A Stitch in Time (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Andrew J. Robinson (Author) "How /odd you humans are..." (more)
Key Phrases: Terok Nor, Ten Lubak, Elim Garak (more...)

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Product Description

For nearly a decade Garak has longed for just one thing -- to go home. Exiled on a space station, surrounded by aliens who loathe and distrust him, going back to Cardassia has been Garak's one dream. Now, finally, he is home. But home is a world whose landscape is filled with death and destruction. Desperation and dust are constant companions and luxury is a glass of clean water and a warm place to sleep.

Ironically, it is a letter from one of the aliens on that space station, Dr. Julian Bashir, that inspires Garak to look at the fabric of his life. Elim Garak has been a student, a gardener, a spy, an exile, a tailor, even a liberator. It is a life that was charted by the forces of Cardassian society with very little understanding of the person, and even less compassion.

But it is the tailor that understands who Elim Garak was, and what he could be. It is the tailor who sees the ruined fabric of Cardassia, and who knows how to bring this ravaged society back together. This is strange, because a tailor is the one thing Garak never wanted to be. But it is the tailor whom both Cardassia and Elim Garak need. It is the tailor who can put the pieces together, who can take a stitch in time.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1

To: Dr. Julian Bashir
Chief Medical Officer
Deep Space 9

Entry:
How odd you humans are. Or is it just the Starfleet people? Captain Sisko has just invited me to join the invasion -- for which I am eternally grateful. The opportunity to liberate my homeland renews and animates my sluggish spirit. But the good captain makes no mention of the fact that this invasion is now possible because of the incident with the Romulans. I am simply to report to his office at "oh-nine hundred hours" with ideas as to where the Dominion defense perimeter might be vulnerable. Oh, our dealings with each other are nothing less than proper ("Mr. Garak," "Captain Sisko"), but what's so odd is that he pretends the incident never happened. And you and I both know how deeply affected he was by the whole business. Only when we exchange direct looks do I perceive a flicker of...what? Anger? Betrayal? Violation?

Odd people.

Humans seem to walk through life's infinite variety of relationships and situations taking them all at face value. They rarely look behind the facade or the mask, where real intentions -- the truth of our motives -- live. And the fact is, more often than not they deny that they have any mask at all. These humans (and I do exclude you, Doctor -- I will come to that shortly) believe that what they present to the world and, conversely, what the world presents to them, is the truth. It's this belief that makes them dangerous.

In Cardassian society, we are taught from an early age to mask all feelings and thoughts, to deflect all outside perception and observation. The objective of this education is to create a citizen who can work within the group to accomplish a group goal established by the leader, and at the same time work in such a way that none of the other members of the group knows what he or she is doing. As long as the goal is accomplished, it's nobody's business how you went about your work.

So why Captain Sisko is so upset with me because I accomplished the goal (which he established!) of getting Romulus into the war against the Dominion baffles me. And it's not because of the few lives that were sacrificed. Federation expansion has taken a toll in countless life-forms -- about most of which they are blissfully unaware. The moment you step into a garden and begin to cultivate and prune, you become a killer. Perhaps the captain was upset because he had hesitated to do what was necessary to insure the integrity of his garden. Sentimentality is another trait that makes humans dangerous.

But why am I writing this to you, instead of waxing philosophical over one of our lunches? I see that overly polite smile, your "Get to the point, Garak" mask. Patience, dear Doctor. First, let me explain why I can exempt you from this human bondage to appearance and sentiment. Long before it was revealed that you were genetically "enhanced," I recognized in you an intelligence, a capacity for understanding that I found lacking in other humans. As much as the subject irritates you, you have not been so much genetically enhanced as "arranged." The people who did this to you had specific reasons, which you have long since outgrown. And having assimilated these changes you've accommodated yourself to this "arrangement" according to the demands of your life. For me, this means that in a sense you are more Cardassian than human. Which is why I am able to share this document with you...and why I sat down to lunch with you in the first place.

Before you cringe with horror at the thought of being a Cardassian, let me give you an example. Human memory is selective and linear. Simply put, a human remembers the best of times in progressive order, beginning with earliest childhood. The rosy memories are only challenged by nightmares. A Cardassian remembers everything on every level all the time. For us, past and present are not neatly separated. We live with everything in the moment -- including the nightmares. And so do you. To a human this would be chaotic, unbearable. For us it's just the way it is.

This is one reason why I am addressing this recollection to you. Fate lines are converging, like memories to a dying man. I need to write this, Doctor, and you're the only person on this station who will understand. The invasion of Cardassia is momentous. Many will die. If I don't survive, I want you to deliver copies of this to some people I will name at the end.

