“But he would always fail, he knew it now, something would always happen to cause him to fail.
Entropy would always win…”
Stardate: 5001.1
In what is easily the best Star Trek novel I have yet encountered, the late Vonda McIntyre (a celebrated Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author) offers an inspiring and deeply personal book about the dangers of time travel. Somewhere along the border between Federation space and Klingon territory, the Enterprise is in orbit around a naked singularity, the first and only such singularity that has ever been discovered. This strange formation has caused x-ray storms and power surges, while radiation pounds the ship and gravity fluctuations are commonplace. It has appeared seemingly out of nowhere about six weeks ago and Spock has been carefully studying its properties –he has been working around the clock and has altered his circadian rhythm. Is the singularity expanding? Why is there no dust in its swirling event horizon? Spock notes there is a strange entropic effect (the likes of which Tipler and Penrose would provide the best analysis) and the increasing rate of entropy seems to indicate that the universe has merely less than a century left before it collapses in total destruction. Spock decides to keep this terrifying discovery to himself until he can finish his observations, but the whole project is abruptly interrupted when the Enterprise suddenly departs before Spock can complete his calculations. Captain Kirk has received an urgent subspace transmission under the rare “ultimate override” code (the “ultimate” code is a special situation in which no written record is allowed, not even for the ship’s log, and it has only been used five times in the past standard decade, according to Spock). Usually the “ultimate” code is reserved for crises when critical assistance is needed, like a planetary disaster (such as when a star is going nova), an unprovoked enemy attack (such as an invasion), or other unforeseen occurrences during a scientific investigation (such as a critical experiment failure). It requires complete radio silence. This transmission has come from a mining colony, Aleph Prime, a small outpost with a research facility used for growing bioelectronic crystals which the potential to revolutionize computer science.
Before Spock can complete his research into the singularity, the Enterprise speeds off to Aleph Prime. Along the way, we meet some new characters. Aboard the Enterprise is Lieutenant Commander Mandala Flynn, a red-haired woman who has been tasked with rebuilding the ship’s security team (she has been aboard the Enterprise for a mere two months after having previously worked for border patrol and she hopes to one day command a starship). She oversees a security team filled with several other new characters, such as her second in command Beranardi “Barry” al Auriga, Snnanafashtalli (“Snarl”), Jennifer Aristeides, Neon, and Maximo Alisaunder Arrunja.
Like many of the crew, over the past six weeks while the Enterprise has investigated the singularity, Mandala Flynn has been growing out her red hair in a bet with Sulu is also growing out his hair and mustache. In the meantime, she has been giving Sulu judo “gi” lessons while Sulu has been giving her fencing lessons in turn (perhaps this is a nod to Sulu’s famous fencing scene in the classic TOS episode “The Naked Time”). The romantic tension between Sulu and Flynn runs high throughout the novel –they are secretly in love with one another (they even take a bath and later sleep together in the novel). We learn that one of Flynn’s officers, Barry al Auriga, is also secretly in love with her but she has no idea. This is all despite the fact that Sulu is considering a transfer to another starship in order to advance his Starfleet career. He is forced to decide whether or not he will choose his career or his love for Mandala Flynn. Here, we learn a bit more about Sulu’s background. It is established in this novel (and later confirmed in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) that Sulu’s first name is Hikaru, a name meaning “the shining one” taken from The Tale of Genji. He was born on earth to a mother who was a consulting agronomist and a father who was a poet. He spent his adolescence on a succession of different colony planets (Sulu says his marks at the Academy were apparently only “dead average”). In his youth, his longest stay was on Ganjitsu, a world located far out on the border of a sector that had long been harassed by renegades and pirates, until it was rescued by a heroic female Starfleet leader named Captain Hunter who triumphantly the pirates and sent them scurrying into the hands of the Klingons.
