better because of those who
come after us. This doesn't (as the book highlights) mean that
we stop working, because our descendants will fix it, but that we have a reason to
keep
working, because we know that if we can leave our descendants a world
better than we found it, they can make it even better than that.
It's a hard hope to believe in, at times. I've discussed here before that in my
Star Trek Adventures
RPG campaign, the players are contending with a friendly alien
race
sliding into authoritarianism. I think they will end up losing to
the authoritarians, because in 2025, it's not very clear to me how one
wins against them.
Enigma Tales
gives us hope, because the Cardassians, as the novel explicitly reminds
us a couple times, are us: Garak, for example, points out that when he
was ambassador to the Federation, they gave him a residence in Paris
where Nazis used to live (p. 155); Garak writes to Bashir, "I loved
Paris, Doctor, but I knew Berlin. I pass through a city like that every
day" (p. 100); later Garak opines that probably only humans have as
brutal a history as the Cardassians. If the Cardassians can do it, so
can we.
But it's not a naïve hope. I have come to very much despise so-called "cozy" fantasy (two "good" examples:
Legends & Lattes and
Someone you can Build a Nest in), and
an essay I recently read by Abigail Nussbaum did a great job of highlighting the issue I have with it:
the ongoing fashion for "cozy", "optimistic", "kind" science fiction
[...] often seems to fail on its own terms. Too often, what these novels
call kindness is actually the
flattening of all difference, and what they call coziness is a
refusal to acknowledge cruelty. This novel recognizes that kindness is
hard,
that well-intended people can have wildly diverging points of view that
can lead them to abuse and dehumanize others, and that conflicts are
not won by "destroying" your opponent with a killer argument, but by
getting them to see you as someone worth compromising with—even if that
means sitting across a table from someone who thinks you shouldn't be
allowed to make your own decisions.
This book shows that though there is hope, it is also
hard.
Pulaski, Garak, Elima, Mhevet, Alden, Lang, even the anonymous
Starfleet Intelligence spook Pulaski confronts near the end of the book,
are all well-intentioned people "only trying to do right in this wicked
world," but that still brings them into conflict with each other, in
ways both small and big. I found particularly devastating a scene where
Garak needles Peter Alden, who still has PTSD from his time as an SI
agent among the Tzenkethi (pp. 202-3). It's very cruel, but it
unfortunately rings true for Garak. Similarly, Garak and Mhevet are
working to the same end, but they come into conflict regardless,
partially because of Garak's long-standing inability to trust others (p.
244). Because it
is hard, it is hope I can believe in.
There's a very powerful scene near the end of the novel, where Garak
confronts Gul Telek, a member of the Cardassian military opposed to the
investigations into what crimes Cardassian committed during the
Occupation. Garak realizes that Telek is one of the children who was
experimented on; the son of a Cardassian soldier and a Bajoran comfort
woman, Telek was subjected to procedures to expunge his Bajoran DNA
because his father wanted an heir. As Garak says, "you can't wipe away
history like that. Something always breaks through" (p. 310). At first
this almost seems like a repeat of the Alden scene, with Garak using his
psychological insight to disable an opponent, but then Garak extends
Telek the compassion no one else ever has. It's beautiful, and had me
misting up a little. Similarly, Peter has to help out the rogue SI agent
even though he'd rather not: "I can't escape my past, Kitty. Those
experiences made me who I am. I can only live with the consequences" (p.
343).
I'm glad I positioned
Enigma Tales where I did, as the last novel of the
Destiny era before
Coda.
I don't think there was a better one. If there was, it could only have
been a different one by Una. I loved this book, I tore through it in a
day and a half, and I didn't want it to end. I think someday I'll just
do a reread of all the Una/Cardassia stories from the relaunch era.
