A review by taaya
Heart of the Sun by Pamela Sargent, George Zebrowski
2.0
The plot wasn’t bad, but the book could have been shortened and enhanced if they just had left out Miss Coles, as she was nothing but annoying.
Also they left a lot of side plots unfinished. Spock’s out of character-ness that had Kirk wondering? No closure on that. And all those hints that Kirk might feel something for that annoying woman? Why hint at something like that if it’s not only never being mentioned again, but also irrelevant to the story?
And then there’s this typical capitalistic (in my part of the world we also call it American, sorry about that to my American friends) arrogance that was inherent in the early Trek (to be seen in episodes like ‚The Apple‘ as well), that the best way of life is the one where one has to overcome obstacles, where one has to fight and to always achieve new things. That the value of a society is based on how much it achieves, even to the point where it’s seen as better to strive for something that can never be attained, instead of building yourself a stable system that makes everyone happy even if it’s stagnant.
Thinking like that has led to our current system with extreme poverty and extreme riches, with turbo capitalism destroying our planet instead of working on a more sustainable and socially just system.
And while it’s not really the authors‘ fault that at that time in history (and - looking at the health care system today) everything remotely social was seen as communism and therefore evil in the US because people didn’t seem to understand the political theories behind it, it’s really annoying to see Trek reproduce toxic thinking again and again instead of at least just not going into that kind of detail when the story just doesn’t call for it.
Especially given that from TNG on Star Trek is what Political Science scholars call communism thought through and fulfilled to the end, this to me is always a reason to dislike a novel or episode.
Also they left a lot of side plots unfinished. Spock’s out of character-ness that had Kirk wondering? No closure on that. And all those hints that Kirk might feel something for that annoying woman? Why hint at something like that if it’s not only never being mentioned again, but also irrelevant to the story?
And then there’s this typical capitalistic (in my part of the world we also call it American, sorry about that to my American friends) arrogance that was inherent in the early Trek (to be seen in episodes like ‚The Apple‘ as well), that the best way of life is the one where one has to overcome obstacles, where one has to fight and to always achieve new things. That the value of a society is based on how much it achieves, even to the point where it’s seen as better to strive for something that can never be attained, instead of building yourself a stable system that makes everyone happy even if it’s stagnant.
Thinking like that has led to our current system with extreme poverty and extreme riches, with turbo capitalism destroying our planet instead of working on a more sustainable and socially just system.
And while it’s not really the authors‘ fault that at that time in history (and - looking at the health care system today) everything remotely social was seen as communism and therefore evil in the US because people didn’t seem to understand the political theories behind it, it’s really annoying to see Trek reproduce toxic thinking again and again instead of at least just not going into that kind of detail when the story just doesn’t call for it.
Especially given that from TNG on Star Trek is what Political Science scholars call communism thought through and fulfilled to the end, this to me is always a reason to dislike a novel or episode.