The best Star Trek book

[guppiecat]

I want to talk about a book. Specifically, about the best Star Trek book I have ever read. I've waited a few months to write this, to let my thoughts settle.
 

Now, I've read a lot of Star Trek books. Not as much as some, but far more than the average. I've read across the board - kids' books, adult novels, episode adaptations, in-universe metafiction, comics and graphic novels, gaming books, making of books, books in the impact of Star Trek on the culture, and autobiographies ... and you may be surprised that the best book falls in the last category.

It's "Still Just a Geek" by Wil Wheaton.
 

Now, I don't know Wil personally. I've liked his online persona. I didn't much care for his character on TNG, much of the time, though there were some standout episodes. In his book he talks about how the TNG writers didn't know what to do with his character, and that's part of the issue - but the real reason is because he always looked sad, especially in the still photos promoting the show, in the magazines, and so on. Turns out there is a reason for this.
 

"Still Just a Geek" is an unusual book, in that it is an annotated version of an earlier book ("Just a Geek"), with additional material from his essays and talks. But it doesn't stop there, because the original "Just a Geek" is *also* an annotated version of previous material with some additional.
 

It covers much more than the handful of years he starred on TNG. In fact, most of it isn't about TNG at all - and in a lot of it, Wil does not come off in a very positive light. He, as an actual human, is flawed in ways that you would expect to see in a novel.

So why, is this book about a likable but flawed character, with repetitive writing, and only peripherally touching on Star Trek content the best Star Trek book I've ever read?
 

It's because of what Star Trek is.
 

Star Trek tells us about a positive future, despite all the pain it takes to get there. Star Trek presents problems with helpful people coming up with creative solutions. Star Trek is about different groups working together for the greater good. It is about growth and change. We may not always like the form that growth and change takes, but that's what exploration is - and Star Trek is, at its core, about how we can explore the human condition, help us all help each other, and wind up the better for it.

And that's what this book is.
 

Wil is brutal in his annotations to his past self - both in the new annotations in the Still ... book, but also in the annotations in the original version. He calls himself out for problematic behavior - both intentional and otherwise. He faces his own personal demons and comes out the other side. While, in the original, he comes across as whiny and entitled, in the new version, he takes his past self to task, while also being kind to his past self and apologetic to everyone he has hurt over the years.
 

He *owns* his own character - warts and all - every bit as much as Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Picard, Data, Worf (eventually), Jadzia Dax, Odo, Janeway, Seven, etc. all do ... except that he is real.
 

His demons - inner and otherwise - are every bit as dark as those in the stories, and like the stories, he overcomes them, with help, and making errors along the way, but he does. He wins, making his personal galaxy a better place.
 

His growth in this book is astonishing, and it's all there, for anyone to see - from painful childhood moments, including emotional and - in one case late in the book - physical abuse, to his awkward teenage years and twenties and his continued emotional and financial abuse, to coming to terms with the person he wants to be, and then working - so damn hard over so many years - to become that person. He grows as much as a person as Spock does from The Cage to his last movie, as much as Data does throughout the original series and movies all the way to the different versions of him in the newer series Picard. He grows more than the Lower Decks characters do, but along a very similar trajectory.

I am not, generally speaking, a fan of biographies, much less auto-biographies which can come across as self aggrandizing at the worst, and more commonly glossing over the worse character traits (as can be seen in Patrick Stewart's autobiography and much of what Shatner has put out). So I am even more surprised than you are that this is my favorite Star Trek book.
 

It's not perfect. The nature of the work - both the annotations and the recycled essays and speeches - lends itself to a lot of repetition, which is lampshaded in the annotations, but you see growth there *too*. He grows further into himself AS HE WRITES THE BOOK. And then, to take it one step further, he grows even more as he does the audiobook version of the book he just wrote, adding additional annotations and coming to terms, IN THE RECORDING BOOTH, with things he had suppressed throughout his life. (The audiobook version is, I think, the best performance I've ever experienced from him and well on par with the more professional audiobook performers.)
 

Star Trek is a big tent, and there are lots of different viewpoints and variations to it, not all of which I agree with (Section 31, for example, should never have existed as a concept, much less as a 'movie' - I am also not a fan of the recent comic series about the Red Shirts.)
 

But if I wanted to pick one thing - just one work across the whole corpus of episodes, movies, comics, books, etc. - that *felt* like what Star Trek feels like when it gets things right, it is this (long, flawed, but ultimately hopeful) book.
 

I hope some of you take the time to read or listen to it.

Comments

[quadong]

Thanks for this.

We have listened to part of the audiobook (before your post).

[guppiecat]

It gets better as it goes along.

[carbonel]

Thanks -- this tempts me to read it. I was very fond of the various "making of" TOS books that came out in the 1970s.

(I wouldn't call this a Star Trek book because it's not fiction set in the ST universe, but that's a minor quibble.)

[pameladean]

I just reread all of Jane Austen's novels, and am now imagining a collection of the "I've been a fool and an asshole" scenes from all those books and more unwritten.

I can't do audiobooks and TNG is not my Star Trek, but as a personal memoir of this possibly unique type, I've put it on my list.

P.

[guppiecat]

I hope you like it.

[pameladean]

It's likely. Either way, I got to read a really well-done, tempting review. P.

[minnehaha]

And I have never read a single Star Trek book, but you invite me to consider it. My ignorant objection is that I have enough self-reflection and growth to manage without vicariously taking upon someone else's.

K.

[guppiecat]

That's fair. I found his self reflections to help with mine - but I have no idea if it would help you the same way.