The Fate Of The Phoenix

The Fate Of The Phoenix, by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath

May, 1979  Bantam Books

Way back in January of 2013 I read The Price Of The Phoenix, an ultra-weird Star Trek novel that introduced me to what is called “slash fiction,” that fan-fiction conceit in which homosexual relations are strongly implied – or downright depicted – between two male characters, in this case Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. Why anyone would want to do such a thing is of course the mystery – I guess these original “shippers” just overlooked the fact that Kirk banged practically every space babe he encountered in the original TV series – but regardless, The Fate Of The Phoenix is the continuation of the story, and is just as reviled by modern-day Trek readers. Indeed, one is hard-pressed to find a positive review of either book. 

But here’s the crazy thing – I kind of liked this one! The first half, at least, which reminded me of Leigh Brackett more than Star Trek, concerning as it did a sort of fantasy-feudal world with masked Romulans wearing chain mail and wielding swords. But a big difference is that Brackett’s was a very masculine fiction, her protagonists most always men; Marshak and Culbreath are feminists, and throughout The Fate of The Phoenix they once again relish in stamping out the “toxic masculinity” of the TV show they claim to love. 

In that way the two women were ahead of the curve. In our post-modern era, in which “empowered women” like Kathleen Kennedy et al have taken the reigns of previously male-dominated properties and sucked the life out of them – removing all toxic masculinity, empowering all women…and, not-so-coincidentally, losing money and tanking the properties in the process – it is very evident that Marshak and Culbreath were doing the very same thing with Star Trek. 

Throughout this book, Captain Kirk – that “alpha male” of the series (the term isn’t as used as much in this book as the previous one, by the way) – is constantly shown as weak, or it’s hammered home that Spock is so much stronger than Kirk…or even how the clone of Kirk, introduced in The Price Of The Phoenix and now named simply “James,” could literally be crushed in the arms of the Romulan Commander, ie that somewhat-sexy female Romulan introduced in the TV series and who also appeared in the previous book. There are many scenes of Kirk (both of them) being knocked out, carried around in the arms of these Vulcans or Romulans, as weak as a kitten…again and again Kirk’s power is diminished so that the non-caucasian male characters can shine. 

Yes, for with even more prescience Marshak and Culbreath’s “toxic masculinity deconstruction” only extends to white males; just as black men and Muslim men are never demeaned nor criticized by the progressivist AWFLs of today (which occasionally leads to some humorous developments), so too is Spock safe from the “toxic male” tag…he’s the Star Trek version of a protected class, I guess. Sure he’s strong and smart and all, and also he’s straight, but he’s not a white male, you see – not a white human male – so our authors do not place their critical lens on him. 

No, as with the previous novel, The Fate Of The Phoenix seems to delight in inverting the charisma and strength that William Shatner brought to Captain Kirk…there is even a part toward the end where Kirk gets amnesia, and he’s fawning over the returning villain of the piece, Omne, basically acting like a loyal little lapdog as he follows him around on some planet, looking to Omne to make all the decisions and etc. Again, the prescience is off the charts…it’s a wonder these authors didn’t come up with some ultra-powerful Mary Sue female character a la Captain Marvel to inject into the toxically masculine Star Trek universe – but then again, they actually did do that, in 1983’s Triangle. 

What makes this all so strange is that Marshak and Culbreath claim in Jeff Ayers’ Voyages Of Imagination that none other than William Shatner himself loved The Price Of The Phoenix (and perhaps this sequel, they don’t really specify), and indeed they even go so far as to claim that, shortly before Star Trek: The Motion Picture got underway, Shatner told them he’d pushed Gene Roddenberry to use the Phoenix books as the plot for the movie(!). 

Of course, in Voyages of the Imagination the authors do not reveal that they’d also written a biography with Shatner around that time – Where No Man, which I picked up years ago and keep meaning to read – so I’m sure that had to play into it a bit…also, according to the About the Authors page at the end of The Fate Of The Phoenix, Marshak and Culbreath were working with Shatner on a non-Star Trek sci-fi project, which never came to pass…all of which is to say, perhaps Shatner had a vested interest in promoting their work. And also let’s face it, he was probably eager to get two roles in a film based on the Phoenix novels, playing two versions of Kirk…just like he had years before in White Comanche, which I once had on VHS and I’d get drunk and watch it and just laugh and laugh…really, why hasn’t that movie been better discovered today? 

