The Best of Trek

Twenty-five years after publication, it is interesting to read this collection of intelligent musings by fans of Star Trek. The chronology is right after the release of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan", so many of the articles contain speculation about what the future of Spock is in the film series. Most commentators had his restoration and resurrection accurately predicted, they understood that the mind meld Spock did with McCoy was significant in storing the consciousness of Spock. What makes the speculations of Star Trek fandom so fundamentally sound is the fact that they are based on events that have already occurred in the Star Trek world. Many point to the storing of the mental essence of Sargon and his group in the original series episode "Return to Tomorrow" inside spheres for centuries. Furthermore, once their consciousness is transferred into human containers, in an emergency situation Spock's essence is for the moment stored inside nurse Chapel. With this historical precedence, there is ample justification for believing that the mind of Spock did not perish when his body was destroyed. The fans of Star Trek are some of the most loyal and imaginative people in the world and that is demonstrated once again in this book. It is a sure sign of intelligence when speculation about the immediate future is still interesting even after that future becomes the somewhat distant past.