by Diane Duane
“Vulcan has no moon…it has a nightmare.”
Ambassador Sarek is being recalled to his home planet. Vulcan is considering seceding from the United Federation of Planets. T’Pau, the Eldest Mother of Sarek’s House, has ordered him to speak in favor of the secession. Spock is also called home to testify in the hearings, as are Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy.
The Vulcan groups who want to secede claim the overt emotions and brashness of Humans are dangerous to the development of Vulcans, a variation on the idea of the prime directive. McCoy does some detective work and discovers that Spock’s ex-betrothed, T’Pring, is behind the movement. The secession is voted down.
T’Pau dies of old age and passes her katra to the Lady Amanda, making Amanda Eldest Mother of the House, and symbolically uniting Vulcans and Humans.
Alternating chapters are devoted to the history of Vulcan, from the Big Bang to the ‘present.’ It sounds dull, but it is fascinating and poetic and exciting—it is Vulcan.
Random Thoughts Written Down as I Read:
Vulcans do not lack emotions. They master their passions.
They do not practice logic, but cthia, ‘reality-truth’—seeing what is real, instead of what we want to be real. A mistranslation of the word cthia resulted in the misperception that Vulcans revere logic. Amanda was partially responsible for this mistranslation while she was working on one of the early versions of the Universal Translator.
The purpose of speech is to describe the world. That’s why Vulcans dislike lying: lying perverts the purpose of speech.
Words are important.
So far in all these books, we are never given the Vulcans’ own name for their planet or themselves. We come close here: ah’Hrak means The Forge. It is how many Vulcans refer to their planet.
Here’s Lt. Naraht!
Uhura is working on her doctoral thesis: improving Universal Translator theory.
Here’s Lt. Harb Tanzer! And K’s’t’lk! Ambassador Sarek and the Lady Amanda are also aboard for the trip to Vulcan.
Proto-internet! So effing cool! Along with concerns over protecting anonymity and copyright concerns.
T’Pring is crazy. She is solipsism personified. She can always logic her way into believing she is in the right.
Surak is Jesus for Vulcans. In the internet age.
WTF:
“Stonn died. I was not entirely displeased. But then as time passed, I came to realize that once again you had robbed me, you and your captain…Once again I did not have my desire, and once again it was your fault. So I decided to take from you such things as you had taken from me: your future life, your captain, and anything else I could manage that could cause you such pain as you have caused me.”
Solipsism? Hell, no . . that’s classic outright narcissism. Right down to the narcissistic rage exhibited by T’Pring. (trust me on this, I have experience) Which in itself is unfortunate – T’Pring made a cold-hearted decision in her original story, but I would have enjoyed seeing a writer develop T’Pring into a fuller neutral protagonist with flaws; no evil plans but no regrets for her choices either.