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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Buy LIFE SIGNS instead, December 1, 1999
By A Customer
The book is mean spirited and wrong headed. There were some glaring errors in this book that could have been avoided if it was proofread by a trekker or two.For instance the author continually describes Betazoids as merely empathic and not telepathic, when everyone knows they are indeed telepathic. Deanna Troi is merely empathic because she is only half betazoid and is infact telepathic with other betazoids.Also she complains about how the holodoc should not be able to leave the sick bay but is seen all around the ship and on away missions. Does she even watch the show? They talk about the mobile emmitter all the time. I can't see whether it is a pheasable piece of tech or not--but don't just leave it out because it doesn't serve your complaining. It is filled with stuff like this.This book should probably offend people with autism, mental illness, developmental disabilites, anyone with spiritaul beliefs and homosexuals.The author is accused of being a feminist by other reviews (is this a bad thing?) but i would argue that she is nothing of the sort. She provides a very strong heterosexist view when she states that Trill symbiots could not possibly be attracted to humunoids because they can't reproduce with them. This is just ugly heterosexist propaganda.The beginning of this book is playful in its view of Star Trek science but it quickly degenerates into an attack.The author uses sloopy logic to try to prove that many Star Trek concepts are impossible. For instance her reasons for why most tech is imposible (transporters, dna scans) is that it would take too much time for it to work. This seems ridiculous, like someone from the 50's refuting the possibility of the internet based on the time it took their computers to compute. When computers get faster and faster every few months--how are we to know what will be possible a few hundred years from now.Another thing that is incredible annoying and fills up much of the book is that when Star Trek doesn't specificly explain a concept the author says "I can only conclude..." and then proceeds to use her assumption as the basis of her argument against it being possible. Far from being the only conclusion possible--she picks the one of many conclusions a person can make that is most handy in her argument that Star Trek science is wrong.I cannot refute the author's science as she is much more knowledgable in that area then I am. But much of this book is oppinion and not science at all. She ignors the premise of Star Trek, ignores that it is a work of science fiction and bases her arguments on what is true on Earth now. This makes the book very limiting. Instead of explaining scientific knowledge to try to imagine what maybe possible in the future, on planets different from ours, in other timelines, this book uses science and oppinion to weave an ugly web in which everything Star Trek is wrong.This is not for Trekkers who enjoy the show. For us I would reccomend the book LIFE SIGNS: THE BIOLOGY OF STAR TREK, which is not just a book that glorifies Star Trek. It is a thoughtful account on what is possible, and gently points out what is most likely not possible as far as we know. Buy this book if you are one of those people who like to watch Star Trek in order to make fun of it, but if you are a fan of the shows and movies (an books) do yourself a favor and skip this tedious book.Most disturbing to me is the author's lack of respect for anything spiritual, if anything has the hint of religion, any thing psychic or spiritual, anything that cannot be explained away by current scientific knowledge, it is ridiculed by the author, and completly dismissed.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't live up to its title!, August 29, 1999
By A Customer
This book is a disappointment, primarily because it is mistitled. It's not the serious and considered analysis and discussion of the biological plausibility and possibility of the alien flora and fauna of the Star Trek TV shows and movies that it should be. It even gets a lot of terrestrial biology wrong. For example: 1)In mentioning prion diseases like kuru and spongiform encephalopathy, for example, she says that, "many scientists are arguing that prions are accompanied by an associated virus." In fact, it has been known for some years that prions are normal brain proteins with abnormal shapes that can induce the same abnormal shape change in other molecules of their kind. It's an amazing blunder since Andreadis is an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. 2)In discussing symbiosis, Andreadis calls lichens " a union of an alga and a moss. In fact, lichens are symbiotic unions of an alga and a fungus, while mosses are actually plants. She also refers to "angelfish" as being able to live in sea anemones, when it is *clownfish* that do this. 3)Andreadis makes numerous categorical statements that are open to question, to say the least. She asserts "unequivocally," for example, that "humans are sexually dimorphic." In biology, this applies to species like peacocks, in which the males have a very different plumage than the females, or certain spiders, in which the females can be many times larger than the males, or other species in which males and females are very different from one another. Human males and females, on the other hand, are very much alike in almost everything but their genital anatomy, and this is the rational basis for gender equity, of which Andreadis is an obvious supporter. The fact that we can - usually - distinguish men from women does not make our species sexually dimorphic. Even more disappointing and distracting than these errors, though, is the superficiality of most of this book and the many irrelevant digressions and remarks offered by Andreadis. These better reflect late 20th Century politically correct thinking in general and Andreadis' personal opinions and prejudices in particular than what 25th Century biology and medicine might be like. Andreadis, besides being careless, just doesn't seem to have put much thought into this work.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lively and opinionated, February 15, 2001
This is a lively and opinionated entry in the "fill-in-the-blank of Star Trek" series and therefore one of the best, certainly up there with Physics and parsecs beyond Computers.Andreadis brings a strong scientific and biological background as well as an encyclopedic knowledge of the franchise in all its manifestations to bear throughout. She celebrates the more reasonable ideas shown, like silicon-based life forms. But she also deconstructs the silly, unscientific ones and showing just why they're silly and unscientific. (This includes such franchise mainstays as the holodeck, the universal translator, shape-shifters, and interspecies fertility.) Those wanting a more objective approach and annoyed by the occasional interjection of feminist and leftist commentary might find this book annoying. However, I enjoyed the fresh approach, the clever references, and the very individual and personal viewpoint. It's well worth reading both for Trekkies and for those wanting a different approach to biology.
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