Star Trek TNG: The Body Electric
{4.5/5} “Once, in the Andromeda galaxy, I met eleven alternate-timeline versions of myself and had to persuade them to let me collapse our shared quantum-probability waveform to avoid a temporal paradox. You don’t know what ‘awkward’ means until you’ve persuaded eleven copies of yourself to let themselves be erased from existence while you get to go on living.”
Once again this review spoils a big change in the Star Trek universe that occurred in the first book in this series…
Spoiler alert
Data has found his mother, Juliana Tainer. But the Immortal, Akharin, is gone — taken by the unbelievably powerful Fellowship of Artificial Intelligence. Against Juliana’s wishes, Data contacts the Fellowship. Meanwhile, Wesley Crusher is shocked to see the planet of the Istarral, friends of his, sucked into a black hole by a giant machine. He can’t stop the machine by himself so he visits his old friend Captain Picard.
The Body Electric by David Mack was published in 2012. It’s the final book in the Cold Equations trilogy, following Silent Weapons.
I wasn’t a big fan of Wesley becoming a Traveler. It didn’t really make sense — he was a normal human, so where did those powers come from? Given that he’s here as a Traveler, I was still happy to see him.
This book has a lot to do with artificial intelligence, and the differences and similarities between it and sentient organic life.
Data’s friend Rhea was introduced in the book Immortal Coil — I haven’t read it but I plan to.
Mack’s smooth writing, knowledge of the characters, and gripping story will keep you reading. If you’re a fan of The Next Generation and you haven’t been reading the books, now would be a good time to start.
This is an amazing trilogy, and I will certainly read more books by Mack.