Spoilers TOS: Ishmael by Barbara Hambly Review Thread

[Therin of Andor]

That's one of my favorite books, but I loved both Star Trek and Here Come the Brides. It seems weird that I never saw Here Come the Brides in syndication.

My awareness of "Here Come the Brides" came from Joan Winston ("Star Trek Lives!" and "The Making of the Trek Convention"). She spent time on the sets with Trek alumni, David Soul, Robert Brown and Mark Lenard and wrote about it. I don't think I ever saw the actual series.

When "Ishmael" came out, I recognised the arrival of Hoss and Little Joe ("Bonanza") and immediately rang a "Bonanza" officianado - and she was the one to connect the dots with HCTB, based on my brief description, and thus greatly enhancing my appreciation of the rest of the novel.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I'd heard of HCTB, when it was in first run, but never actually saw it until after I'd read Ishmael, and had been told it was a HCTB crossover. I have since seen strip-syndicated reruns of it.

 

[Christopher]

I was unaware of HCTB until years after I read Ishmael. I learned about it when I finally read Bjo Trimble's On the Good Ship Enterprise, I think it was; there's a chapter talking about HCTB, and I gradually caught on, "Hey, I recognize these characters... whoa, was Ishmael based on this show?! Bizarre!"

To this day, I have never actually seen an episode of the show.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

As it happens, before I saw any episodes (but I'm pretty sure after I'd read Ishmael), I'd taken the Bill Speidel Underground Tour at least once, while visiting Seattle. The tour covers basically the most interesting parts of early Seattle history. HCTB is loosely based (names were changed, some characters were split, and others conflated) on the actual early history of Seattle.

But why are we talking about Ishmael, in an Uhura's Song thread?

 

[Stevil2001]

I have also never seen the show but I have always enjoyed the book. (Hambly is an underrated writer of Trek novels, in my opinion; all three of hers are favorites.)

 

[Allyn Gibson]

That's one of my favorite books, but I loved both Star Trek and Here Come the Brides. It seems weird that I never saw Here Come the Brides in syndication.

And it's Paladin from Have Gun Will Travel on the cover.

To this day, I have never actually seen an episode of the show.

Same.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Having seen 'HCTB' back when it was still Decades TV and they did 'Binges' and being a lifelong resident of the Greater Puget Sound, all I can say is that it is a highly fictionalized account of Asa Mercer's two attempts to bring single women to Seattle.

Seattle wasn't nearly as small as depicted, being one of the last major ports for hunters and prospectors on their way up north to the Alaskan territories.

There was, and still is, a large Native American presence that went unrepresented in the show. As well as a large Asian population. I think Seattle has the second or third largest Chinatown after San Francisco and Vancouver B.C.

Being filmed on the studio backlot, the trees, terrain, and climate are all wrong for the region.

Prior to logging and the Great Fire of 1889, a large portion of Seattle and SODO (South of Downtown) was built on reclaimed marshland surrounded by the 'Seven Hills' - First Hill, Yesler Hill, Cherry Hill, Denny Hill, Capitol Hill, Queen Anne Hill, and Beacon Hill.

After the fire, Denny Hill was leveled to move the city farther up the hillside, while the logging debris was emptied into Puget Sound to extend the waterfront out past First Avenue. The term 'Skid Row' comes from the loggers 'skidding' the trees down the Denny Regrade to barges waiting to take them to the lumber mills.

Harbor Island, along the banks of the Duwamish River is also built on logging debris. If, and when, the big one strikes, most of the ground under the waterfront, Pioneer Square and SODO is going to liquify and slide/fall into Puget Sound.

There's a memorial down in the parking lot by Boeing Field that marks the spot where the first non-native settlers first set foot and made claim to the area in 1851. If you were to stand on that spot and look north towards downtown Seattle, you'll see how much land has been reclaimed in the intervening years.

 

[Falconer]

But why are we talking about Ishmael, in an Uhura's Song thread?

Maybe a kind mod can split the thread.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

. . . all I can say is that it is a highly fictionalized account of Asa Mercer's two attempts to bring single women to Seattle.

Either you live in Seattle, or grew up in Seattle, or took the Underground Tour multiple times, or have read all of Bill Speidel's uncensored Seattle history books (I've only read Sons of the Profits and Doc Maynard).

Probably more than one of the above. Oh, yes, that's right, you did say you fell into at least the first two categories.

Thank you for filling in the details. I'd about reached the limits of my own knowledge of the subject.

 

[Tallguy]

And it's Paladin from Have Gun Will Travel on the cover.

That's a very young and baby faced looking Paladin. Even when he was 40 Richard Boone was pretty rough looking.

I haven't read Ishmael OR Uhura's song in over 35 years. And I figured out the Here Come the Brides connection from Bjo's book too! Does Paladin have an appearance in the book?

I recall liking Uhura's Song quite a lot.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Either you live in Seattle, or grew up in Seattle, or took the Underground Tour multiple times, or have read all of Bill Speidel's uncensored Seattle history books (I've only read Sons of the Profits and Doc Maynard).

Probably more than one of the above. Oh, yes, that's right, you did say you fell into at least the first two categories.

Thank you for filling in the details. I'd about reached the limits of my own knowledge of the subject.

Born here 8th-August-1970 at 7:58 am in a hospital long since demolished. I still have the newspaper clipping announcing my birth.