Well anyway, the two novels are basically one; The Fate Of The Phoenix opens immediately after the end of The Price Of The Phoenix. So then, Omne returns, aka Omne the Black, aka Omnedon. The guy who died twice in the previous book, but we’ll recall the “Phoenix” is Omne’s invention, a sort of transporter that captures a soul and can make a duplicate out of it. In The Price Of The Phoenix, “James” was created, a perfect duplicate of Kirk. But Omne himself was killed, and we learn at the start of The Fate Of The Phoenix that Omne has duplicated himself…and also, since they had a duplicate Kirk in the previous book, this time the authors introduce a duplicate Spock, pretentiously referred to throughout as “The Other.” 

“Pretentious” is a fitting description of the writing style; there is a tendency to pad the pages with a lot of words, words that don’t say very much. Characters speak in obfuscations or riddles and there were a lot of times that I had no idea what was going on. Humorously, Marshak and Culbreath seem to understand this, as throughout the novel we will have periodic recaps of what has happened; seriously, characters will either remind themselves of what has happened so far in the narrative or some other character will come along and they’ll tell this person such and such happened, and it’s almost like the authors understood that their own book was practically impossible to follow. 

And while the slash fiction weirdness is mostly toned down for this sequel, the fan-fiction roots remain; once again only Kirk and Spock matter, the rest of the characters from the Enterprise not even really appearing. McCoy has one or two lines, and I think Scotty might as well, but otherwise the authors only focus on Kirk and Spock…and once again practically the entire universe knows about them, as if they were the stars of a TV show even in their own fictional world. 

But the opening is kind of cool, if for no other reason than the authors leave the regular characters alone. It features the Romulan Commander, with James in tow – and, picking up from the finale of the previous book, he’s been surgically augmented to look like a Romulan – taking care of a potential rebellion on some Romulan-owned world or something. It’s all very Amok Time, with pointy-eared Romulans in armor and this warrior-woman who has her own male consort, and there’s a lot of intended hanky-panky between the two women and two men. 

Indeed, the authors let us know in no uncertain terms that the Romulan Commander and James have been getting it on; there’s even a ridiculous bit where the Commander comes in on James when he’s gotten out of the shower and the authors note how only a towel covers him, which of course made me think of that time in Who’s The Boss when Tony Danza walked in on that blonde chick in the shower. More prescience, people!! 

Anyway, this will be it for the hanky-panky, and as you’ll note it is directed toward the male character (despite being feminists I assume the two authors are still attracted to men), so admittedly it wasn’t the sort of hanky-panky I look for in my fiction. And besides, it seems that Marshak and Culbreath focused more on this stuff in the aforementioned Triangle. 

But the slash stuff is here, if mainly due to the theme of possession – and I don’t mean in the supernatural horror-thriller sense. No, the gist is that Omne “owns” the first “Phoenix” (ie James, the clone of Kirk), and he keeps trying to claim him as his own…indeed, and spoiler alert, but the novel actually ends with Omne and James alone on a deserted planet, out of touch from the rest of the universe for like fifty-thousand years or something. In other words, an Adam and, uh, Adam sort of situation. 

Like Arsenio Hall would say, “Hmmmm.” I mean folks, if you have a goofy stipulation that you must own your first clone, then by god clone a porn actress or something! 

But it takes a goodly time to get to that finale; indeed, The Fate Of The Phoenix is similar to its predecessor in that it moves slowly and things take forever to happen. A commenter on my review of The Price Of The Phoenix noted that Omne was like Thanos, and that’s true…with the caveat that this is a Thanos that is all bark and no bite. In fact it is even specified in this novel that Omne never kills anyone, and he spends the entire novel making veiled threats and insinuations; but have no fear, we are assured again and again that he can tear Kirk apart and crush his limbs with absolutely no problem whatsoever. That weak little kitten Kirk; he couldn’t harm a fly! 

