Star Trek: SCE: Creative Couplings (Star Trek: Corps of Engineers) (Paperback)

~ David Mack (Author)
Key Phrases: main viewer, main viewscreen, tactical console, Captain Gold, Aaron Rosenberg, Dayton Ward (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

These are the voyages of the U.S.S. da Vinci. Their mission: to solve the problems of the galaxy, one disaster at a time. Starfleet veteran Captain David Gold, along with his crack Starfleet Corps of Engineers team led by former Starship Enterprise™ engineer Commander Sonya Gomez, travel throughout the Federation and beyond to fix the unfixable, repair the irreparable, and solve the unsolvable.

The S.C.E.'s missions don't always go as planned -- repairing the weather grid on the resort planet Risa turns into a deadly first contact, constructing an industrial complex on a nonaligned world leads to some startling revelations about the financier behind it, diverting a runaway ship could spell death for the crew the da Vinci didn't even know was there, and a planet in a box proves a more valuable prize than anyone could have imagined -- but their greatest challenge comes much closer to home...

Captain Gold's granddaughter Esther is marrying Khor, son of Lantar, a Klingon politician. Now Gold faces what may be the greatest challenge of his career: officiating the first-ever Klingon-Jewish wedding!

About the Author

David Mack is the author of numerous Star Trek books, including Wildfire, A Time to Kill, A Time to Heal, Warpath and the critically and fan acclaimed series Star Trek: Destiny. With Marco Palmieri, he developed the Star Trek Vanguard series, for which he has written two novels, Harbinger and Reap the Whirlwind.

His other novels include the Wolverine espionage adventure Road of Bones, and his first original novel, The Calling, will publish in July 2009.

Before writing books, Mack co-wrote with John J. Ordover the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fourth-season episode ?Starship Down? and the story treatment for the series' seventh-season episode ?It's Only a Paper Moon.?

An avid fan of Canadian progressive-rock trio Rush, Mack has attended shows in all of their concert tours since 1982. Mack resides in New York City with his wife, Kara. Learn more about him and his work at www.infinitydog.com.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Star Trek (December 11, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141654898X
• ISBN-13: 978-1416548980
• Product Dimensions: 3.6 x 2.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #40,235 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars doubleplus good., December 20, 2008

By	L. Goldstein "estrelladesax" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I read this a few months ago, but some memories remain- it was complex, included characters that weren't really familiar to me and weren't introduced thoroughly enough that they became familiar to me... and it was on the whole so well-written (word choice, plot points) that I didn't care about its shortcomings.

It made me- as a Trekkie and as a reader- happy. It's a good continuation of the series. (I've read all of the other books in the SCE series, and was delighted to find this on the shelf.)

The trend in the ST universe of publishing what is essentially very well-written fanfiction disturbs me. This book has a more canonical feel to it than do many others that I've read, and it's pleasant.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars looking forward, May 1, 2008

By	JohnA37 "Tuva or Bust" (Brisbane, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Star Trek: SCE: Creative Couplings (Kindle Edition)

This book doesn't have the Ooomph of the other SCE series; I am waiting to see how other readers find "Creative Couplings".

4.0 out of 5 stars A Klingon-Jewish wedding -- Oy vey!, June 4, 2009

By	Rabbi Yonassan Gershom (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)

Captain David Gold and his wife Rachel are the first continuing Jewish characters in the Star Trek universe. (Yes, there have been a few other Jews in the novels -- see my own book, Jewish Themes in Star Trek -- but the Golds are the first major Jewish characters in an ongoing series.) In "Creative Couplings," Captain Gold's granddaughter, Esther, is marrying Khor, the son of a Klingon ambassador, and Gold is going to perform the wedding. (Which gets around the sticky question about intermarriage between a Jew and a non-Jew. It isn't stated in the book, but I imagine this is why Rachel -- who is a rabbi -- does not officiate. Although, since membership in the Jewish community is passed down through the mother, and the bride in this case is Jewish, that means their children will be Jews. Imagine -- Jewish Klingon kids! Perhaps future stories will deal with these issues in more depth?) Trying to bridge these two cultures in a mutually-acceptable ceremony is a challenge for both the Golds and the Klingons, but they succeed -- how, I'm not going to tell you.

This book is actually an anthology, with 5 other S.C.E. stories as well. I liked some better than others, but on the whole it was a good read. Although these other novellas don't have overtly Jewish themes, Captain Gold does use Yiddish expressions occasionally. I was most impressed that he does NOT degenerate into the "comic relief" role that is so often assigned to Jews in popular literature. Gold is a highly competent Starfleet captain who just happens to be Jewish. Very well done!