In 2002, I finished my epic fanfiction novel set within the "Star Trek" universe: A Soldier's Last Battle. I had been working on the novel for years, adding to its voluminous nerdosity little by little. In July of 2002, though, I moved away from my home in Iowa with my final destination as Chicago, Illinois. Along the way, I visited a friend in Texas (that's on the way to Chicago from Iowa, right?) and stayed with her for a couple weeks. I had two missions during this mini-vacation. One: drink a lot. Two: finish my novel. And by the time the two weeks were over, I owned a very tired liver and a very finished novel. Those two weeks were the greatest two weeks of my life. I had no job. I had no responsibility. I woke up every day around 9 or 10, wrote for a few hours, ate lunch, wrote for a few hours more, then showered, got dressed, and when my friend got home, we went out drinking and carousing around the Dallas/Arlington area. It was like I was a professional writer. In that two weeks, I wrote one hundred fifteen pages, finishing my novel out at three hundred seven pages of "Star Trek" goodness.
As time went by, I was impressed by the overwhelming roar of people not caring about my fan fiction novel. And who can blame them? Most of the world didn't even know it existed. So I devised a brilliant plan for getting everyone to read it. Fortunately before I implemented my plan, I realized that poisoning the water supply could be construed as a criminal act, so instead I decided to bribe the New Yorker into reviewing my glorious tome. I figured it made sense - my novel was certainly better than Star Trek Generations. So a-bribing I must go. That was eight years ago. I have been sending in successively larger amounts of bribe money, but I kept getting rejected. Until today. In my mail today, I received a letter from the editor saying they had accepted my "submission" (which I assume is snooty east-coast code for "bribe") and that a full review would be appearing in their online magazine (which I assume is snooty east-coast douche code for "website"). Attached was a link for me to preview the review. I was advised to refrain from sharing any part of the review with anyone prior to online publication, so I copied the entire thing and here it is in its entirety.
(Oh, and by the way, if you want to get a book reviewed, apparently the magic number is $17.50.)
A Soldier's Rejoinder: A Star Trek Fan Seeks Universal Truth
by Eric Sedrickson, staff writer
Upon first review, Daryl A. Moon's 2002 unpublished novel A Soldier's Last Battle: A Novel Set Within the Star Trek Universe seems nothing more than the frantic spasms of a fanboy's typewriter set upon the world like so many Egyptian plagues. Having just recently (yet again) read Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which is this humble writer's favorite foray into mankind's darkest rabbit holes, I was in no mood to suffer fools lightly. I thumbed through the work disdainfully, impressed with the narrow margins and use of white space on the page, undoubtedly in an effort to crank the page total to just over 300. By page 20, I was secretly hurling mental javelins of fury towards my boss, who cursed me with this mindless schlock. I was remembering that as he handed it to me and I saw the title, I asked him why the hell he wanted anyone to read it, let alone write a review of it. I was pretty sure I heard him mumble something about "forgot money for lunch," but I couldn't be sure. I was just about to abandon the project and face the wrath of my overseer when a curious line of prose caught my eye. "The red alert siren wailed menacingly, and the bridge of the U.S.S. Verona lay bathed in harsh red light that made Captain Kim think of a light panel dipped in blood." As my mind played with the words like a tongue exploring the peaks and valleys of a newly chipped tooth, I saw a wider view of what had been written. Verona, of course, seemed to make reference to "Romeo and Juliet," and the scene Mr. Moon was laying out featured the long-past death of the protagonist's wife, revealed in a dream flashback. Then I realized what my mind's tongue was probing for:
"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds
That sees into the bottom of my grief?O sweet my mother, cast me not away!
Delay this marriage for a month, a week,
Or if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies."
My God, is it possible this sophomoric "Star Trek" novel was a thinly disguised homage to the Bard himself? Or was it an unintentional stroke of genius by a failed English major unconsciously recalling a bit of actual literature from a now-dead past? There was only one way to find out: read deeper.
I don't have the space in this column to explain the plethora of gemstones I would soon discover, but they fell into my outstretched hands as if tender snowflakes on the first day of winter. I ran towards them, hands and tongue outstretched, pleased with my effort and with the results. The Harkozen fleet, a sort of bugaboo plaguing our intrepid protagonist (Captain Harry Kim, a future version of a character from one of the shows) is clearly meant to represent the "terrorist threat" facing the United States in the early part of last decade. In fact the "Harkozen Invasion" is the precipitating event in an all-out war consuming the Federation. Clearly, this all-out war (war on terror? one is tempted to ask) was a bit of precognition on Mr. Moon's part (remember, the novel was completed in mid-2002), forseeing our never-ending struggle in Afghanistan and Iraq against an "inferior" foe. At one point it is even revealed that the Federation President who "carried on the struggle against the Romulan menace" was named Steven Jones. Clearly Mr. Moon was, possibly with too heavy a hand, pointing out that an Americanized warrior mentality is to blame. (The alternative is that Mr. Moon is a terrible science fiction writer and chose a horrible name for an alien, but at this point I've seen the brilliance, so there is no reason to suspect any malfeasance on the author's part). Even Captain Kim's "sidekick," his first officer Commander Krollek, couldn't have been painted in any broader ironic strokes. His calm intelligence and clearly Native American manor leave this reptile-like "shaman" a clear indictment of shallow tale-craft. If only Mr. Moon could get John Grisham and James Patterson in a room together and teach them. Though that would probably fail because they wouldn't understand Mr. Moon's character was constructed to reflect their type of incompetent writing. They would probably just find the character a "really cool devise."
It goes without saying that the "good guys" win in the end, but are they really the good guys? Doesn't the ending just leave the military industrial complex that is the Federation's Starfleet at the helm of human destiny? Of course, in the hands of Mr. Moon, we are shown the folly of our naive hope for mankind, as the final paragraphs so potently mirror the opening page of the novel, leaving us to realize that nothing we do truly matters and that the crushing weight of destiny eventually squeezes us all. And when it does, the only sound will be a slow applause from this writer, celebrating the best abstract realization of slow-churning doom I've read in years. I see big things for Mr. Moon's future.
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