Oh and Marshak and Culbreath have this super bizarre viewpoint that I guess ties back to the “alpha male” bullshit of the previous book; so basically, we learn here that Omne has this huge grudge against Kirk because Kirk didn’t bow his head to Omne when they met! I mean, the entire thrust of the two-volume scenario is that Omne was not given his proper due, and he’s mad as hell about it, and there’s this simmering grudge between the two…and even I, a guy who to this day still has not seen every episode of the original TV series, even I am familiar with at least a few episodes where Kirk got on his knees, or showed proper deference to some alien king or whatnot (even if Kirk was just feigning it), so I kept wondering to myself what show these two “Star Trek experts” were even watching. 

So there’s this ridiculous bit where as mentioned Kirk has amnesia, and he bows his head to Omne, and this “touches Omne more than he thought it might,” and it’s just weird. Now that I think of it, the slash fiction shit didn’t go away; the authors just changed it from Kirk and Spock to Kirk and Omne, with “James” added in to make it a veritable three-way. 

But the opening is at least cool…we have not one but two Romulan babes: the Commander and the Doyen, a warrior-woman in armor who very much seems like a creation of the TV show; you could totally see a character like her in some third-season episode in a Rodenberry-approved revealing costume…something else that has been gutted from the franchise, or correct me if I’m wrong and there are scantily-clad space-babes in that “vintage-inspired” Star Trek: Strange New Worlds bullshit? 

The warrior-woman’s male consort also has a memorable costume that would’ve looked cool on the show: a cape and half-mask, which is how James dresses when he’s in public with the Commander. That is the two of them, by the way, James and the Commander, on the cover (courtesy Bob Larkin) – though we certainly are not informed that the Commander wears any such cleavage-baring outfit in the novel itself! 

Things derail when Omne returns and the empty boasting ensues – I mean things derail both for the characters and for the reader. And now there are two Omnes: the regular one and the Other, ie the Spock clone, who is supposedly the “more evil” version of Omne, not that you’d really guess it. Really the book is a lot of talk, a lot of speculation, a lot of internal turmoil and stressing out over things that the actual characters of the show wouldn’t even concern themselves with. 

As for action…there isn’t much. I think The Price Of The Phoenix actually had more. Kirk gets in a few fights with Omne (getting his ass handed to him, of course), and there’s one part where someone shoots a phaser (I think), but this is not an action-heavy novel at any means; it is even more probing and talky than the average episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. 

But at the same time, I kinda dug the ‘70s weirdness of it all. It’s for this reason that I suspect I will always be more interested in the 1970s Star Trek paperbacks by Bantam than the ‘80s ones by Pocket, as the former were just stranger, more off the beaten path…and were not at the mercy of Rodenberry and his arbiter of Star Trek continuity. That said, also according to Voyages of Imagination, Roddenberry did review The Fate Of The Phoenix, and his only stipulation was that there could not be two Kirks in the universe, hence the authors sending James to that impossible-to-reach planet with Omne at the end. 

As mentioned neither Phoenix novel is much regaled these days – seriously, just do a Google search and take a look at the scathing reviews – but they did well enough at the time that Marshak and Culbreath were able to write two more novels for Pocket: 1982’s The Prometheus Design and 1983’s Triangle. 

I’ve been on a bit of a Star Trek kick lately, mainly through watching the animated series every Saturday night on MeTV Toons, followed by the second half of the original-series episode over on MeTV (I don’t know why they don’t just program the shows so that the animated series is on first and the original series on next), so I’ve been in the mood for some vintage Star Trek fiction – and as ever I am only interested in the original crew/cast. 

As I mentioned in my review of The Price Of The Phoenix, a good thing about being interested in Star Trek fiction is that so much of it is available…and for cheap! One thing that has not changed since 2013 (when I last decided to pick up some Star Trek novels) is that used bookstores still stock tons and tons of Star Trek books, and unlike vintage men’s adventure novels and whatnot, they’re actually half-price! Just this past weekend I went to three different Half Price bookstores in the Dallas area and found all of the Star Trek novels I was interested in reading, and they only cost me a little over a dollar each. 

