William Shatner's career as an actor, director, producer, screenwriter, recording artist, author, and horseman has spanned more than fifty years. One of pop culture's most recognizable figures, he is also a major Hollywood philanthropist. Shatner and his wife and three married children live in Los Angeles.
The Star Trek star and "Tek Wars" series author creates a new space adventure featuring 16-year-old Jim Endicott. When his secretive father is murdered and his stepmother disappears, Jim calls upon his survival training to escape the government agents sent to kill him on planet Wolfbane. Back on Earth, he finds that the secret code his birth mother embedded in his DNA links him to the mass psychosis caused by a vast computer network of mind arrays. Interesting hypotheses on DNA manipulation and the use of human minds hardwired for a global link overcome sketchily drawn characters. Buy on demand.
The kickoff of Shatner's third SF series (after Tek and Man of War) is, according to the publisher, aimed to promote "scientific literacy and a love of reading." The novel certainly promotes the revival of the Heinlein-style juvenile, with a few contemporary themes (e.g., sex) added to the pulpy mix. In the 22nd century, young Jim Endicott finds himself a fugitive because his DNA carries information about combining human minds into a gigantic organic computer intended to help humanity compete with its superior, and alien, neighbors. The pursuit of Jim by Delta, Jim's biological father and head of the Combined Intelligence Agencies, is violent, costing the lives of Jim's biological mother and foster father, and eventually bringing Jim back to Earth. There, he is turned into a walking bomb in order to bring down Delta, who invented the group-mind technique. Delta broke with Jim's mother over the invention and has used an inferior version ever since, creating mass psychosis among Earth's unemployed. At the end of the novel, the aliens continue to surround humanity, reason enough for the next book in the series. With gritty realism and computers, high-tech weaponry, spectacular action scenes and breakneck pacing through which familiar characters scurry, this novel essentially combines Star Wars and cyberpunk in the Heinlein-juvenile framework. It's entertaining but too often gives whiffs of old (too old) wine poured into a new bottle. (Feb.)
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