Home » Categories » Science-Fiction

Science fiction

Tuvok Reveals the Hachai and P'nir May Ally Against Voyager

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995

Chapter 30 is the last chapter of Ragnarok, and it lands with a twist that is dark even for early Voyager tie-in fiction. Voyager is safe. Repairs are underway. Kim is resting. The battle is far behind them. Janeway gathers her department heads in the ready room for a postmortem on the whole disaster.

Voyager Bursts Out of the Derelict Under Fire

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995

Chapter 29 is the escape chapter, and nothing about it is clean. Janeway got her people back. Harry Kim is in sickbay. The shuttle is aboard. Then Paris punches Voyager out of the First Federation derelict and straight into the kind of fight where everyone suddenly has opinions about whose side you are on.

Janeway Uses a Tractor Beam to Rescue the Shuttle

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995

Chapter 28 is Janeway at her most Janeway. Locking the tractor beam on the shuttle was the easy part. Getting everyone out alive while a dozen P’nir cruisers converge and the shuttle’s shields are basically decorative? That is the job.

Janeway Outruns the P'nir to Find the Shuttle

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995

Chapter 27 splits the action in two. Up on Voyager’s bridge, Janeway is running a dangerous game of cat and mouse through the battle zone. Down in the wreckage, Chakotay’s shuttle is bleeding air and losing Harry Kim by the minute. The chapter ends the moment those two storylines finally touch.

Kim and K't'rien Board the P'nir Ship by Transporter

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995

Chapter 26 is the chapter where a transporter hop turns into a horror show. The P’nir energy projector in the hangar is not ready yet. Guards have retreated behind shielded corridors. Only a handful of unarmed workers remain near the assembly. Chakotay decides it is safe enough to drop shields for a moment.

The P'nir Build a Mysterious Energy Projector

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X
Published 1995

Chapter 25 is where the siege metaphor stops being a metaphor. Chakotay, Kim, Rollins, and Bereyt are trapped in their shuttle inside a P’nir hangar bay, and the enemy has stopped shooting at them. That sounds like good news until you see what they are building instead.

Star Trek Voyager the Escape: A Chapter-by-Chapter Retelling

Book: Star Trek: Voyager #2 - The Escape
Authors: Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch
ISBN: 0671520962

I’m starting a retelling of The Escape, the second Voyager novel from Pocket Books. Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote it in 1995, early in the show’s run. If you’ve only watched the TV series, this one goes places the show never did.

Harry Kim Lost in the P'nir Ship Maze

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X

B’Elanna Torres hates being pulled off the engines, but Janeway’s order is clear. Study the Hachai shields and find a weakness. Carey gets the warp core. Torres gets Tuvok’s sensor analysis.

Kim Wakes Up Sick in an Alien Hospital With a Klingon Half-Breed

Star Trek: Voyager - The Caretaker by L. A. Graf (ISBN 0-671-51914-X)

Harry Kim wakes up cold, lonely, and a little sick. He is wearing a thin cotton robe in a colorless alien hospital with no friends nearby. His mind goes straight to the time he was quarantined as a kid for Rigellian fever. His parents stayed with him the whole time. His mother even brought his clarinet. He went home after three days and she threw him a welcome home party.

Kim Blasts His Way Through a P'nir Door

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X

Harry Kim has been alone in the dark on a P’nir cruiser for a long time. Chapter 18 finally gives him a way forward. He finds the door. He cannot feel a latch anywhere from knee height to the top of his head. So he does what any stranded ensign with a phaser would do. He aims carefully and fires.

Tuvok Mind-Melds With the Sperian and Becomes Something Entirely New

Book: Star Trek: Voyager #5 - Incident at Arbuk
Author: John Gregory Betancourt
ISBN: 9780671520482

Chapter 8 is the weirdest and most intense stretch of the book so far. Tuvok walks into sickbay after Vulcan mental exercises and tells the Doctor to monitor him through the mind-meld. The Doctor is not thrilled. His databases scream warnings about joining with unconscious, unwilling, unfamiliar, possibly brain-damaged subjects. Tuvok already knows. He has taken precautions.

