Night of the Living Trekkies

✍ Scribed by Kevin David Anderson; Sam Stall

• Publisher: Quirk Books
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 127 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

Our story follows a rag-tag group of Trekkies en route to an annual Star Trek convention. Arriving with homemade uniforms, glued-on prosthetics, and plastic phasers, these fanboys know more than any rational adult should know about Kirk, Spock, Next Generation, particle physics, black holes, and Ricardo Montalban. But when aliens release a zombie plague upon the Earth, all of this Starfleet training suddenly becomes a lot more relevant. Our fanboys find themselves trapped in the Botany Bay Hotel and Convention Center - and desperate to escape. Some will be assimilated. Others will summon the courage of their favorite characters and perform brave feats of heroism. And one reluctant fan will discover his inner Trekkie, rise up, and take command of the crew.

Review

'...something that will appeal to the inner fan boy in all of us...' Terror 4 Fun, August, 2010....Quirk Books have made a pile lately with fleetingly-amusing splices like Pride And Prejudice And Zombies, but mixing Star Trek and zombies works much better. Extremely enjoyable if you re a fan of both, this is top-grade pulp nonsense. It centres on former soldier Jim Pike, assistant manager of a Houston hotel hosting a Star Trek convention, as guests and staff start turning into flesh-craving undead. It works because the authors really know their onions they re aware that Janeway hair becomes a worse insult if you specify season one Janeway hair . They also make some smart observations about the differing ethoses of Trek and zombie movies and how both differ from workaday reality. Well-structured, with some cunning twists and a neat SF spin on zombies (these ones are the result of alien parasites, and cause people to sprout gruesome third eyes), it d make a superb film. Sadly, we suspect rights issues mean we ll never see a Hummer ploughing through a crowd of zombie Borg trombonists (long story...) on the big screen. Shame....SFX magazine, September, 2010....Packed with hundreds of gags referencing Star Trek, Star Wars, comic books, and fan conventions, Night Of The Living Trekkies reads like the strange lovechild of Galaxy Quest and Dawn of the Dead. Journey to the final frontier of zombie science-fiction satire!...SCi-Fi pulse, August, 2010...Night of the Living Trekkies is a brilliant sci-fi concept, bringing fans and zombies together (eek). Ultra-readable, once I was over the first couple of pages I couldn't put it down. So well written it played in my head like a movie - in fact, someone really should make a film of it. What I particularly liked about this book was that the 'how-and-the-why' of zombies was fully explained - there was a reasoning behind it, instead of the usual 'well, they all turned into zombies somehow and you have to shoot their heads off'. I would recommend this, and can't wait for the next one - and I'm not usually into zombies, trek, wars or any other sci-fi....Woodwords dot com, Sept, 2010...we can all agree that this is a story that needs to be told. Its a tightly plotted story that tears along at a terrific pace, littered with jokes and references to Star Trek, Star Wars and geek culture. If you don t get one, don t worry, there ll be another along in a few lines. Or somebody eating someone s spleen. Admittedly, some jokes are overplayed while others are under-explored and there s some awkward exposition, but there s so much going on these are minor quibbles. It s released on September 1st. Splatter, girls in gold bikinis and some laugh out loud moments. What s not to like?..armyofdave dot com, Sept, 2010...I thoroughly enjoyed Night Of The Living Trekkies, way more than I thought I would, because I'm not much of a Star trek fan and I don't watch horror movies unless I'm tied to a chair with my eyelids taped open. This however is not a disadvantage. The book starts fast and gets straight into the story, moving at a pretty relentless pace all the way. It's not a literary masterwork and there's some clunky exposition during the opening set-up scenes but the prose is easy to read and the characters, Jim Pike in particular, are decently enough written that you'll be quickly drawn into their world, identifying with them as fellow nerds and geeks even if the Con scene is something that you'd generally avoid like the plague. Obviously the dialogue is brim-full of jokes and knowing references to Star Trek, Star Wars, geek culture, comic books, fanboys and girls, conventions and generally nerdity but it flows so effortlessly that you needn't worry if you don't get them all, the underlying message carries across and you'll still be entertained. --Slice of Sci-Fi, Sept, 2010