At any rate, the Enterprise speeds off to colony Aleph Prime where lo and behold they encounter the same Captain Hunter who once rescued Sulu on Ganjitsu. She is now the captain of the USS Aerfen which patrols the region between Federation and Klingon territory; Sulu holds nothing but pure admiration for her. Unsurprisingly, Captain Hunter is also a former lover of Captain Kirk’s (in fact, she once invited Kirk to be part of her nine-member family partnership through which she has a daughter, but Kirk declined on three separate occasions). Seizing this moment, Sulu is granted a transfer to the Aerfen to work under Captain Hunter. He shares one final private goodbye with Mandala Flynn wherein she gives Sulu a ruby ring to wear on his finger.
Meanwhile, on Aleph Prime nobody seems to have any clue as to who might have sent the “ultimate” code to the Enterprise (does this premise sound familiar?), though the planet is experiencing a strange outbreak of a poisonous plague (hypermorphc botulism to be specific). Kirk meets an attorney named Ian Braithewaite who makes a request of the Enterprise: to transport a dangerous criminal named Georges Mordreaux, the famous theoretical physicist. Spock once studied temporal physics under Dr. Mordreaux many years ago at the Makropyrios, one of the finest universities in the Federation (Spock describes Mordreaux as “…the finest physicist since Vekesh, if not Einstein”). Why has Mordreaux been locked up? What exactly has he done to deserve this criminal treatment? Braithwaite claims Mordreaux was found guilty in a recent case involving the disappearance of ten people, which turned out to be a case of unauthorized research on self-aware subjects.
Reluctantly, Kirk agrees to transport Mordreaux to Rehabilitation Colony 7 (believing it will merely be a simple “milk run”) even though Spock finds no evidence of a trial, nor any published news articles about an arrest as described by Braithewaite. Nevertheless, Mordreaux is placed under heavy security by Mandala Flynn’s team while on the Enterprise. But almost immediately after he boards the ship, strange things begin happening. For example, Scotty claims to have seen Spock conducting repairs in the transporter room even though Spock has been on the bridge the whole time. What is going on here? Moments later, Mordeaux suddenly appears on the bridge and dramatically fires a lethal “spiderweb” gun which shockingly kills both Kirk and Flynn (the “spiderweb” gun is prohibited on every Federation planet because it causes a slow and painful death when its bullet form threads of a web expanding along axons and dendrites up the spinal cord into the brain causing blindness and then death). How did Dr. Mordeaux escape from his cell? The whole ship falls into a sorrowful funk at the loss of their beloved captain. Sulu returns from his new starship to mourn the loss of Captain Kirk as well as his beloved Mandala Flynn.
“Dr. McCoy, the captain is dead.” (98).
But as Spock investigates the situation, he quickly learns that Mordreaux has actually been safely locked inside his cell this whole time. So, who killed Kirk and Flynn? Was it a double? Or did Mordreaux manage to sneak some help aboard the ship? Throughout the second half of the novel, Spock discovers that Dr. Mordreaux was conducting unethical time travel experiments, and his research was considered highly dangerous so Starfleet apparently ordered that all records of his trial be erased –“Temporal displacement. Motion through time. You mean –time travel?” (136). Spock realizes that the culprit was actually Mordreaux’s future-self who killed Kirk and Flynn. But why? With help from present-day Mordreaux who is still imprisoned on the Enterprise, and Dr. McCoy (who is still distraught at the loss of Kirk), Spock develops a rudimentary “time-changer” unit, a surprisingly simple device that works in conjunction with the ship’s transporter, to send him back in time where he can hopefully alter the contemporary timeline –and thereby save Kirk and Flynn.
“McCoy slowly began to understand how frightening the implications of Mordreaux’s theories were. Anyone who could put them to use could change the time-stream: history itself. Even now they might all be changing, being changed, without their consent or even their knowledge” (140).