Voyager Takes Fire From the Hachai Fleet

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X

The Hachai fleet has Voyager boxed in, and Chapter 17 opens with the ship shuddering hard enough that Janeway has to grab a railing just to stay upright. She shouts down to Engineering for more shield power. Down below, it is chaos. Conduits are buckling. The deck vibrates with every hit. B’Elanna Torres is doing a dozen things at once and tells the captain she has already given her everything she can spare.

Voyager Senior Briefing: Neelix Serves Goulash While the Tube Counts Down

Book: Star Trek: Voyager #5 - Incident at Arbuk
Author: John Gregory Betancourt
ISBN: 9780671520482

Chapter 6 is one of those moments where the book reminds you that Voyager is still a crew trying to eat dinner while a planet-killer spins in the background. Captain Janeway calls her senior officers together at 1700 hours. The tube is building power again. Tuvok and Ensign Dvorak think it fires in about an hour and ten minutes. Everyone shows up looking grim, which is fair, because they just watched a space city get wiped out.

Janeway Offers to Mediate the Ancient War

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X

Chapter 10 is Janeway putting her offer on the table and getting slapped for it. She broadcasts to the whole battlefield. Clear voice. Federation starship Voyager. Neutral party. Ready to help negotiate.

Neelix Explains the Hachai-P'nir War

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X

Chapter 9 is basically a history lesson on the bridge, and it is one of the best parts of the book so far. Janeway asks Neelix to explain the Hachai-P’nir war. The whole senior staff turns and stares at him. He clears his throat and starts talking.

The Hachai and P'nir Battle Erupts Around Voyager

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X

Chapter 8 opens with Voyager hanging almost motionless inside a cloud of ionized metal dust, safely out of weapons range while thousands of ships tear into each other a few light-seconds away. The bridge crew watches. That is the whole situation. And it is terrifying.

Voyager Discovers a First Federation Derelict

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X

Okay, the slug says First Federation derelict, but Chapter 7 is really about the moment the book’s title starts making sense. Janeway gets dragged out of a nightmare where Mark and her dog were mummified in a tunnel. Bridge to captain. She checks the clock. They should still be in interstellar void. Why is she needed?

Janeway Slows Down in a Dead Star System

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X

Chapter 5 slows the pace, literally. Janeway orders impulse as Voyager nears another system. Neelix mutters that if she insists on crossing the cluster, she could at least do it faster. Nothing alive out here except the Hachai and P’nir, and you will not get supplies from them.

Neelix Fights Janeway on Heading Into War

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X

If you thought Neelix would give up after Janeway set course into the Kuriyar Cluster, Chapter 3 says hello. He is waiting the second she steps back on the bridge. Captain, please reconsider. Hachai and P’nir warships could be anywhere. They have exhausted entire planets building fleets.

Neelix Warns Janeway About the Kuriyar Cluster

Star Trek: Voyager: Ragnarok
By Nathan Archer
ISBN: 067152044X

Chapter 1 opens on a rare quiet moment aboard Voyager. Repairs are ongoing, the crew is short-handed as always, but nobody is dying right now. Engines work. Life support works. The hydroponics bay is doing fine. Janeway is on the bridge with Neelix, studying star charts and thinking about the long trip home.

Babel-17 Part 5, Ch 5-6: The Finale

After all the revelations, the identity reveals, and the explanations of how Babel-17 works as a weapon, you might expect the final chapters to be long and dramatic. They’re not. They’re short, funny, and surprisingly hopeful. And they end the book on exactly the right note.

Babel-17 Part 5, Ch 3-4: Everything Unravels

These two chapters are where everything comes together. The mystery of the spy, the Butcher’s identity, and the true nature of Babel-17 as a weapon. Dr. T’mwarba is running the show now, and he’s got a plan that involves hamburgers, paradoxes, and a dungeon.

Babel-17 Part 5, Ch 1-2: Enter Markus T'mwarba

We have a new part, a new name in the title, and a new point of view. Part 5 is called “Markus T’mwarba.” If you’ve been following along, you might remember that name. Dr. T’mwarba is Rydra Wong’s psychiatrist. He’s been mentioned a few times, but we’ve never met him directly.

