Windows on a Lost World

There are flaws; how the alien race can have a "name" for themselves that translates into a verbal sound (Kh!lict) when their language has no sounds, but is one of color and movement, is a question I find unanswerable. Still, there are relatively few such flaws in an otherwise exquisite story. Good pacing, good characterization, fascinating plot hook. One of the best. But in spite of the cover, don't expect Chekov to play a major role, he really doesn't. This is a classic Kirk/Spock story.

This is the story of an archaeological mission that goes spectacularly and uniquely wrong. The crew discover a transporter-like device that converts Kirk, Chekov and several others into the long-dead aliens that originally inhabited the planet. Kirk has to figure out how to contact Spock from inside an alien body while Spock must decipher the alien technology and change the converted crew back before they go insane. The scenes with Kirk in the alien body are very well written and the slow unravelling of the alien society is well paced and depicted. The archaeological investigations of Spock are also written, although others may find them to be lacking in events and with too much time on descriptions. Stories in which the crew actually spend their time in scientific exploration are fairly rare, and this is a very good and detailed one.

While performing archeological research on a long-uninhabited planet, Kirk, Chekov, and a security team fall through an artifact that might once have served has a one-way transportation device and are taken over by alien minds and bodies as they learn the details of exactly what happened to its ancient civilization. This audio novel crept up on me at a time when I was taking geology and oceanography courses in college. I literally had to squeeze fifteen weeks of oceangraphy into three weeks that summer, so while I had to devote most of my time to studying, this tape served as a way for me to take a break without actually forgetting some of what I was studying, because the idea of a team of scientists working together as in this story helped to keep me grounded and hopeful that I would pass my course.

An archaelogy team on Careta IV discovers a window-like transporter that sends Kirk, Chekov, an archaelogist with a superiority attitude, and several security guards to a time when the planet's original inhabitants were giant crabs. These crabs had the strange idea that they were the only intelligent species in the galaxy and therefore had the right to kill everybody else. Spock has to learn how to communicate with Kirk and feed him, so that the humans could revert to their original forms. Along the way, Spock's team learns of the inhabitant's culture, including the horrific sacrifices and the crabs' education. Giant or small, the only thing crabs are good for are eating them. A whole civilization of them is a nightmare!

This book is somewhat hard to understand. The Enterprise uncovers a window, and Checkov is sucked in with a few security guards. Then Kirk is sucked in too. It takes a long time for the crew to find out that they have been turned into giant crabs. The only way to get back to normal is to find the other window and go through it. This book is ok, if you like a lot of explaination, and confusion. I would only recommend this book to those who trully would read every Star Trek book out there.