And being the glutton for punishment I am, I bought both of the Marshak and Culbreath novels for Pocket Books, and the next Star Trek novel I plan to read is…Triangle! Based on a quick flip-through it looks like the authors toned down on the slash kink and brought in a bit more of a standard kink, in the guise of a hotstuff alien chick called Sola Thane who manages to bang both Kirk and Spock (not at the same time). So hopefully – hopefully! – that one will be quicker-moving than The Price Of The Phoenix and The Fate Of The Phoenix.

The Price Of The Phoenix

The Price of the Phoenix, by Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath
July, 1977  Bantam Books

Toward the end of the ‘80s I became less interested in men's adventure novels and more into sci-fi, in particular Star Trek. Luckily I never became a full-on Trekkie, but there was brief a time when I was heavily into the show, watching reruns, buying the movies on VHS, and even catching The Next Generation in its debut season. (I only managed to last for that one season, though.) Soon enough my bookshelf wasn’t just crowded with men’s adventure novels, it was also filled with Star Trek novels.

I haven’t read one of those novels since then, but the other day I was in a used bookstore and happened to be in the science fiction section. In the “series” area I was floored to see how many Star Trek novels they had – I mean, one whole shelf was devoted to them, and it was a big shelf. I ended up buying a handful, this being one of them – I liked the ‘70s look of the paperback and the plot sounded nice and cerebral, a little off the beaten Star Trek path.

Later I learned there was a bit of controversy around this book, with fans split down a sharp divide – they either love The Price of the Phoenix or they despise it. Marshak and Culbreath were members of the first wave of Trek fans, appearing at conventions and editing fanzines. They also edited a few Star Trek anthologies Bantam published around this time. Which would imply that they would at least know the characters from the show, wouldn’t it? Reading this book, you’d never think so.

Happily, I was unaware of something known as “slash fiction,” where Trek fans write fiction that plays up on a supposed homosexual relationship between Kirk and Spock. Sometimes the authors leave it subtle, unspoken, but others blow it up to laughable extremes. This book was my entry into this weird little fiction niche, as Marshank and Culbreath are very heavily in the “slash” category, and they’re also ones who take it to those extremes. But after reading the book I kind of wished I could go back to the time when I didn’t know what slash fiction was.

Okay, the novel opens with Kirk dead. Killed on some “hole in the wall planet” as he attempted to save a woman from a burning house (?). And yet this is all apparently a ruse of evil Omne, a muscle-bound humanoid with black hair and black eyes, who likes to go around in a black jumpsuit with gloves. Omne’s power and muscles are often described and he brings to mind Arnold Schwarzenegger. But beyond this he’s not human, and has more power than even a Vulan -- even a Vulcan, I stress, because the authors for some reason keep playing up the superawesome physical powers of Vulcans throughout the novel.

Kirk’s dead on the first page, and the book starts from Spock’s point of view, as he rages outside of Sickbay, waiting on an official word from Bones. As I said, other writers “subtly” play up the supposed Kirk/Spock relationship, but Marshak and Culbreath make it glaringly obvious; Spock rages and storms and weeps as if he has lost a spouse. And what makes it all the odder is that others are conscious of protecting Spock, of ensuring he doesn’t have to see Kirk’s dead body, of putting him through the horror of losing a loved one…I mean it’s just weird. And as the novel goes on, it gets weirder.

And I don’t say it’s weird due to any homophobic reasons; rather, it’s very unsettling how the authors treat Kirk and Spock throughout this novel, just downright creepy. Spock is constantly portrayed as the heartsick beyond-human who must overcome his desire to lash out in rage, trying to protect his meek and cuddly little Kirk. Speaking of which, there is a concerted effort throughout the novel to make Kirk seem weak and defenseless, and part of Omne’s master plan is to not only make Kirk cry (!), but also to get Kirk to kneel to him (!!) so that “alpha male” Kirk will know he is well and fully mastered. And yes, “alpha male” really is a term thrown around in the text, a lot.

