And the fire and the rose are one.
In my mind, the fire represented Spock’s emotional life, his hidden, controlled passions, while the rose signified the perfect form of his logic. I also knew T. S. Eliot’s first lines in that stanza:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
That seemed perfect to me. I could explore Spock’s internal battle between emotion and logic, attempt to deliver a richer, deeper understanding of the character, and yet not conclude with a Spock vastly different than the one everybody already knows, and who would later appear in The Next Generation. I knew that it would be a complex task, dealing with the feelings of a mostly impassive personality, an individual in whom intellect often won out over heart, but I thought it would be worth shining a light on Spock in this way. So I decided to give it a shot.
Finally, then, I came to the tale of Captain Kirk. All along, I had believed that this would be the easiest of the three novels to develop. As with the other two stories, I would root the tale within the series and tie it into “The City on the Edge of Forever.” As dramatic as Kirk’s sacrifice of the woman of his dreams had been in that episode, there had never been any follow-up to it. Since “City” had taken place near the very end of the first season, and since Kirk’s brother and sister-in-law had also died in the very next installment, I thought that I could go back to the ensuing period, before the next year of episodes, and examine the captain’s reaction to such terrible losses in his life. What could be easier?
Except that I don’t really enjoy doing things that are easy. And I certainly do not like doing the expected. I reasoned that since the first two novels of the trilogy would be such heavy character pieces, perhaps I should consider a more action-oriented story for Kirk. I would still want to tie it in to the other two books through the crucible of the events in “The City on the Edge of Forever,” but I wanted to find an unpredictable means of doing so. I looked at Kirk’s life again, searching for the proper place to set my story, or at least to begin it.
Because of the impact his death would have on Spock in The Fire and the Rose, I found myself focusing on that incident. In Generations, Kirk acted nobly, agreeing to essentially eschew paradise and assist Picard in trying to stop Soran from causing the deaths of millions on Veridian IV. He and Picard succeeded, but Kirk perished in the attempt. A fitting end for the captain-selflessly saving lives-but I decided that I wanted him to save the universe just one more time.
But how could I do that? And how could I tie that in with Edith Keeler? Thinking about the events of Generations, and in particular about Kirk’s time within the nexus, I considered the existence of Antonia, a woman with whom the captain had shared a serious relationship for two years, and whom he apparently regretted not having married. I remembered that when I’d seen the film for the first time, I’d felt disappointed that Kirk had not conjured up Edith Keeler within the nexus. I had always felt that Edith had been his one true love, and I so wanted that to be the case.
Maybe it was, though, I told myself. Maybe he had cared for Edith so much that even all those years later, even within the wonderfully illusory realm of the nexus, he could not face having lost her. And maybe he had loved Antonia, but ultimately hadn’t married her because the memory of the love of his life remained too strong.
As I considered all of this, I saw a means of addressing it all, first employing the nexus as a narrative device, and then returning to the Guardian of Forever. Flashbacks suggested by the nexus would allow me to shine a light on Kirk’s relationship with Antonia, and in so doing, reveal the deep impact that Edith’s death had continued to have on him throughout the course of his life. I would leave the character as I had found him, dying essentially alone on a barren, alien world, the result of a final heroic act.
Once I had completed the outline and submitted it to my editor, Marco expressed some reservations about ending the fortieth-anniversary trilogy with a main character’s death. I saw his point, even though I had envisioned writing that death in a stirring and positive way. It occurred to me then, though, that another avenue existed for Captain Kirk at the end of the book, a road he could take that would be, I thought, completely unexpected. I reframed the denouement of The Star to Every Wandering-a title I appropriated from a Shakespearean sonnet and that referred to true love-and then I set about writing the actual novels.
As I made my way through the first pages of the first book, I strived to keep all of the tales in mind so that I could tie them together at various points. I didn’t really think much about the nature of the outlines initially, simply hoping that I had put together solid stories that would entertain and surprise readers. But as I continued along, I realized that I had actually crafted three unusual Trek stories. Marco felt the same way, and at a convention would later remark that I had told the stories within the trilogy in a way that had never before been tried in Star Trek novels.
As I’ve mentioned, I like to defy expectations, but I also felt a responsibility then to do something more explicit in terms of celebrating the anniversary of the Original Series. Early on in penning the first of the novels, I knew that I had made a number of references to TOS episodes, even going so far as to novelize and expand some scenes from the series itself. In thinking about how I could commemorate the show, the idea rose in my mind that I could attempt, through the course of the trilogy, to make a unique reference to every episode. Personally, I feel that continuity references can easily be overdone, and I don’t usually like to make them in too obvious or too frequent a manner. But I thought that this special case merited a different perspective on my part.
And so I went back over the pages I’d already written and took notice of those references that I’d already made. The number already exceeded my expectations, and so I decided to go for it. I listed every single TOS episode-from the three seasons of the Original Series, to the two years of animated adventures, and through the seven feature films-and I began noting my exclusive references to each. In the end, I found a way to bring up every single episode, animated adventure, and film in a unique way. That is, a reference to, say, Lieutenant Kevin Riley would not be an example of such a reference because that character appeared in two episodes, “The Naked Time” and “The Conscience of the King.” On the other hand, an allusion to Governor Kodos of Tarsus IV would constitute such a reference, since that character (and planet) occurred only in the latter of those two episodes.
After I finished writing the three novels, I wondered-as I always do-how they would be received by the readers. I felt that I had once again defied expectations, but perhaps even more so than usual with my unorthodox stories. Would they work? Would readers be able to accept and enjoy what I had written?
I didn’t know at that point, and as I sit putting these words down, I still don’t. But I like challenging myself, and I hope that readers will enjoy the challenge I’ve set them as well, asking them to put aside any preconceived notions they might have about this trilogy and simply going along for the ride with an open mind. The Star Trek characters you all know and love are here, though perhaps in different settings and situations than you might have imagined. I’ve tried to take Kirk and Spock and McCoy on personal journeys, and I sincerely hope that you’ve enjoyed taking those journeys with them-and with me. For opening the pages of these books-as well as those of my other works-I thank you. A writer is nothing without readers. My whole purpose in putting pen to paper or pixels to screen is to reach people I don’t even know, to offer brief moments of enjoyment in their lives, perhaps even occasionally to enrich them or to make them think, to connect with them on some level. I hope I’ve done that, and I am grateful to all of you for allowing me that opportunity.