Chain of Attack.

By Gene DeWeese.

Synopsis:
The Enterprise accidentally ends up in another galaxy by flying through a mysterious space phenomenon that they were supposed to be studying. Having failed to get home again by flying backwards they do a bit of exploring, and find that all the planets in the immediate vacinity have been thoroughly blasted. Then they come across some vicious semi-suicidal alien warships, and the aliens think the Enterprise did the blasting...

Review:
I came to this book prepared to hate it, as I read the sequel some years earlier, and was both bored and confused by it. However, this one wasn't as bad as I was expecting. The sequel might make a bit more sense now, I should dig it out again.

Anyway, the paranoid aliens and the equally paranoid Federation Council wannabe (who came along for the ride, and wasn't really into inter-galactic exploration) were cool, and the aliens self-destruct devices were also kinda groovy. Thankfully, no attempt was made to explain the inter-galactic gates, although that may have been what the sequel was about, I can't really remember... Also, the two warring alien races teaming up to kick the Enterprise's butt would so happen.

The Federation almost Council guy was cool (New year's resolution - use descriptive phrases other than 'cool' in book reviews) up until the point of personal epiphany where he realised he'd been wrong about everything he'd ever done in his entire life, and decided to be a better person. He was much more interesting as a psychotic, deluded, self-abusive, degenerative, anti-social bastard.

I think Mr DeWeese is a Spock fan. Although, during Spock's saving of the day (along with reformed psycho Federation Council guy) the issue of Human/Vulcan survival in vacuum arose. Now, my understanding (which, admittedly, is gleaned almost entirely from Confidence and Paranoia (the Red Dwarf episode) and Event Horizon) was that if you have a large amount of air in your lungs, you would explode. Therefore you couldn't survive in vacuum just by taking a deep breath, holding it, and ignoring your popping eyeballs as best you can. Further research needed by at least one of us.

Conclusion - S'OK.