It seems pretty obvious that The Price of the Phoenix is nothing more than a post-feminist revisionism of the Star Trek mythos, with a good heaping of homoeroticism overlayed. If that’s your thing, you’ll love the book. Otherwise, like me you’ll be pretty goddamn puzzled throughout. Seriously, it was like watching a car wreck, reading this book.

I guess I should get around to the plot. Omne has invented this sort of transporter which can pick up and store the complete psychic being of a person as he or she dies, basically the soul, and just as a transporter can reform physical molecules, Omne’s transporter can recreate the entire being, a perfect and exact duplicate with all of the same thoughts and etc as the original product. This is how the novel opens; Omne has arranged the death of Kirk and now unveils his replica (pretentiously referred to as “the Human” quite often in the narrative; just one of the authors’s many pretensions, in fact).

Omne tries to barter off this replica Kirk, offering him to Spock, who simmers and holds back his rage – again, the creepy connotation here being that Kirk is a dead spouse and Spock is going mad to get him back. But not content with this, Omne also barters the replicant Kirk to The Commander, a female Romulan starship captain who apparently appeared in an episode of Star Trek and so was quite popular with early fan fictioners due to her strong will and all that jazz.

The authors definitely have a knack for the kinky, even though they don’t elaborate on it. For one there’s the whole Kirk/Spock dynamic, but also they state quite obviously (and often) that The Commander wouldn’t mind having Kirk and Spock in her bed, at the same time. Anyway the authors insinuate that Kirk and the Commander had something going on after that episode (plus she also has the Romulan hots for Spock), and now Omne is offering the Commander her very own Kirk, in exchange for all sorts of pretentious and over-analyzed trade-offs.

But it develops that Kirk did not die – Omne transported him out of the burning house and now has him somewhere in the labrynths of his defense-shielded planet (which is decorated like the Old West complete with Romulan guards in “black levi’s” with six-shooters strapped to their belts!). Once Spock and the Commander are aware that the real Kirk lives, it sets up what proves to be the main portion of the narrative: the four characters plot against Omne while often stopping all action to stand around and discuss philosophical issues.

Actually what The Price of the Phoenix most reminded me of was those dialog and philosophy-heavy early episodes of The Next Generation; all cerebral masturbation and no action. We’ll get blocks and blocks of paragraphs as Omne will arrive on the scene and trade speeches with our heroes, and this goes on throughout. Every once in a while the authors will deliver a pretty sadistic fight scene, but they’re spare and brief and the violence is neutered by the psuedo-literary style.

The fights the authors provide the most detail for, of course, are the man-on-man brawls between Omne and Spock or Omne and Kirk, with lots of words spent on each thrust and slap and grunt. Pretty soon I got some sick enjoyment out of seeing how far these ladies would go in their quest for homoeroticism; the pinnacle is probably when Kirk takes away a mega-beaten Spock and rubs his entire body with a healing liquid of Omne’s, stripping Spock down and lathering him up good and proper from head to toe. My god, just kiss already!

Only toward the very end do the authors realize they can capitalize on the fact that they have two Kirks, and here the fun and goofy spirit of the original TV series returns as Kirk banters with himself.  In these few scenes the authors whittle back on their revisionist designs and allow the characters to breathe a little, and it lets you see how much fun this novel could have been. 

The novel’s only 182 pages but it seems a lot longer, and not just because of the tiny print. Marshak and Culbreath have a very affected style, with characters who talk solely in obfuscation. I kept reading how these two, given their diehard fan status, knew the characters so well, but to me these characters seemingly had nothing to do with the ones on Star Tek. Also their fan fiction roots shine through in that no one in the galaxy apparently matters other than Kirk and Spock – everyone seems to know of them, and as mentioned Omne’s whole plan is to master either or both of them, never mind that he’s created a device that could change the fate of the entire universe.

Marshak and Culbreath end the novel on a cliffhanger; they followed up the book two years later with The Fate of the Phoenix, which god help me I also bought. And by damn I’m going to read it. One of these days.