After a few failed attempts at changing the past, Spock realizes that the singularity the Enterprise was observing at the start of the novel was “merely the spectacular physical manifestation of the one-way trip Dr. Mordreaux’s friends had taken through time… But the entropy effect was something new, and it was the far more disastrous consequence of temporal displacement” (165). In other words, Mordreaux’s time travel experiments had unwittingly accelerated the destruction of the universe.
While Captain Hunter boards the Enterprise and begins asking questions, at the same time that Scotty starts growing suspicious of Dr. McCoy (who is desperately trying to protect Spock’s covert mission), Spock travels even further back in time to prevent Dr. Mordreaux from initially opening the singularity with his time-traveling friends and to stop him from publishing his fifth research paper which details all of his temporal discoveries (Spock is also joined by yet another Mordreaux from the future who disintegrates right before their very eyes). It turns out that one of Mordreaux’s temporal displacements is the one who sent the urgent “ultimate” code to the Enterprise. Indeed, he has been the culprit all along. But since Mordreaux and Spock have successfully stopped Mordreaux in the past from moving forward with his research, the whole timeline of The Entropy Effect has been erased and the threat of total destruction is lifted.
Once this wild adventure is resolved, everything suddenly returns to normal back in Stardate 5001.1. Now, the singularity from the start of the novel actually starts forming a black hole which will take six days (it is no longer causing entropy). Kirk is still alive, Sulu remains aboard the Enterprise, and there has been no urgent “ultimate” code from Aleph Prime. Additionally, Spock returns to his proper timeline in a somewhat disheveled state, appearing suddenly inside the ship’s observatory still clinging to his bioelectric “time changer” device which he claims to have vaguely constructed “to help complete my assignment” –a statement which is technically true. But Spock, alone, remembers all the details about travelling through time, while everyone else behaves as if this little misadventure never even happened.
The Entropy Effect concludes with Captain Kirk giving Sulu a field promotion to Lieutenant Commander, making him one of the youngest officers of that rank without formal front-line experience.
“Like a freed bird, the Enterprise sailed out of the grasp of the singularity, through the flaming curtains of disintegrating matter that surrounded it, and out into deep space” (223).
I found The Entropy Effect to be a brilliant, effective, wonderfully thoughtful Star Trek outing. It features all manner of new characters (on the one hand, we are reminded of familiar faces like Pavel Chekov, Janice Rand, Christine Chapel, Montgomery Scott, Dr. McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, and on the other, entirely new characters emerge like Captain Hunter, Mandala Flynn, her aforementioned security team, and a new Enterprise crew member who is only mentioned in passing named Beatrice Smith who is apparently “the elderly yogi of the Enterprise”). There are also lots of new ideas explored in this novel, including the fact that Spock keeps the temperature in his quarters warmer than the rest of the ship in order to match the natural climate on Vulcan (Spock apparently also keeps a Vulcan granite meditation stone in his quarters), and I was keen to pick up on the idea of “sailboats” sailing the solar wind outside the outpost on Aleph Prime. I was struck by the sheer imagery of this concept.
Lastly, the time travel narrative in The Entropy Effect is also handled with care and due attention. The plot hearkens back to other similar time-warp voyages, such as in TOS episodes like “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” “Assignment: Earth,” or “All Our Yesterdays,” as well as the film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. But The Entropy Effect is, above all, an incredibly thrilling ride as we follow Spock’s nail-biting adventures backward through time. This early Pocket series Star Trek novel (technically the first original Pocket novel) comes highly recommended from me.
McIntyre, Vonda N. The Entropy Effect. Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. New York, NY, 2006 (originally published in 1981).
The Entropy Effect, the first original Pocket Star Trek novel, was published a mere two months after the final Bantam Book was published (Death’s Angel) and a full eighteen months after the first Pocket Book (the novelization of The Motion Picture). Vonda McIntyre later returned in subsequent years to pen several more Star Trek novels, and she also wrote one of the lesser novels in the Star Wars Expanded Universe (The Crystal Star). She passed away in 2019.
Great book! Read it several times. Also try “The Wounded Sky!”