The Star Trek Reader

Series · 4 books · 1976-1978

By James Blish

Books in series

The Star Trek Reader I

1976

Using the original scripts, which sometimes differed from the final filmed episode, Blish turned each episode of the original Star Trek into a short story, which were collected into anthologies and published as paperback originals. The Star Trek Reader collects three of these anthologies: Star Trek 2, Star Trek 3, and Star Trek 8. The episodes present include The City on the Edge of Forever; Arena; A Taste of Armageddon; Tomorrow Is Yesterday; Errand of Mercy; Court-Martial; Operation—Annihilate!; Space Seed; The Trouble With Tribbles; The Last Gunfight; The Doomsday Machine; Assignment: Earth; Mirror, Mirror; Friday's Child; Amok Time; Spock's Brain; The Enemy Within; Catspaw; Where No Man Has Gone Before; Wolf in the Fold; and For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky.

The Star Trek Reader II

1976

Here for the first time in hardcover are 19 of the most exciting episodes that ever appeared on the award-winning Star Trek television series. Novelized by the renowned science fiction writer James Blish, each of these stories is a little gem with a permanent sparkle, and their combination a collector's item. Eerie, frightening, mysterious, humorous and heartwarming, The Star Trek Reader II is a mind-bending journey to the outer reaches of the imagination. In The Devil in the Dark, we meet the unforgettable Horta, a shaggy, acid-secreting animal whose proteins are based on silicon instead of carbon—with shocking results. When finally cornered after terrorizing a group of miners, the Horta tells (in a voice that sounds like pebbles in a can) a tale of heartbreak and suffering understood only by Spock through the Vulcan mind-lock. In Obsession, the reader is bewitched by an illusive creature that hovers between matter and energy; after killing in a most ghastly way, it escapes into another dimension. And in Charlie's Law, we meet a space orphan, an ordinary looking seventeen-year-old whose desperate adolescent needs combine dangerously with a superhuman ability—making him perhaps the worst monster ever encountered by the crew of the Enterprise. In Hugo Award-winning Menagerie, we see how the crew members fight one of the most subtle weapons ever devised—illusion. But in Dagger of the Mind, we see, poignantly revealed, an even more powerful weapon-loneliness. In The Enterprise Incident, the crew seriously questions Captain Kirk's sanity, whose bizarre behavior ranges from blatantly violating Romulan territory to tossing an ethnic slur at Mr. Spock. A Vulcanoid woman commander finds a way to soothe Spocks' ruffled ego—if he has one. These and thirteen mroe episodes—many of them selected by the fans themselves—vividly demonstrate why the slogan Star Trek lives! will go on forever. JAMES BLISH was a biologist as well as a prolific writer who wrote more than twenty-seven novels including the Hugo Award-winning, A Case of Conscience. Includes the following stories: "Charlie's Law" "Dagger of the Mind" The Unreal McCoy" "Balance of Terror" "The Naked Time" "Miri" "The Conscience of the King" "All Our Yesterdays" "The Devil in the Dark" "Journey to Babel" "The Menagerie" "The Enterprise Incident" "A Piece of the Action" "Return to Tomorrow" "The Ultimate Computer" "That Which Survives" "Obsession" "The Return of the Archons" "The Immunity Syndrome"

The Star Trek Reader III

1977

Nineteen episodes from the now-defunct but still-popular television series follow James Kirk, Mr. Spock, and the crew of the Enterprise to strange worlds and distant adventures

The Star Trek Reader IV

1978

James Blish was a science fiction writer who wrote over 27 novels, most notably the Cities in Flight series, and A Case of Conscience, for which he won a Hugo Award. He also was a highly respected critic, and his criticism in collected in the books The Issue at Hand, and More Issues at Hand, (published under the pen name of William Atheling, Jr.). Using the original scripts, which sometimes differed from the final filmed episode, Blish turned each episode of the original Star Trek into a short story, which were collected into anthologies and published as paperback originals. The Star Trek Reader IV collects two of these Star Trek 10, and Star Trek 11, and Blish's original Star Trek novel, Spock Must Die!. The episodes present The Alternative Factor; The Empath; The Galileo Seven; Is There in Truth No Beauty?; A Private Little War; The Omega Glory; What Are Little Girles Made Of?; The Squire of Gothos; Wink of an Eye; Bread and Circuses; Day of the Dove; and Plato's Stepchildren.

Author

James Blish

Author · 49 books

James Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling Jr. In the late 1930's to the early 1940's, Blish was a member of the Futurians. Blish trained as a biologist at Rutgers and Columbia University, and spent 1942–1944 as a medical technician in the U.S. Army. After the war he became the science editor for the Pfizer pharmaceutical company. His first published story appeared in 1940, and his writing career progressed until he gave up his job to become a professional writer. He is credited with coining the term gas giant, in the story "Solar Plexus" as it appeared in the anthology Beyond Human Ken, edited by Judith Merril. (The story was originally published in 1941, but that version did not contain the term; Blish apparently added it in a rewrite done for the anthology, which was first published in 1952.) Blish was married to the literary agent Virginia Kidd from 1947 to 1963. From 1962 to 1968, he worked for the Tobacco Institute. Between 1967 and his death from lung cancer in 1975, Blish became the first author to write short story collections based upon the classic TV series Star Trek. In total, Blish wrote 11 volumes of short stories adapted from episodes of the 1960s TV series, as well as an original novel, Spock Must Die! in 1970 — the first original novel for adult readers based upon the series (since then hundreds more have been published). He died midway through writing Star Trek 12; his wife, J.A. Lawrence, completed the book, and later completed the adaptations in the volume Mudd's Angels. Blish lived in Milford, Pennsylvania at Arrowhead until the mid-1960s. In 1968, Blish emigrated to England, and lived in Oxford until his death in 1975. He is buried in Holywell Cemetery, Oxford, near the grave of Kenneth Grahame. His name in Greek is Τζέημς Μπλις"