Strangers from the Sky
Margaret Wander Bonano
Book Description (jacket text):
James Kirk didn't normally pay much attention to this thing – a best-selling book, and a controversial one at that. But Strangers From the Sky had piqued his interest – and everyone else's, it seemed. For the book disputed a fact well known to every Federation schoolboy: That Earth's first encounter with alien life had occurred when the UNSS Icarus came upon the humanoid people of Alpha Centauri in 2048.
Strangers claimed that history was wrong... that humanity's first contact with another sapient species had taken place years earlier. And that when the two races met, something happened. Something so climactic, so dangerous, that it had been wiped from the records and kept secret by both worlds for almost two centuries.
But when Kirk read the book, it triggered strange dreams... nightmares that threatened first his health, then his sanity. It was only when he discovered that Spock also shared those dreams that the Admiral began to wonder: Could there be more to this book than he or anyone guessed...?
Opinion:
In "Strangers from the Sky" Humans and Vulcans meet for the very first time. Based on a fictional future that first ever encounter of Earth people with "aliens" is really enthralling and it is described quite realistically, starting from all the different kinds of reactions to military interventions and the yellow press. In the meantime, "Star Trek - First Contact" was released and therefore, there is now a different and official version of the first encounter between Earth and Vulcan. "Stangers from the Sky" was published beforehand, though, and delivers another very good and perhaps even better alternative version.
The author provides her story on multiple time frames. First, she starts at a time that lies between the first and the second movie and she includes her book itself into the story, a nice eye-twinkling gimmick. In this time line, the book in the book causes a great uproar since, paradoxically, it shows a different version of the first encounter of Vulcans with Humans than officially known in the Federation. In Kirk and Spock it causes some déja-vus that are interpreted as madness at first but that are, in fact, memories. Together they manage to find out what has really happened. With that the stories continues in the past at a time directly before the TOS pilot
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" where some crew members are thrown into the 21th century surrounding the year 2045.
Practically everything happening on the "historic" Earth is really exciting and brilliantly written. The travelling Vulcans fit perfectly into the picture outlined of them. Future Earth, from our point of view, the past Earth out of Star Trek's perspective, is constructed pretty realistic. Besides the Trek characters there are two Agronoms that are in the centre of everything as well as another ship's crew. All new persons are far more interesting than the known which is partly explained by the chosen time slot prior to the first Star Trek pilot: the Enterprise crew doesn't know each other well. A little bit sad is the fact that Vonda
McIntyre's "The First Adventure" describe the same situation but, of course, differently. That way, it is underlined once more that books are nice but without meaning and no part of a continuing story or even official Star Trek history. In my view, Vonda McIntyre has created a mile stone with her version of Star Trek's beginning so that good as it may seem "Strangers from the Sky" has to stay behind. Nevertheless it has to be mentioned that some characters that were not allowed to survive the pilot are a very vivid part of the events here. Of course, there are Kirk's friend Gary Mitchell and Lee Kelso as well as Dr. Dehner. "Strangers from the Sky" proves how much potential was wasted by their early deaths.
As a conclusion, "Strangers from the Sky" is almost perfect. A little drawback is the "magic" which simply doesn't want to fit in. A man living backwards evokes some problems nevertheless, e.g. I have never understood how he is able to even talk to others when everything is running vice versa all the time.
"Star Trek - The Animated Series" has dealt with a similar concept in
"The Counter Clock Incident" and faced similar problems there (and nowadays it's Brad Pitt in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button").
Without judging it should be mentioned that Spock's trip into Earth's past has a strong resemblance to the events described
in "Ishmael" by Barbara Hambly. The conditions are almost identical in both cases, as well as the proceedings. Most likely it is just a coincident but anyone who knows both books will notice certain similarities nevertheless.
"Strangers from the Sky" entered the "New York Times" bestseller list when it was released which in itself is a - justified - recommendation.
