A review by octavia_cade
Star Trek 4 by James Blish

adventurous fast-paced

3.0

I zipped through this little book in about an hour and a half. It's very nicely paced, so that helped, containing as it does the novelisations-in-short-story-form of six episodes from the original series of Star Trek. The best of them was, I think, "The Menagerie," the initial pilot episode that was so thoroughly reworked for the show proper. I've seen it several times, so no surprises there, but what was most interesting was how Blish altered the episode slightly, getting rid of the framing device. Most of the episodes in this series are straight retellings with little authorial editing or explanation, but Blish had apparently tried and failed to produce such a retelling, and felt exercised enough by the final product that he left a rather lengthy note explaining what he'd done. I always enjoy reading that sort of thing - being a writer myself I feel a sympathy! - and it's good to see how other writers deal with problems like this when things don't turn out as expected.