Cities in Flight Retelling: The Triumph of Time Part 4 - Object at Infinity

The chapter title is “Object 4001-Alephnull.” If you’re not a math person, aleph-null is the smallest infinity. It’s the number mathematicians use when they need to count things that never stop. That’s what this chapter is about. Building something at the edge of what’s countable, what’s knowable, and sending it into a place that shouldn’t exist.

Cities in Flight Retelling: The Triumph of Time Part 1 - New Earth and Old Problems

This is it. The fourth and final novel in Cities in Flight. “The Triumph of Time” is where Blish wraps up everything. New York City has left the Milky Way galaxy entirely. They crossed intergalactic space and settled on a planet called New Earth, in the Greater Magellanic Cloud. The flying days are over. The Okie era is finished. And Mayor Amalfi, after a thousand years of wandering, is supposed to be retired.

Babel-17 Part 3, Chapters 2-3: Things Get Brutal on Jebel Tarik

These two chapters hit hard. If Part 3’s first chapter was about arriving somewhere new and interesting, chapters 2 and 3 are about learning just how dangerous that place really is. People die. Rydra makes a discovery about the Butcher. And she finds out what Babel-17 can really do to human beings, including herself.

Cities in Flight Retelling: Earthman Come Home Part 7 - The Battle of Hern VI

Amalfi is turning a dead rock into a weapon. Hern VI is a planetoid, small and ugly, and his people are bolting spindizzy engines all over it. The work is brutal. Every driver has to be placed at exact compass points, locked to the center of gravity, balanced against every other machine. And there still aren’t enough to make the thing fully steerable. When this rock finally flies, it will be clumsy and wild. But it will fly.

Cities in Flight Retelling: Earthman Come Home Part 6 - The March on Earth

In Part 5, we saw the jungle of Okie cities gathering near a red dwarf star, desperate for work. An Acolyte entrepreneur showed up offering terrible wages, things got violent, and Lieutenant Lerner’s cops accidentally blew up a bystander city. Amalfi watched it all and decided it was time to visit Buda-Pesht, the King’s city, in person. He brought Hazleton and Dee along. And now things get political.

Cities in Flight Retelling: Earthman Come Home Part 1 - New York in Space

We are now in the third novel of Cities in Flight, and this is the big one. “Earthman, Come Home” is the longest book in the collection, and it shifts focus to the character who matters most in this universe: Mayor John Amalfi of New York City. Not New York on Earth. New York flying through space, powered by spindizzy engines, looking for work among the stars.

Babel-17 Part 1 Chapter 1: A Ruined Port City and a Poet Named Rydra Wong

Part One of Babel-17 is called “Rydra Wong.” And it opens with a poem. Delany puts an epigraph at the start, a piece from Rydra’s own poetry collection “Prism and Lens.” It describes a port city at night. Hustlers, sailors, shadows, ambiguity. It’s beautiful and gritty at the same time. And it sets the mood perfectly for what comes next.

The Kid From Hell Chapter 8 - Coming Home

Back to Giganda

Chapter 8 is short. Maybe the shortest chapter in the book. And it hits the hardest.

Gack pushes through the last thickets and steps out onto a road. It’s raining. Not a light drizzle, a downpour. There’s a stench coming from a ditch where something that used to be a person is rotting in clayey slime. A burnt-out tank sits half-sunk in a quagmire, its flamethrower barrel pointed uselessly at the clouds.

The Kid From Hell Chapter 7 - Breaking Free

This is it. Chapter 7 is where everything breaks and everything begins. If you’ve been following Gack’s story, you know this has been building. The kid from another planet, the child soldier who worshipped his duke and his generals, finally gets hit with the full truth. And what he does with it is the entire point of this novella.

The Kid From Hell Chapter 6 - The Truth Hurts

The Perfect Trench

Chapter 6 opens with Gack inspecting a mortar position that Dramba just finished digging. Two hours and ten minutes. Perfectly smooth walls, regulation slope, tamped-down floor, beam-covered dugouts. Gack is proud. His Highness’s Engineer’s Academy would approve.

