Star Trek: The Galactic Whirlpool by David Gerrold (1980)

[Damian]

I've had this book since it's 1989 reprinting (I only know because this was the only Bantam novel I got brand new and that was the printing date). I had read it back then but largely forgot about it. So as part of my "summer" Star Trek reading I decided to re-read this along with all the other Bantam novels I've been reading the last 2 or 3 summers.

I'm glad I did. Many of the Bantam novels have been from downright poor (here's looking at you "Fate of the Phoenix") to fair, maybe one or two were ok, not great but readable. Finally we have a book that redeems the line. I found this book to be excellent. I enjoyed it cover to cover.

The basic plot stars off as the Enterprise is playing cat and mouse with a ship just outside sensor range which they suspect to be a Klingon ship. Meanwhile the Enterprise encounters an enormous ship, cylindrical basically but with many additions, and many times larger than the Enterprise. I have a 2nd generation cover so my copy doesn't have a picture of the ship but if you look the book up on Memory Beta they have a picture of the original cover with the ship on it (I encourage anyone reading the book to take a look at it--as good as Gerrold does in his description, sometimes it helps to have a frame of reference).

Anyway they go aboard to investigate and they find evidence of a battle taking place on board the ship a long time ago (I love how the crew speculates on what was there originally--shops and apartments perhaps that have been torn away). Then they make their way into an area obviously used for farming. They are intercepted by a guard, a young woman, whom they end up having to take aboard the Enterprise. She accuses them of being demons from the 'lower' levels of the ship. They also learn this is an ancient human ship from about 200 years prior (it's important to remember this book was released in 1980 so Earth's future history follows a different path from what we are now familiar with). The ship left the Solar System and eventually humanity lost contact with it. They discover there was a mutiny as some of the colonists aboard wanted to stop an investigate a potential landing spot that experienced dangerous radiation every so many years, whereas the captain wanted to continue on. A battle ensued and a schism occurred, with half the inhabitants reinforcing the upper levels of the ship and the mutineers moving to the lower levels and who live a bare existence with little food or power. The Enterprise crew learn this ship will encounter a 'galactic whirlpool' where two large black holes are basically which will destroy the ship. Kirk attempts to convice the 'captain' of the upper levels but he is delusional and wants to hear none of it. The 'captain' of the lower levels agrees with Kirk but has no way to help. So Kirk must find a way to get the two sides to work together to correct the ships course. There is a great deal of damage from the schism and a lot of mistrust to work through.

That's the basic plot. There's much more of course. Lt Kevin Riley has a prominent role, as does the person they find on the ship, named Katwen. Also, I loved Gerrolds' detailed description of the ship, it's history, the degeneration of the society aboard, and degeneration of the ship from what it once was. In the uppermost levels they find an area that housed numerous environments, including what was once a forest and desert, reduced to fungus due to the loss of power (and loss of light). Once Scotty makes a repair that results in light returning for the first time in decades Kirk and the landing party are disheartened to see the true scope of the damage.

Also, Gerrold obviously took to heart two reference books. One was his own "The World of Star Trek" as well as "The Making of Star Trek". Gerrold was obviously interested in staying true to those reference books and to the original vision of Star Trek. I thought he had a good handle on the characters as we knew them up to that point. And the story kept your interest. If there was maybe one minor weakness it's that the ship on the edge of sensor range is never really resolved in the book. We are led to believe it's a Klingon ship but unlike my cover image that depicts a Klingon ship, the Klingons never appear. However, I didn't mind that as this story was a full story. Adding Klingons in the flesh would have needlessly complicated the story. And the book ends with a line about them next going to Space Station K-7 in the hopes of R&R (which obviously won't happen as I'm sure this was a lead in to Gerrold's own story, "The Trouble With Tribbles"). Perhaps that ship turns out to be Koloth's ship? I love the eerie aspects of the story as well.

Definitely worth a read for any Star Trek lit fan. And finally, a Star Trek novel from the Bantam novel that I can say was an excellent read.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Lt Kevin Riley has a prominent role, as does the person they find on the ship, named Katwen.

Katwen is a Tuckerism for Katherine Trimble, eldest daughter of Bjo & John Trimble. Kat was oxygen-deprived at birth, but did not let that stop her being an avid attendee at SF conventions, and becoming a talented artist. ("Katwen" is how she pronounced her own name as a youngster.) Gerrold manages to use the name to get a great pun out of Kevin Riley.

This novel is also the first original literary cameos for Filmation's Arex and M'Ress, apart from the Ballantine "Logs".