If there's a flaw to this book, it's that it made me imagine another
book that we will never get. I think Una would write a brilliant campus
murder mystery starring Kate Pulaski with Peter Alden as her hapless
sidekick. Just imagine it! Pulaski comes to give a guest lecture
somewhere, someone dies in mysterious circumstances, local authorities
are baffled, Pulaski's keen eye for scientific detail and willingness to
trammel over social niceties solves the case while Alden runs around
apologizing for her and getting her out of scrapes. So good!! I'm sure
we could contrive a way to make this fit into the
Picard continuity, figure it out, Simon & Schuster.†
Continuity Notes:
- The doctor-loving soccer-playing Cardassian
shop owner who helps Pulaski while she's on the run (pp. 172-4) is
Rugal, right? It has been fifteen years since I read The Never-Ending Sacrifice but doesn't he open a shop in the country?
Other Notes:- Lots of good lines. I like this bit from
Elima about the Federation's presence on Cardassia during the
reconstruction that really captures Star Trek utopianism in a
very casual way: "I loved having you here. All your people—they were so
young, so friendly. They laughed a lot, like there was something to
laugh about, like they could see that the future was going to be okay.
After a while it sort of rubbed off on you. You started to believe them
when they said it would be okay. And one day it was" (p. 141).
- Lots of good moments of characterization,
especially of Garak. Take this little internal aside from Gark about how
he could charm even Bajorans: "Not Kira Nerys. Charm had not been key
to winning over Kira. Killing other Cardassians had been necessary to
prove himself to Kira" (pp.156-7). Or this bit, when Garak discusses how
beneficial Bashir was to him during his exile. "'It was everything he
represented. His capacity to see good—even in me—his capacity to strive,
to seek to find and not to yield...' He could hear his voice catching. I am delivering a eulogy, he thought, for a man who is not yet dead" (p. 63).
- The book is also quite funny. I loved the bit
where Pulaski has to use the comm but says she has no money and the
Cardassian who might be Rugal grumbles, "You lot never do." Or when
Pulaski goes on a Cardassian 'cast and causes a diplomatic incident.
Pulaski is great throughout, as I've alluded to. Or the Or the bit
where Pulaksi tells Alden she's been violating the Prime Directive since
he was in diapers (p. 255). Or the bit where Mhevet goes "That bloody
woman!" and Garak says that when he wrote Picard to ask about Pulaksi,
he said the exact same thing (p. 273).
- McCormack has a Ph.D. in sociology, and
worked as a professor in higher ed for many years. For that reason, the
details of academia always ring true in a way I very much appreciated,
such as the recounting of Elima's academic career thus far on pp. 20-21.
She knows exactly the scope of a doctoral thesis, knows what kind of
work early career academics do and how it gets recognized.
- I enjoyed the occasional comments about human
literature Garak read and enjoyed, which includes Douglas Adams (p.
156). Garak even goes on to claim that if he needs to a new career, he'd
like to be a book reviewer!
- The book is filled with unsent letters from Garak to Bashir, comatose since the events of Section 31: Control.
(This is one of the details that makes the 2388 setting more compelling
than the 2386 one; the way everyone talks about Bashir makes it seem
like he's been unconscious for years, not months.) In the letters, Garak
rues that he has finally gotten Bashir to Cardassia, and Cardassia is
the most beautiful it's ever been... and Bashir can see none of it. I
was originally a little grumpy that McCormack couldn't write, that no
one could write, a story of Bashir and Garak together on postwar
Cardassia because of the events of a novel I liked much less, but
I came around on this because as much as we might want things to work
out perfectly, of course they don't. I myself said it earlier; the book
works because making a better world is difficult. The letters are
beautiful and they're sad. I'm sure there's an perfectly serviceable
audiobook of this novel read by Robert Petkoff, but it's a shame there's
not one read by Andrew Robinson.
- The two scenes at the bedside of the comatose
Bashir are quite moving: Pulaski's is (p. 298) but particularly Garak's
(p. 346-7).
I read Destiny-era Star Trek books in batches of five every
few months. Next up in sequence: Coda: Moments Asunder by Dayton Ward
* Surely this is the only Star Trek novel to quote Audre Lorde? I wish it weren't so.
† Wait, wait, I've got it! What if it was set between seasons one and two of Picard, when he's the chancellor of Starfleet Academy! "That bloody woman!" C'mon, it'd be brilliant!!
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