Collision Course
-
- $12.99
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
If you think you know how it all began, think again...
Young Jim Kirk wants nothing to do with Starfleet, and never wants to leave Earth. In the summer of 2249, he's a headstrong seventeen-year-old barely scraping by in San Francisco, haunted by horrific memories from his past.
In the same city, a nineteen-year-old alien named Spock is determined to rise above the emotional turmoil of his mixed-species heritage. He's determined to show his parents he has what it takes to be Vulcan -- even if it means exposing a mysterious conspiracy at the heart of the Vulcan Embassy, stretching to the farthest reaches of the Federation's borders. There, a chilling new threat has arisen to test the Federation's deepest held belief that war is a thing of the past and that a secure future can be forged through peaceful means alone. But it is in San Francisco, home to Starfleet Academy, where that threat will be met by two troubled teenage boys driven to solve the mystery that links them both.
In time, the universe will come to know these young rebels as Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock...two of the Federation's greatest heroes. Yet before they were heroes, they were simply conflicted teenagers, filled with raw ambition and talent, not yet seasoned by wisdom and experience, searching for their own unique directions in life -- a destiny they'll discover on one fateful night in San Francisco, when two lives collide, and two legends are born.
Star Trek Academy: Collision Course sets the stage for an exciting new era of Star Trek adventure, and for the first time reveals Kirk and Spock as they were, and how they began their journey to become the Kirk and Spock we know today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Shatner bares his deep-seated trepidation vis- -vis all things digital in this breezy peek at the reciprocal effects that Star Trek(and its offspring) and serious scientific research have exerted on one another over the past 35 years. While contemplating the Enterprise'sfictional warp drive, Nobel Laureate and Trekkie Stephen Hawking provided the book's title; today's scientists and inventors are now boldly developing many far-out concepts that Trekkies earth-wide cherish: transporters, time travel, wearable interfaceless computers, artificial intelligence, androids, enhanced life spans and holodeck virtual reality. Shatner and Walter crisscrossed the U.S., visiting cutting-edge laboratories and noshing with scientists and inventors on the cusp of discoveries that promise to change life on earth. Despite his own humbling battles with his recalcitrant computerized home lighting system and GPS-equipped rental cars, Shatner valiantly faces the challenge of demystifying quantum mechanics and black holes, nanotechnology and the human genome. Peppered with "Did any of this make sense?" and even the occasional "Huh?," Shatner's early chapters tend to leave the uninitiated feeling buffeted by the bitstorm. By connecting other abstract concepts such as the exponential burgeoning of scientific breakthroughs to such archetypal Star Trekepisodes as "The Trouble with Tribbles," though, Shatner humanizes his complex topics and even has some tongue-in-cheek fun with them. His summary, on the other hand, seriously warns about letting technological genies out of bottles without due consideration for consequences and, even more sobering, for the results of humanity's ultimate hubris, trying to play God.