And the book ends with a line about them next going to Space Station K-7 in the hopes of R&R (which obviously won't happen as I'm sure this was a lead in to Gerrold's own story, "The Trouble With Tribbles"). Perhaps that ship turns out to be Koloth's ship?

Yes. When I read it, I was assuming that the presence of Arex and M'Ress was a clue that the story happened in the fourth year of the 5YM. I read the end as more of an "Oh no, not K7 again, it wasn't very peaceful last time...", and I thing the Timeliners did the same. But I had the chance to grill David Gerrold over this in 1988 - we were GoHs together at a New Zealand Star Trek convention - and he said his intention was to set up "The Trouble With Tribbles". Which also means that Arex and M'ress were on board throughout the 5YM, we just didn't see them on the bridge until the fourth year.

The book also features the sometime-need for transporter receiving pads/pattern enhancers to be placed at the destination, in order to improve transporter safety, something he discussed in "The World of Star Trek" ("Whither Star Trek" chapter), added to the TNG Writers' Guide - and eventually featured in the episode "Power Play".

 

[Christopher]

TGW is definitely my favorite Bantam novel, and there's not much I can add. But it does have a couple of imperfections. The main one is that the descriptions of the layout of the generation ship are inconsistent. At first, the book correctly portrays the lower-gravity levels above and the higher-gravity levels below as concentric, in the inner and outer portions of the rotating cylinder with gravity decreasing toward the central axis. But at times later on, it loses track of that and describes the two sections as the front and rear halves of the cylinder.

Also, the history lecture from "Specks" (who was an author insertion of Gerrold himself) went on really long, although the history it spelled out was interesting. Still, otherwise I quite enjoyed the various historical and worldbuilding digressions that Gerrold put into the novel. I tried to emulate them a bit in an early chapter of Ex Machina.

It's weird -- I learned eventually that Gerrold wrote this book as kind of a Robert A. Heinlein pastiche, but I've never been much of a fan of Heinlein's novels, even though I quite liked this one.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Also, the history lecture from "Specks" (who was an author insertion of Gerrold himself) went on really long, although the history it spelled out was interesting.

So is "Specks" the same character as Gerry Auberson, after he was cured of his allergy to Retinax V?


David Gerrold cameo in TMP by Ian McLean, on Flickr

Gerrold had originally drafted a 60p. outline for an episode he called "Tomorrow Was Yesterday". It was rejected for TOS so he removed all the Trek-specific references and turned it into a film script called "Yesterday's Children", which became a novel instead. Then it got another life as "The Galactic Whirlpool". Decades later, "Yesterday's Children" served as the beginnings for his ongoing "Star Wolf" SF novel series.

 

[Christopher]

Gerrold had originally drafted a 60p. outline for an episode he called "Tomorrow Was Yesterday". It was rejected for TOS so he removed all the Trek-specific references and turned it into a film script called "Yesterday's Children", which became a novel instead. Then it got another life as "The Galactic Whirlpool". Decades later, "Yesterday's Children" served as the beginnings for his ongoing "Star Wolf" SF novel series.

Well, sort of. It's somewhat messier than that. He started writing Yesterday's Children as an adaptation of his Trek 2-parter premise, but he soon found himself getting more interested in the original characters and premise he created in place of the Trek elements, and veered off to tell a totally different story that had nothing at all to do with the title, which was why it was renamed Starhunt in its later, expanded edition. He eventually went back to the original "Tomorrow Was Yesterday" premise and turned it into Whirlpool. He then developed Voyage of the Star Wolf as a TV series based on a rebooted version of the YC/SH characters and premise, and when the TV pitch didn't go forward, he turned it into the novel series. So he ultimately got six different books out of the same rejected premise.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Well, sort of. It's somewhat messier than that. He started writing Yesterday's Children as an adaptation of his Trek 2-parter premise, but he soon found himself getting more interested in the original characters and premise he created in place of the Trek elements, and veered off to tell a totally different story that had nothing at all to do with the title, which was why it was renamed Starhunt in its later, expanded edition. He eventually went back to the original "Tomorrow Was Yesterday" premise and turned it into Whirlpool. He then developed Voyage of the Star Wolf as a TV series based on a rebooted version of the YC/SH characters and premise, and when the TV pitch didn't go forward, he turned it into the novel series. So he ultimately got six different books out of the same rejected premise.

Ah yes, I have "Starhunt", too.

And he looped TNG's "Blood and Fire", again by filing off the Trek references, into the "Voyage of the Star Wolf" books, too. (And then it ended up as a TOS fanfilm episode with Kirk's nephew in the main role.)

