eSpecs Books Focus #2: Christopher L. Bennett
Tell us a bit about your latest work.
My most recent published work is Star Trek: The Original Series—Living Memory from Gallery Books, my second consecutive novel set in the period between Star Trek: The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan. My previous novel, The Higher Frontier, showed how Kirk became commandant of Starfleet Academy while keeping the Enterprise as his flagship for special missions, setting up the status quo that would eventually lead to The Wrath of Khan. While The Higher Frontier showed Kirk commanding one such special mission, Living Memory keeps Kirk occupied with a challenging situation at the Academy, involving the controversial admission of a specially bred warrior population to the student body at a time of public protests at the perceived militarization of Starfleet. Meanwhile, Captain Spock of the Enterprise and Captain Terrell and Commander Chekov of the Reliant investigate a series of destructive cosmic storms that seem to be backtracking the Enterprise’s past ports of call—and that turn out to have a surprising connection to Commander Uhura, one that she’s unable to remember due to the Nomad probe wiping her memory in the episode “The Changeling.” I was glad to take that throwaway plot point and craft a poignant story about Uhura’s struggle to reconnect with her lost past.
My latest original work (aside from a few short stories on my Patreon) is the duology Arachne’s Crime and Arachne’s Exile, published by eSpec Books, also available as a single volume with bonus stories, The Arachne Omnibus. This is an epic interstellar adventure in which a human starship crew inadvertently destroys an alien space habitat and is put on trial by the survivors. Arachne’s Crime devotes its first half to the trial, then follows the crew as they attempt to integrate into the alien society and make amends for their mistake, complicated by factions of both species that would prefer a more violent resolution. Arachne’s Exile then opens up the story on a more cosmic scale, as the characters travel deeper into galactic civilization and discover ancient secrets that drive them to seek escape—leading to a dangerous heist on a unique megastructure orbiting a neutron star. The late Don Sakers of Analog called Arachne’s Exile “a fun, exciting read.”
Read more:
https://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com/2021/08/especs-books-focus-2-christopher-l.html
