We all have books that haunt us, right? Those books that, for one reason or another, float at the edge of our consciousness, that appear in our peripheral vision but don’t quite seem to register on a regular basis but once in awhile make an appearance, reminding us that they are still there and we have yet to read them?

Voyage of the Star Wolf has been one of those books, and in a moment I will explain why. But first:

The Silk Road Convoy has existed for a long time, having built itself up to be the most profitable and most safe caravan in space. Its success makes it a tempting target for piracy, and thus the thousand-ship convoy exists to protect the lives and the goods of those companies and individuals who conduct trade between the stars.

The Morthan Solidarity would like nothing more than to strike a fatal blow to the Alliance, and the Silk Road Convoy is the ideal place to do just that. The LS-1187 is a destroyer-class Alliance ship that has yet to earn a proper name because both ship and crew are untested in battle. That will change soon after joining the Silk Road Convoy, but the name that they earn–Jonah–will set them on a dangerous quest for vengeance.

David Gerrold, famous for penning the script for one of Star Trek‘s most well-known episodes, “The Trouble With Tribbles”, brings a visual media sensibility to his writing, making Voyage of the Star Wolf a novel with a compelling pace. While not perfect in execution, Voyage of the Star Wolf was hard to put down and I found myself purposefully scheduling time during a busy week to read “just a few more pages”.

I am pleased that Voyage of the Star Wolf continued to haunt me over the past twenty-five years, it was well worth reading and I intend to seek out its prequel and sequel siblings.

My Rating: 7.5/10

Voyage of the Star Wolf was published in 1990. At that time I had been married two years, was nearing the end of my college degree, and I had a part-time job at a mall-based Waldenbooks in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I loved that job, and the best part of it was shelving books, particularly in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section. One of my clear memories is of shelving Voyage of the Star Wolf when it was first released.

It was the cover.

A quarter century later, I cannot recall making the connection that this was a John Harris cover. I know from the timing that I would have been aware of his covers for the first two Ender novels by Orson Scott Card, but I am not sure I was paying attention to the name of cover artists as much as I was their work. I just know that the image of the damaged LS-1187, floating in this massive docking bay, compelled me to pick up the book over and over again. This is where recollection, and the haunting, comes in.

In my memory I did borrow a copy of this novel from the store (one of the many reasons I loved that job). I remember beginning it and discovering early on a chapter where the enemy leader had some sadistic tendencies, graphically depicted, that bothered me enough that I stopped reading then and there. But the book has haunted me all these years. I never consciously thought about Voyage of the Star Wolf unless I was in a used bookstore, and then I would inevitably see the book’s spine and would pull it out to gaze longingly at the John Harris cover. And for a day or two that image would float around in my head, whispering words of temptation.

Last week I was once again reminded of Voyage of the Star Wolf when I found a copy of the book at Half-Price books that was in remarkably good condition. This time I decided to go ahead and bring it home. I figured I would give it a try, fully expecting that I would come to a point where I did not want to read any further.

You know what? This is not the book I was thinking of! There is no scene in Voyage of the Star Wolf that comes anywhere close to my recollection, and now I’m left with the pleasurable experience of having read a good science fiction tale in the vein of shows like Star Trek and the Battlestar Galactica reboot but also with the knowledge that I have no idea what book I read that offended my young sensibilities that deeply. So the haunting continues…

Memory is a fickle mistress.

My apologies for that long aside. Voyage of the Star Wolf is a cracking good read. Jonathan Thomas Korie is the XO of the LS-1187 and while the ship has a full crew, including a living A.I. (artificial intellligence), Korie’s is the focal point of the story. Early on in the story, the captain of the LS-1187 makes a fatal mistake, leaving Korie to rally the crew so that the LS-1187 can limp home defeated. Upon arrival Korie does not get the welcome he expected, and news of the wide-spread Morthan attack leaves him with a thirst for vengeance and no clear way to slake that thirst.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately depending on how you look at it, the LS-1187 has to be put back into service, but not in Korie’s command. Korie is forced to once again take on the role of Executive Officer, this time taking orders from one of the Alliance’s most notorious commanders.