The Kid From Hell Chapter 4 - Private Dramba

A Walk Through an Empty World

Chapter 4 switches to third person and takes us outside, into the open. Gack and Dramba are walking along a deserted road on Earth’s plains. The sun is up, grasshoppers are screaming, and the road stretches from one horizon to the other in a perfectly straight line.

The Kid From Hell Chapter 2 - Waking Up on a New World

Naked in a Strange Room

So here’s what happened. Gack wakes up completely naked on a hospital bed. Two men are sitting next to him. One is a rosy-faced doctor beaming at him like a saint from an old icon. The other is a skinny, tanned guy with grey hair and a straw sticking out of his mouth. He says nothing. Just watches.

The Kid From Hell by Strugatsky Brothers - A Chapter by Chapter Retelling

Who Are the Strugatsky Brothers?

If you grew up in the USSR or any post-Soviet country, you know Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. They were THE science fiction writers. Not just popular, but genuinely brilliant. Think of them as the Soviet version of Arthur C. Clarke meets Philip K. Dick. They wrote dozens of novels and short stories, and most of them still hold up today.

Definitely Maybe Chapter 9 - Choices and Consequences

Chapter 9 is where people start making their choices. And most of them choose to quit.

The Impossible Telegram

Let’s start with the thing that should terrify everyone. That telegram Irina got? “DMITRI BAD HURRY TO MAKE IT IN TIME.” It was signed by Snegovoi. But Snegovoi was already dead when it was sent. Nobody went to a telegraph office and typed it out. The machine just printed it. By itself.

Gateway Chapter 31: Living With What You Did

This is it. Thirty-one chapters. Hundreds of pages. Years of therapy. And now we are here, at the end.

Rob Broadhead is still in the chair. Sigfrid is still across from him. The same room. The same machine. The same conversation they have been having since page one. Except this time, there is nowhere left to hide.

Gateway Chapter 28: The Mission Goes to Hell

This is the chapter where Gateway stops being a psychological novel and becomes a horror story. Not the monster kind. The physics kind. The kind where the universe itself is trying to kill you, and there is no door to run through, no weapon to grab, no hack to deploy.

Gateway Chapter 27: Running From the Session Before the Mission

This chapter is short. Really short. Just a therapy session. One of the last ones before everything goes sideways.

But do not let the length fool you. What happens here matters. Because this is the last time Rob successfully runs from the truth. After this, there is nowhere left to hide.

Gateway Chapter 26: Two Ships, One Mission, and Klara Is Back

The mission is getting real. What was just a name on a board and a number on a contract is now becoming an actual plan with actual ships and actual people who might actually die. And right when Rob thought he had the emotional landscape of his life figured out, Klara walks back into it.

Gateway Chapter 25: Broke, Depressed, and Signing Up Again

Rob is broke. Again. Still. Always. And this time the hole he is sitting in feels deeper than before.

This chapter is about what happens when the universe hands you just enough to survive, but not enough to escape. And about the choices people make when the only options left are bad ones.

Gateway Chapter 24: Solo Mission to the Wrong Place

Rob is alone in space. A One-class ship. Just him and the Heechee controls and fifty-five days of silence.

If the last chapter was about emotional nakedness, this one is about physical and psychological isolation pushed to the breaking point. Pohl gives us everything here. Space adventure, discovery, disaster, rescue, and then the most disturbing therapy session in the entire book.

Gateway Chapter 23: The Confession Rob Never Wanted to Make

This chapter is short. Maybe the shortest in the book. But it hits like a truck.

We are back in the therapy room with Sigfrid. No space missions. No Gateway drama. No alien ships. Just Rob sitting in a chair, trying very hard not to say the thing he knows he needs to say.

Gateway Chapter 21: I Murdered Her Twice

This chapter is a therapy session. Just one. No missions, no Gateway politics, no Heechee technology. Just Rob and Sigfrid in a room. And it is one of the most disturbing chapters in the book.