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Thanks, Mr. Bennett: I knew the outline of the path from "Tomorrow Was Yesterday" to The Galactic Whirlpool, but not in nearly so much detail.

 

[Christopher]

Just to make it even more confusing, the expanded version of Yesterday's Children was originally published under that title (around the same time The Galactic Whirlpool was released) and only renamed Starhunt on reissue. The edition I have is the expanded version under the YC title.

I actually prefer the original version; it has what I consider a fairly bold and deconstructive ending that reveals the "hero" of the book had been wrong all along, but the expansion adds more chapters afterward that reverse that, have it turn out he was actually right, and go for a more conventional, crowd-pleasing happy ending. Fortunately, both books are the same up until that point, with the only change being the addition of about a dozen more chapters after it, so you can still experience the original version if you just stop reading at the end of Chapter 28. (I used to have both versions, but I sold off the shorter one when I determined its entire contents were intact within the longer one.)

 

[Therin of Andor]

Just to make it even more confusing, the expanded version of Yesterday's Children was originally published under that title (around the same time The Galactic Whirlpool was released) and only renamed Starhunt on reissue. The edition I have is the expanded version under the YC title.

Yep. I have both. IIRC, it took me ages to track one of them down secondhand - I hadn't realised they had similar content - and suddenly had the chance to get one of them from DG himself.

 

[Damian]

This novel is also the first original literary cameos for Filmation's Arex and M'Ress, apart from the Ballantine "Logs".

Yes, I should have mentioned that. One of the only times IIRC that an animated series reference was made in the Bantam line.

I should have also mentioned my surprise when I saw a reference in the novel to Wolf 359. I'll admit, for a split second I thought, ooh, a TNG reference, when I quickly realized that was impossible.

I looked up "The Best of Both Worlds" on Memory Alpha and the novel on both Memory Alpha and Beta just to see if the writers of the episode were giving a sort of shout out to this novel. Wolf 359 is an actual star and it seems based on what I could find that it was just a coincidence. But I was still surprised when I saw Wolf 359 mentioned in the article nonetheless. A pretty amazing coincidence in the sense that Wolf 359 is not a well known star to the masses that I'm aware of.

If Gerrold was still involved with TNG by the time BOBW had come out then you could probably make an argument it was a reference to the novel, but he was long gone by that point (though if anyone knows if this was inspired by the novel I'd be interested to hear about it).

At first, the book correctly portrays the lower-gravity levels above and the higher-gravity levels below as concentric, in the inner and outer portions of the rotating cylinder with gravity decreasing toward the central axis. But at times later on, it loses track of that and describes the two sections as the front and rear halves of the cylinder.

Yes, sometimes it was hard to keep track of all the references. It's one reason I referred people to the original cover. He was pretty descriptive but I hard time visualizing it. But once I saw the picture that helped a lot. I read on Memory Beta I think (when I was trying to research the Wolf 359 question) that the cover was an accurate representation of Gerrold's intent.

Also, the history lecture from "Specks" (who was an author insertion of Gerrold himself) went on really long, although the history it spelled out was interesting. Still, otherwise I quite enjoyed the various historical and worldbuilding digressions that Gerrold put into the novel.

You almost sound like Captain Kirk. After the 'lecture' Spock noted that Specks perhaps was a bit over-detailed but Kirk noted he found it very interesting (sort of ironic that Spock was concerned he was overly detailed). I think it was one of the longest chapers in the book. But I too was interested in the history of the ship. I liked having a description of what the ship was designed to be and Gerrold was equally detailed in his description of how far the ship had sunk.

It was a bit hard to imagine the scale of the ship. When he's describing how it was supposed to include deserts and forests and farms, etc. I kept thinking this ship's scale must be enormous. It's amazing to think that Earth 200 years prior was even capable of creating such an incredible large ship. I mean, it's large enough for a war to basically develop on board and last for decades. In any 'normal' size ship it would probably be impossible for that sort of war to last for any length of time.

Unlike most of the other Bantam novels, this one had an epic feel to it. There was a lot going on but I never felt overwhelmed. I'm glad I re-read it.

 

[Christopher]

I looked up "The Best of Both Worlds" on Memory Alpha and the novel on both Memory Alpha and Beta just to see if the writers of the episode were giving a sort of shout out to this novel. Wolf 359 is an actual star and it seems based on what I could find that it was just a coincidence. But I was still surprised when I saw Wolf 359 mentioned in the article nonetheless. A pretty amazing coincidence in the sense that Wolf 359 is not a well known star to the masses that I'm aware of.

