The Three-Minute Universe (Star Trek, No 41)

by Barbara Paul

1988

Status

Available

Publication

Pocket Books (1988), 265 pages

Description

The Sackers. In all Captain James T. Kirk's travels, he has never found a race more universally shunned and abhorred. Their mere appearance causes most Federation members to become violently ill. Now the Sackers have performed a deed whose brutality matches their horrifying exterior. They have stolen a revolutionary new scientific device -- murdering an entire race in the process -- and used it to create a rip in the fabric of space, a hole through which another universe is rapidly leaking. Unless Captain Kirk and the crew of the "Enterprise can find a way to stop the new universe's expansion, it will consume -- and utterly destroy -- our own.

User reviews

LibraryThing member MacDad
"The galaxy is on fire." With these words, James Kirk summarizes the latest threat the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise is forced to address: an expanding wave of heat that has already annihilated an entire solar system, including the home world of the Zirgosians. Their investigation takes them to the
Show More
remaining Zirgosian colony, where they find a massive spaceship in orbit controlled by the "Sackers," a species so physically repulsive that sentient beings cannot stand to be in their presence. The crew soon discovers that the Sackers are at the center of the mystery, with a plan that effectively holds the entire universe hostage unless their demands are met.

Barbara Paul's novel offers readers what is many respects a textbook Star Trek story: the crew faces a seemingly insurmountable challenge, then proceeds to save the day through a mixture of intuitive psychology and teamwork. It's an interesting tale both for the species she introduces and the unusual combination of Kirk, Scotty, Uhura, and Chekov working to deal with the situation in which they find themselves. Yet too much of the novel comes across as contrived, with the Sacker threat both epically dangerous yet in the end ridiculously easy to resolve. Squaring the difference between these two contrasts might have made for a truly excellent Star Trek novel, but as it is the book's strengths can't quite overcome its flaws.
Show Less
LibraryThing member coachtim30
This was an outstanding adventure featuring all of the original cast, but focusing especially on Kirk, Scotty, Uluru, and Chekhov. The novel kicks right in with action as the Enterprise discovers a fiery, raging universe that threatens to devour every world in its ever-expanding path. Behind this
Show More
campaign to crush all the known worlds under Federation control are a mysterious race of grotesque beings known as the Sackers. It's up to the aforementioned foursome to convince the Sackers to stop their plan to destroy our universe. But Kirk and his team find out much more about the Sackers then they bargained for once they are kidnapped and taken aboard the Sacker starship. Maybe these hideous beings aren't really who Kirk and crew think they are.
Fans of the series will enjoy this adventure and the true-to-character way that they are drawn.
Show Less

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

1988

Physical description

265 p.

ISBN

0671658166 / 9780671658168

Barcode

1601287
Page: 0.5863 seconds