TekWar

TekWar #1

by William Shatner, Ron Goulart (Contributor)

The national bestselling detective novel set in a futuristic Los Angeles by the legendary actor who played the original Captain Kirk on Star Trek!

Not satisfied with the thrills of being one of Greater Los Angeles’ toughest cops, Jake Cardigan turns to Tek, a computerized brain stimulant which transports the user to any reality he can imagine. He’s soon addicted to this fantasy-enabler—and it isn’t long before Cardigan is accused of dealing. When he fails to convince the mechanized jury of his innocence, the state strips his badge and sentences him to fifteen years in suspended animation. Four years later he’s awakened. His sentence has been changed, but no one will tell him why. Cardigan’s search for answers takes him to Mexico, where a rogue scientist is attempting to rid the world of Tek. But these efforts have roused powerful enemies.

Aiding this quest is the right thing to do, but for an ex-con, doing good can be the most dangerous decision of all.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Mystery, Cyberpunk, Crime, Thriller

216 pages, Hardcover

First published October 9, 1989

About the author

William Shatner is the author of nine Star Trek novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Ashes of Eden and The Return. He is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Get a Life! and I'm Working on That. In addition to his role as Captain James T. Kirk, he stars as Denny Crane in the hit television series from David E. Kelley, Boston Legal -- a role for which he has won two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe.

Reviews

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Throughout this short read, I imagined I was watching a bad 80's sci-fi flick on VHS, complete with laughable special effects. The tracking might be a bit off too, and the audio's a bit fuzzy. It smells like must and cigarette smoke, and it likely has a garage sale sticker on the front that won't come off.

Well, I wanted an easy break from all the heavy reading I usually do, and this actually fit the bill. Think noir detective story with shades of Regan-era drug war, and painted in faux-SciFi.

It's obviously Ghost written, with The Shat sitting behind the scenes tossing out words that start in Plas- or Laz-. It's that special kind of genre book that has all the flying cars and moving sidewalks of science fiction, but without any of the interesting thought that made that stuff interesting.

Plot: People use disposable computer chips as drugs, scientist creates device that can destroy all drug chips. Toss in double crosses and robot double, and stir.

While obviously ghostwritten, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was penned by The Shat. Characters declare their intentions, then events happen. Sometimes, it mixes it up a bit and has stuff happen, then characters explain out loud what you just read. Meanwhile, it never once talks about the consequences of its world. Stuff happens, one thing after another.

There's even a good bit of unintentional humor here too. For example, one chapter ended with the phrase "... and it was Beth Kittridge", only to have the next chapter begin with "But it wasn't Beth Kittridge." Each of the small chapters has to end on a climax, some sort of tension, no matter how artificial. There's a trap where the hero gets attacked by robot bulls, and another where he gets ambushed by a "mexican" cyborg with an electric knife for a hand. I could only imagine Bender with a sombrero and a fake mustache. Seriously, what am I supposed to think when you mention a mexican cyborg?

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read Tekwar to follow along with the episodes of the bad book podcast, "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" that covered it back in 2018-19, so I knew what it would probably be like, going in.

It met my rather low expectations on several fronts. The plot was a very simple and repetitive "looking for a guy" quest, featuring a main character who it's all too easy to picture as its nominal author as he: sits in meetings, has explosions happen in his immediate vicinity, gets into overwrought fistfights, and has women falling all over him.

Characters come and go to provide ex-cop, ex-convict "Jake Cardigan" (Cardigan? lol) with the information he needs to go to the next, rather straightforward setting. We're in the future as imagined by the 80s, simple to understand but not all that interesting or original, or even sensical at times. (Where do robots come from? What determines what kinds of jobs they have? Do they have rights, or are they essentially slaves? Well, who cares. They're just chrome-plated NPCs.) The eponymous Tek is a wish-fulfillment device where you dial in the good choices and happy endings you missed in life, and experience them in a virtual reality scenario. Jake struggles with addiction to it, but that isn't handled very gracefully, nor is the industry that creates it. Our setting may as well be the size of Los Angeles county: go to Mexico, go to the Moon, it's all the same, really.

This novel was almost certainly ghostwritten by Ron Goulart, who also wrote comedic sci-fi and a series of mysteries with Groucho Marx as the protagonist. Goulart provides the only spark this novel possesses (this is being very generous and assuming that Shatner wrote a single word and wasn't just the "idea guy") via some very strange scenes and dialogue.

A sooty sea gull coughed once, took three lurching steps along the Boardwalk railing, teetered, fell over. Dingy wings flapping awkwardly, it went plummeting straight down to the rubbish-strewn beach twenty feet below. There was a thunk and a rattling when it hit.

("Death of a seagull" was my favorite thing in the book. And it prepared me for the similarly gesticulation-heavy death scenes of minor human characters that followed.)

"The Cosmos Agency specializes in gathering little tidbits of information from hither and yon. And from yon came the news that that putz Winterguild had complained to the parole folks because you'd tipped him onto his toke."

