Science Fiction: Review

In "The Chosen," a man who appears to be a member of a time-travel expedition awakens to discover he has been literally living a lie; the protagonist of "The Great Doors of Silence" comes to a similar awakening while visiting the house of her father, who abused her as a child. In the title story, an otherworldly creature that might be an angel or just some stranded extraterrestrial is found, lying in a coma on the side of a road, by a lonely newspaper editor named Eddie. Instead of cashing in on his discovery, Eddie asks himself some hard questions and then does something that guarantees Steven Spielberg will not make a movie out of "And the Angels Sing." Once you start questioning reality, Ms. [Kate Wilhelm] seems to be saying in story after story, there is no telling how far you may have to go. For Eddie, the most important question turns out to be not what kind of creature fell from the sky, but why Eddie feels the need to call it a "she." Although much of the film's dialogue is reproduced verbatim, the characters on the page, stripped of the life-support system linking them to on-screen faces and voices, come across as bloodless simulacra. Here is Dr. McCoy diagnosing Captain [Kirk]'s reaction to his son's death: "But when David was killed, you didn't have time to grieve for him. You were too busy trying to save the lives of your crew. You've always been the captain -- always so busy taking responsibility for everyone else's life that you don't have time for your own." I suppose this is the sort of thing that McCoy must say, but it never sounded quite so stilted in the mouth of DeForest Kelley. The original "Star Trek" television series ran for only 79 episodes. "Star Trek: The Next Generation," a second series with an entirely different cast, recently completed its hundredth episode. After a slow start, Captain Picard and his crew have proved worthy successors to Kirk and company. I see no reason why Star Trek the Television and Film Phenomenon should not go on and on. But I doubt that anyone will still be reading the "Star Trek" books when the Enterprise celebrates its 50th anniversary.