There's another reason. I know that we have grown apart and that's as it should be. We learn what we can from certain people, then we move on after we've taken what we need. When we learn nothing new about ourselves in a relationship that's when the relationship is over. Or it's over the moment when we're afraid to learn something new about ourselves. But what I have been learning about myself...whatever it was inside me that was sparked and challenged when I first met you...is deeply connected to this story. I'm an unfinished man, Doctor, like a suit of clothes hanging on a display rack waiting for the final touches that may never come; I need to tell this story to make a peace with those parts of me that were left unfinished. A healing. Indulge me, if you will; I need you as a witness. A stitch in time....

Copyright © 2000 by Paramount Pictures

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 396 pages
• Publisher: Pocket Books (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671038850
• ISBN-13: 978-0671038854
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (77 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #106,963 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rich texture, developed characters, and lots of continuity, April 27, 2000

By	David Henderson (Peoria, IL) - See all my reviews

We find out about Garak's childhood, events just before and just after "Tears of the Prophets", Garak's initiation into the Obsidian Order, Gul Dukat's first name, the real reason Dukat hates Garak so much, some "missing scenes" from "What You Leave Behind", why Garak was exiled to Terok Nor and why he stayed behind on Deep Space Nine, where his gardening skills come from, and a few months of developments on Cardassia after the end of the war... just to name a few of the more interesting bits.

The book basically follows three timelines: One starts in Garak's youth, just before he goes off to join an academy, and progresses to about the middle of "Emissary". A second starts just before "Tears of the Prophets" and continues to near the end of "What You Leave Behind". The third goes from shortly after Garak's arrival on Cardassia after WYLB and shows important events in the rebuilding of the planet.

This is a wonderful novel, and it is a tribute to Andrew J. Robinson's knowledge of his character, and the others in the series, that he was able to create this story without a ghostwriter or co-writer.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, May 7, 2000

By	Nathan Blumenfeld "mastadge" (Wilmington, DE United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is, I believe, the best Trek book I have read to date. The plot is relatively simple -- it fills in Garak's life before Deep Space Nine, it fills in Garak's life and feelings in the events surrounding the Cardassian invasion, and then it tells us about his efforts on the devastated planet afterwards.

The beginning segment, at the school et cetera, was the closest that Star Trek has gotten to "Ender's Game." While this novel isn't that good, that was the general feeling I got as I was reading it. The characterisations were consistent and superb throughout the novel, and to differentiate between the different plotlines, the author simply uses different fonts. It was a neat effect.

It is clear when reading this book that Robinson is a fledgling author. While the vocabulary is okay, the sentence structure is somewhat elementary, but this doesn't really hurt the novel, because it is a lot better than some of the drivel we've seen before when it comes to ST books.

This book is written in a series of first-person entries into Garak's journal, which he has arranged into an interesting order and is sending to Dr. Bashir. Although the premise and writing are clear, the presentation was a little dissapointing. These didn't feel like journal entries; I can't picture anyone writing a journal looking like that.

Still it was an interesting, sometimes thought-provoking, and always fascinating view of life through Garak's eyes. Kudos to the author for a job well done!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excelent, Plain and Simple..., August 26, 2003

By	Dale Raby (Green Bay, WI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A Stitch in Time, by Andrew J. Robinson...

I recognized the character Garak, the Cardassian "taylor" of Deep Space Nine, from the title of the novel as much as from the cover art depicting him in a pensive mood holding an Edosian Orchid. So far as I was aware when I picked the book up, I had never heard of Andrew J. Robinson, though in fact I had... more about the author later.

A Stitch in Time is set up as a sort of Barbourian diary, if you will. It begins in the present with a letter to Garak's friend, Dr. Bashir, sojourns alternately between two different points of Garak's "fateline", each progressing generally forward. Time and all its permutations is very much woven into the fabric of the book. I suspect that the title, having its base in reference to a popular saying related to tayloring, ("a stitch in time saves nine", for those who somehow missed this lesson at Gramma's knee), is also a metaphor for a short span of time... or perhaps Garak's life.

During the time that the television series was still in production, Garak's past, and indeed present, were somewhat of a mystery. This novel fills in the gaps of his earlier life and gives a vivid picture of what life in a militaristic society must be like. Reading this, I was very much reminded of George Orwell's 1984, though it ends on an upnote rather than the despair of the future that permeates Orwell's novel and the outlook of his character Winston, though I suspect that if Winston were a Cardassian... well, I digress.

The tone of the novel is somewhat somber, and one can easily envision "plain and simple Garak" at his keyboard in a ruined Cardassian city amid pots and sherds with orchids, sewing machines, thread, fabric, and such littered around him as he puts the final touches on his narrative and the cover letter to Dr. Bashir he is sending along with it.

I found much to reflect on in this story.

A Stitch in Time is currently available as an ebook or in paperback, #27 in the Star Trek Deep Space Nine series. Buy this book. It is the best Star Trek novel I have ever read, though, My Enemy, My Ally is a close second.

Oh.... the author? Andrew J. Robinson? He is the actor who so brilliantly potrayed Garak on the television series where he was introduced.

Very, very well done, Sir!