If you want a good idea/picture of what Seattle was like approximately 50 years ago, I would suggest the movies 'Harry in Your Pocket', 'Cinderella Liberty' both 1973, and the 'Emergency' tv movie 'Most Deadly Passage' from 1978. All were filmed in and around Seattle and its various landmarks.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

That's a very young and baby faced looking Paladin. Even when he was 40 Richard Boone was pretty rough looking.

I haven't read Ishmael OR Uhura's song in over 35 years. And I figured out the Here Come the Brides connection from Bjo's book too! Does Paladin have an appearance in the book?

I recall liking Uhura's Song quite a lot.

Paladin appears in a chapter for a couple of pages as someone who plays chess with Spock while he and Aaron Stemple travel to San Francisco and stay in the same hotel Paladin lives in.

 

[Denise]

And it's Paladin from Have Gun Will Travel on the cover.


Same.

I was crazy about Bobby Sherman as the youngest Bolt brother.

 

[Denise]

Paladin appears in a chapter for a couple of pages as someone who plays chess with Spock while he and Aaron Stemple travel to San Francisco and stay in the same hotel Paladin lives in.

I never realized this. That's cool.

 

[Denise]

I have also never seen the show but I have always enjoyed the book. (Hambly is an underrated writer of Trek novels, in my opinion; all three of hers are favorites.)

I really liked them, too.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I saw Emergency: Most Deadly Passage when it was first aired (and before that, I saw the 60 Minutes segment on the Seattle paramedic program being one of the most advanced in the country). Hell, as far as Emergency is concerned, I have the Station 51 alarm both as a ringtone (for work-related calls) and as something I can set on my computer, as an appointment reminder.

My original draw to Seattle was an organ, of all things: the St. Mark's Flentrop. In fact, a bit of its console is visible in my avatar. I've had the privilege of playing it several times (not in front of an audience; my chops aren't even remotely that good!); it's absolutely amazing how something so immense can be so responsive to nuances of touch, even from a ham-handed beginner like me.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

That's a very young and baby faced looking Paladin. Even when he was 40 Richard Boone was pretty rough looking.

And John Dehner, the radio Paladin, was even rougher looking!

A few years ago, I watched much of HGWT, and I found that I could generally tell which episodes were the Gene Roddenberry episodes. Sometimes it would be the way a premise played out. Sometimes it would be a name, like Robert April, a minister who visited prisoners as a Kansas state prison. Sometimes it would be a little comedic moment. There would be something that would cause a bulb to go off in my head and think, "Roddenberry!" In short, you can find the roots of Star Trek in HGWT.

I recall liking Uhura's Song quite a lot.

As did I. I really should reread it one of these days.

Paladin appears in a chapter for a couple of pages as someone who plays chess with Spock while he and Aaron Stemple travel to San Francisco and stay in the same hotel Paladin lives in.

My only complaint is that, IIRC, Paladin is wearing his black garb in the novel when Spock hustles him at chess, and Paladin didn't do that in the hotel. A number of times, one of his clients would be completely gobsmacked when they later saw Paladin in his black attire, because they knew him from the hotel as a cultured and elegant man of leisure.

I should note, I didn't know that when I first read Ishmael, as I'd never seen the show, nor would I have known who Paladin was. But now, it kinda stands out to me. Like, no, that's not right.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Maybe a kind mod can split the thread.

Hmm, OK, I'll see what I can do!

ETA:

OK @Falconer , I've moved all the Ishmael-related posts, starting with @Denise 's post here, into the existing Ishmael review thread. I think they split pretty cleanly, but if anyone has any concerns with where their post ended up, let me know. I think one of the moved posts still touches on Uhura's Song, but the majority of the post was still about Ishmael.

And rather than making a separate post in the other thread about it, I'll just mention it here: since I was already moving posts around, I ended up moving the remaining Uhura's Song posts into the review thread for that book, since it was basically also a review, and it's good to have all of those in the same place.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Over in the 'Trek Guest Actors in Maybe Surprising Roles' thread, M'Sharak posted a bit of information regarding the years 'Have Gun - Will Travel' take place.

"Like many Westerns, the television show was set in a time vaguely indicated to be some years after the American Civil War.
The season-five television episode, "A Drop of Blood", gives the specific date of July 3, 1879. In the 14th and 17th ("Lazarus", March 6 and 7, 1875) episodes of season five, it is 1875."

Which led to this response from me.

If the dates in the Wikipedia entry are correct, then Paladin was operating much earlier in San Francisco than previously thought, because 'Ishmael', which is based off the TV series 'Here Comes the Brides' is set in Seattle circa the late 1860s; the novel places the events from September 1867 to December 1867. Historically Asa Mercer made two attempts to bring single women to Seattle in 1864 and 1866. 'Have Gun Will Travel' is set nearly a decade later circa mid to late 1870's.

Spock and Aaron Stemple travel to San Francisco at one point and stay in the same hotel as Paladin. At one point, Spock plays chess with Paladin.

Richard Boone was forty when 'Have Gun - Will Travel' first aired. If this indeed is meant to be the same Paladin, he would be in his late twenties/early thirties in his appearance in the novel, which would explain his younger appearance on the cover.

 

[Greg Cox]

If you want a good idea/picture of what Seattle was like approximately 50 years ago, I would suggest the movies 'Harry in Your Pocket', 'Cinderella Liberty' both 1973, and the 'Emergency' tv movie 'Most Deadly Passage' from 1978. All were filmed in and around Seattle and its various landmarks.

See also the second Kolchak tv-movie, The Night Strangler (1973), which nowadays serves as a nice time capsule of the somewhat seedy, seamy Pioneer Square of the 1970s.