But very well known to science fiction writers and TV scientific advisers, because it's the third-closest star system to Sol, after Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star. So not a coincidence at all. Both stories used it because of its proximity to Earth.

I read on Memory Beta I think (when I was trying to research the Wolf 359 question) that the cover was an accurate representation of Gerrold's intent.

Only very roughly, in that it shows a large, basically cylindrical vessel. But the details don't fit, since the cylinder's flat upper surface is festooned with structures oriented as if the direction of gravity is parallel to the cylinder's axis, whereas in a rotating cylindrical habitat the gravity would be radially outward from the axis. So it's a pretty fanciful take on it overall.

It was a bit hard to imagine the scale of the ship. When he's describing how it was supposed to include deserts and forests and farms, etc. I kept thinking this ship's scale must be enormous. It's amazing to think that Earth 200 years prior was even capable of creating such an incredible large ship. I mean, it's large enough for a war to basically develop on board and last for decades. In any 'normal' size ship it would probably be impossible for that sort of war to last for any length of time.

Gerrold was no doubt influenced by Gerard K. O'Neill's The High Frontier, as well as the theoretical work done by The Planetary Society on possible L4 and L5 colonies. If you'll recall, The Lost Era: The Sundered portrayed a similar type of L5 O'Neill habitat existing at the time of World War Three. The anime franchise Mobile Suit Gundam also drew on these ideas, which you can read about here. They were also a major influence on my worldbuilding in Only Superhuman and the Troubleshooter stories.

 

[Damian]

But very well known to science fiction writers and TV scientific advisers, because it's the third-closest star system to Sol, after Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star. So not a coincidence at all. Both stories used it because of its proximity to Earth

I have to admit until I looked it up I hadn't realized Wolf 359 was a real place. I assumed it was a sector they made up, not a star. Though Star Trek has tried to use real places so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise it's a real place.

Still, my eyes did widen at the reference.

Only very roughly, in that it shows a large, basically cylindrical vessel. But the details don't fit, since the cylinder's flat upper surface is festooned with structures oriented as if the direction of gravity is parallel to the cylinder's axis, whereas in a rotating cylindrical habitat the gravity would be radially outward from the axis. So it's a pretty fanciful take on it overall.

Well, now, if you want to get all sciency about it . But the picture at least gave me a frame of reference. I basically envisioned a giant tin can with some bands around it and some rocket-like structures along side. When I saw the picture on the original cover it helped give me a better perspective. This was one of the covers that actually helped the story I thought. The original "Perry's Planet" cover was somewhat helpful as was "Planet of Judgment" "Devil World" and "World Without End". Those all had pictures in their first editions that seemed to relate pretty well to some important element in the story (whether a picture of a vessel/ship, or in the case of "Devil World" where it depicted the aliens and a structure important to the story). Now the quality of the stories is questionable in some cases but at least the cover picture seemed to serve some purpose in those cases.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Yes, I should have mentioned that. One of the only times IIRC that an animated series reference was made in the Bantam line.

Ah, and you forgot the appearance of Admiral George La Forge! We assume an ancestor of Geordi, long before TNG was created, but both characters are Tuckerisms for a Trek fan with a disability, whom Gene Roddenberry and David Gerrold had befriended at Trek conventions. In the "Enterprise" novel, "Live by the Code", La Forge is a captain in command of a starship in the Federation Starfleet. Admiral Jonathan Archer considered him among the captains he trusted out in the field.

The original "Perry's Planet" cover was somewhat helpful.

When I met Joe Haldeman in Sydney, he mentioned that I should go home and check the "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" reference on the cover of his brother's novel, "Perry's Planet". Even though all the Bantam novels are set in the 5YM, sure enough, barely visible, Kirk is wearing his TMP casual shirt and a Perscan device! You do need to hold the book cover in a good light...


Perry's Planet by Ian McLean, on Flickr

 

[Damian]

Ah, and you forgot the appearance of Admiral George La Forge!

Yes, that too caught my eye. I read in Memory Beta I think it was that both La Forge's were named for a real life person as you noted. As Gerrold was involved with the creation of TNG that was less of a surprise than the Wolf 359 reference was too me.

Even though all the Bantam novels are set in the 5YM, sure enough, barely visible, Kirk is wearing his TMP casual shirt and a Perscan device! You do need to hold the book cover in a good light...

I have a first generation copy of that book and yes, it's hard to see. So much so in fact that if I hadn't read about it on Memory Beta I probably wouldn't have noticed. But it wins the award for being the only Bantam novel that has any movie era reference on it (even though the story is a 5YM story).