The enemies in Gerrold’s universe are the Morthans, a name that arose from media description of those humans who opted to augment themselves with genetic and technological advances. As this practice continued, the augmented humans evolved to be so different than humanity that they became their own culture and began to see humans as a lesser race to be conquered and made extinct. Readers only get to meet a few individual Morthans, but those that are showcased clearly demonstrate that they are a formidable enemy.

Voyage of the Star Wolf is interesting to read in light of the knowledge that David Gerrold has extensive experience writing for television. Chapters are short, allowing the focus to shift to various crew members and to different parts of the ship. Jon Korie, and to a lesser degree the ship A.I., HARLIE, are the only characters that are presented with any complexity. While Gerrold gives a handful of other characters distinct personalities and purpose, we only see the inner dialogue and deeper emotions of Korie and HARLIE. And that is okay. There is enough dramatic build up, peppered with moments of humor and camaraderie, that keep the story moving forward at a compelling pace, particularly after the slower paced opening chapters in which the LS-1187 makes its way back to the starbase after its initial near-destruction.

Readers of science fiction often complain of the dreaded info-dump: those paragraphs, or pages, where the old adage to “show, don’t tell” appears to be chucked out the window in favor of a long, science-y, explanation. David Gerrold uses the info-dump in a way I don’t recall experiencing in any of my previous science fiction reading: he has three opening one and half page info-dumps focusing on a specific aspect of the future he has created. This unconventional approach does work, though I find it an inefficient way to engage readers in a story.

There is also an element of time constraint to parts of the story. We have all experienced television episodes, or even films, where the story feels as if it is being pushed forward, or wrapped up, simply because a time limit is in place. Voyage of the Star Wolf takes its time in the beginning chapters, allowing readers the chance to get to know Jon Korie and to experience the frustration and impotence he feels at being so swiftly and easily defeated in battle. When the LS-1187 finally does arrive back at an Alliance Starbase, the story leaps forward in television-episode fashion for a period before settling down again to a pace that more closely mirrors the opening, allowing the tension to build for a dramatic conclusion.

Given that experience in the middle of the book, I was expecting the ending to feel rushed, and as the pages turned and the end was in sight, I was sure those expectations would be confirmed. Thus I was surprised that, for the most part, I was wrong. David Gerrold is a talented writer, and while years of reading and watching science fiction gave me an idea of how things would play out in the end, he managed to surprise me both with the way in which he wrapped up Voyage of the Star Wolf, and also how he managed to weave in some unexpected emotional moments between characters.

Voyage of the Star Wolf is not perfect, and my slightly lower rating reflects my desire to not mislead you into thinking it is. But I loved the story. For most of my life I have been attracted to series like Star Trek, and the story that plays out in Voyage of the Star Wolf would make for an excellent full season or two in a space-based science fiction television series. Objectively I can see its flaws. Subjectively it makes me happy and I am glad I finally got around to reading it.

In researching David Gerrold to write this post, I was reminded that he was the author of the semi-autobiographical short work, “The Martian Child”, that was adapted into a film starring John Cusak. David Gerrold also had a big influence in my childhood viewing–he was the creator of the Sleestaks, the alien race in the television series, Land of the Lost. Though they are ridiculously funny when viewed today, I remember being deliciously terrified of them when I was a kid. Land of the Lost was a regular part of my and my brother’s Saturday morning cartoon viewing.

If you are interested in the kind of crew-centric science fiction story ala Star Trek, Voyage of the Star Wolf is worth adding to your reading list. While not flawlessly executed, it does take that basic framework and add some interesting world-building elements while proposing an intriguing, if frightening, vision of post-humanity. It was a fun read.