Gateway Chapter 18: Coming Back to Gateway With Nothing

They are back. Forty-six days in a tiny Heechee ship, cramped and scared and hoping for something, and they are back with nothing. No discovery. No bonus. No glory. Just a docking clamp and a medical team and the smell of a ship that has been lived in too long by too many people.

Gateway Chapter 16: 46 Days for Nothing

Forty-six days.

That is how long Rob and his crew have been sitting inside a Heechee ship. Forty-six days of eating paste, sharing a tiny space with four other people, using a toilet with no privacy, breathing recycled air, and waiting. Just waiting for the ship to arrive wherever the pre-programmed course takes them.

Gateway Chapter 13: When Your Therapist Changes the Furniture

You walk into your therapist’s office and everything has changed. The mat is gone. The mobiles are gone. The fake Hawaiian surf is gone. Instead there is a couch. A traditional, old-school psychoanalyst’s couch. And your therapist, who used to be a voice and some abstract shapes, is now a dummy sitting in a chair wearing dark glasses.

Gateway Chapter 9: Money Can Buy Everything Except Happiness

This chapter is short and it hurts in a quiet way.

We are back in the present with Rob and Sigfrid. No Gateway flashbacks this time. Just a rich man sitting in a therapist’s office, listing all the expensive things he buys. And somehow, every item on the list makes him sound more empty.

Gateway Chapter 7: Fat Kid, Lonely Kid, Broken Kid

After the Blue Hell party and the casino shock of Chapter 6, Pohl drops us right back on the therapy couch. And this time, Sigfrid goes deep. Really deep. This is the chapter where Rob’s armor starts to crack in places he did not even know existed.

Gateway by Frederik Pohl - A Classic Sci-Fi Book Retelling

I just finished reading Gateway by Frederik Pohl and I need to talk about it.

This book won the Hugo, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Award when it came out in 1977. And honestly, after reading it, I get why. It hit different from most sci-fi I have read.

About

About BookGrill

BookGrill.com is your guide to books for life, culture and imagination.

Know More

Category

Tags View all tags

Book-Retelling Stephen King Horror Janeway The-Eyes-of-the-Dragon Voyager Cell Lynn-Abbey Star-Trek Richard-Bachman The-Running-Man Big-Driver Dark-Tower Science-Fiction From-Tulips-to-Bitcoins Torsten-Dennin Kim-Pezza Singapore Full-Dark-No-Stars Hearts-in-Atlantis Castle-Rock Fantasy Four-Past-Midnight Tuvok Chakotay Philosophy Chronicles-of-Athas Dark-Sun Survival The-Green-Mile Revenge Star-Trek-Voyager Confucius Classic-Sci-Fi Torres Diplomacy Financial-History Atlas-Shrugged Ayn-Rand Classic-Novels Fiction Objectivism Paris The-Tommyknockers 4-Hour-Body Commodities Health Tim-Ferriss 50-Years-Singapore-Un Delta-Quadrant International-Relations Storm-of-the-Century United-Nations Under-the-Dome Wizard-and-Glass Kes Needful-Things Dark-Fantasy Roadwork Vietnam-Era College Pete-Riley Business Commodities-Markets-Performance-and-Strategies-H-Kent-Baker H-Kent-Baker Prime-Directive Book-Review Chapter-Review Psychological-Thriller The-Dark-Tower-Stephen-King Fitness Neelix Wolves-of-the-Calla Christie-Golden Rage-Stephen-King School-Hostage-Fiction Harry-Kim Jeri-Taylor Kathryn-Janeway Peter Straub Suspense Rage-Chapter-Review Bag-of-Bones Dafydd-Ab-Hugh Frederik-Pohl Gateway Heechee Science-Fiction-Masterworks Space-Exploration Star-Trek-Voyager-009-Invasion-4-the-Final-Fury Tom-Paris Duma-Key Guilt Nathan-Archer Peter Star-Trek-Voyager-003-Ragnarok-Nathan-Archer Blaze China Thinner-Stephen-King Fantasy-Western