Recently I spent a bit of time examining the phenomenon that is the mash-up novel. I reviewed the zombie/Jane Austen trilogy that begins with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Overall, the experience was a lot of fun and it was nice to read various authors attempts to bring two dramatically different genres together in such a full on way. For my next foray into the world of mash-up novels I decided to stick with zombies but bring things bang up to date with something that is set this century rather than at the turn of the nineteenth. Night of the Living Trekkies by Kevin D Anderson and Sam Stall brings finds the hordes of undead taking on their most awesome foe yet, Star Trek geeks. I should point out, in the spirit of full disclosure, I would probably fall into this category. Jim Pike works at a large hotel in downtown Houston. As an ex-serviceman, after two tours of Afghanistan, he wants nothing more than to quietly go about his life acquiring as little responsibility as possible. His sister is coming into town to attend Gulf Con Star Trek convention at the hotel and Jim is looking forward to spending some time with sibling. As the attendees start to arrive the zombies start to appear and make their presence felt. One of the things I love to see in a zombie novel is a new spin on zombie mythology and I particularly enjoyed the premise here. In keeping with the science fiction theme we have a space parasite that when exposed to organic matter, namely us, turns the host into mindless violent husk only interested in propagating the species and searching for more hosts. Almost all of the action takes place within the hotel and this adds a nice claustrophobic edge to events as they unfold. Dark stairwells and long empty corridors help to heighten this effect. In fact it is not until very near the end that the actions shifts outside and the reader gets to learn what is going on elsewhere. Anyone who has ever attended a genre convention will feel right at home with this tale. The humour in the novel is handled well. I think, however, that it is fair to say, that the more that you know about Trek and its various incarnations/spin-offs the more you will get from the novel. Most character and location names are guaranteed to raise a smile on the face of any Trek aficionado. There are also some nice nods to another famous sci-fi franchise which the majority of readers will be familiar with. Night of the Living Trekkies isn t Shakespeare, but then I would argue that it s not supposed to be. This is brain (excuse the pun) candy of the highest order. It is exactly the sort of thing you want to pick up when you want some action, some laughs and at two hundred and fifty six pages an easy read. --The Eloquent page, March, 2011

Ever since zombies invaded the pages of Jane Austen with great success, publishers have been searching for the next great mash-up novel. Earlier this year, we got Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, a funny take on the historical biography that asked what if Honest Abe was really a vampire slayer? On the other end of the spectrum is the Hugo-nominated zombie/steampunk novel Boneshaker. And then, somewhere in the middle is the mash-up, Night of the Living Trekkies. The story is a satire, bringing the horror of the zombie apocalypse to a Star Trek convention. Trekkies is a clever satire that works well enough in small gulps. Each chapter title is cleverly taken from the title of an episode of Star Trek, and each chapter is packed with in-jokes and one-liners for fans of each generation of Star Trek. The story finds Jim Pike, a former special forces soldier who quit the military after stints in Iraq, working at small hotel that is hosting the local Star Trek con. After Iraq, Jim wanted a quiet job where he wouldn t have to think too much and working at the hotel seems to fit the bill. However, as the con gets up and running, Jim finds that things are slowly getting more and more bizarre, leading up to the discovery that zombie are attacking the hotel. Jim becomes the reluctant leader of a small group of survivors who work their way through the hotel, trying not to become zombies themselves and to escape. One of the big problems with satirical genre stories is the author or authors try too hard to emulate the style of two of the greats in the field Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. Both men make being funny, satirical and witty look easy as you read it, but anyone who s tried to emulate their style knows it s not easy to do. Trekkies isn t in the same stratosphere of an Adams or Pratchett story, but authors Kevin David Anderson, and Sam Stall are able to keep the jokes coming at a reasonable pace and to have the story keep moving. My big fear picking up the novel was that it could become like an SNL skit and overstay its welcome. And while the story, as a whole, loses a bit of momentum from the time we figure out zombies are attacking the con and our team of heroes getting together to try and escape, the story and jokes never go hopelessly off the rails. Reading Trekkies, I kept having flashbacks to Sharon McCrumb s two classic murder-at-genre-convention novels, Bimbos of the Death Sun and Zombies of the Gene Pool. And while Trekkies isn t quite as entertaining as those two novels, it s still a fun little read. It s a far more specific genre satire than either of McCrumb s novels. If you love and know your Trek, there are a wealth of in-jokes and fun to be had here. The novel may not be as clever as some of the other zombie mash-ups, but it s still a fun read and well worth picking up if you like zombies and you like Star Trek. -- -- --Slice of Sci-Fi, Sept, 2010

About the Author

Kevin David Aderson and Sam Stall are lifelong Star Trek devotees. Mr. Anderson lives in California and Mr. Stall lives in Indiana.

Library : Horror
Formats : EPUB
ISBN : 9781594744631