The Star Trek Reader II

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's 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"