(Why give a character just one dialect? Give them three or four!)

Tekwar ends with its major plotline unresolved, but there is no way I'll be continuing with this series. Occasional silly filigree and the opportunity to riff on it aside, this was a boring read that is best left in the past.

Edit: reading through the "372 Pages" selections in order, I happened to finish this book a day or two before TekKill was announced as the next one. So I guess I'll be reading one more of these!

[Clint Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a book that got me into reading for fun.

I used to hate the reading assignments doled out in school. I couldn't care less about Mr. Gatsby's parties, or the anachronistic sense of humour in Shakespeare's work, or children catching flies or whatever. Give me chases and explosions and sex and violence and vulgarity. In college you can force feed me classics. I want to want to read. And that's what TekWar did.

I was probably ten when I read this, and I couldn't put it down. It was a whirlwind of spacestations and chrome-plated robots and murder and drug dealers. Of course, the only reason I picked it up was because Captain Kirk wrote it, but maybe that was the greatest hook of all.

Even now, in my thirties, I still buy Shatner books at the thriftshops without reading the synopses. Oh Captain, my Captain!

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was edited for audio by Ron Goulart who I expect had quite a hand in the initial manuscript as well. I remember thinking it read like one of his novels when I first read this shortly after it came out.

This was better listened to as an abridged audio book than I remember it in paperback. The story is totally cliched, but it rolled along quickly, if predictably. Still, the good Captain wrote & read it, which helped a lot. Plain fun, leave your thinking cap off. Just go with it & enjoy.

[Warren Fournier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I've owned the original "TekWar" for years, I've never read it or any of the other books in the series, nor have I played the video game, nor have I watched the 90s TV series. But the idea behind Shatner's upcoming interactive animated reboot of the series sounds intriguing, so I thought now is a good time to check it out.

Supposedly, Shatner came up with the ideas that would become the series while on the set of Star Trek V, wanting to create a scifi universe that blended elements of Star Trek and T.J. Hooker. Well, I don't know about all that, but I will say that the final product, which was written by the great Ron Goulart, is really a fun time, more reminiscent of a love-child between Douglas Adams, Phillip Dick, and "Breaking Bad."

The book is charming through and through, with a sense of good humor, engaging characters, gritty noir sensibilities, and scifi action. In the year 2120, a technological drug called Tek, which is essentially a microchip that is placed in a device called a Brain box, is all the rage. It allows the user to experience any number of realistic fantasies, and the stimulation is very addictive. Tek-addicts are known as "Tekkies," and I'm sure the pun is intentional. Jake Cardigan is a former cop and Tekkie, sentenced to 15 years of suspended animation in "The Freezer" for charges of running Tek. Being in suspended animation doesn't sound like a bad punishment at all, like going to the hospital to get a hernia repair and seeming to wake up from anesthesia instantly. But the real punishment comes after you wake up, as the longer you've been suspended, the more things in life have changed, making it harder to adapt and cope. Fortunately for Jake, he is able to get a commuted sentence of four years in exchange for helping his former partner Gomez out with a special private investigation in Mexico. And that's when the pace really picks up, fully immersing the reader like a dose of Tek itself.

As we get nearer to the actual year in which this story was supposed to take place, many of the "futuristic" touches in the prose evoke a few chuckles from modern audiences out of familiarity rather than from absurdity. Jake is pestered by a "voxbox" in his apartment, and his interactions with the device are highly remiscent of my own dealings with Alexa, especially when I am awakened at three in the morning to her randomly bitching at me for no reason: "This skill has been disabled by you. You can turn this skill back on by going into the settings menu on your Alexa device." Yeah. Jake and I have a lot in common.

This book gets quite it's share of criticism for being wooden and stilted. I don't see that at all. Sure, it's kind of stupid and silly. This isn't next-level science fiction. But it never pretends to be anything other than a fun homage to old crime noir and vintage sci-fi action pulps. I was prepared to really not like this one, but honestly, I just had a really good time.

[josie · Rating 1 out of 5]

what you get when you mix TJ Hooker and Star Trek with someone who can not write.

[Mathew Walls · Rating 1 out of 5]

You know the weirdest thing about this book? It's so very clearly trying to be sci-fi noir, and it's actually neither of those things. The attempted noir is badly executed (and probably hampered by the fact that the protagonist is 100% Captain Kirk pretending to be Philip Marlowe), but the sci-fi elements are just laughable. The book was published in 1990, and it seems to have been written as though it were set in 1990, then someone went through and replaced a bunch of words with more future-y ones.

Oh, did I say a bunch of words? I mean all the words. Everything's robots and cyborgs and plasglass and... wait for it... faxzines (magazines are still in print, they're just faxed to you and printed on demand - books too) but the future tech is a veneer, absolutely nothing happens that couldn't happen in the '80s. Even the "cyborgs" are just people with pirate-style prosthetics - I mean like knives for hands. Seriously.

I didn't notice at first, because in old sci-fi you don't expect to see things like smartphones or the internet, but as I was reading it occurred to me that computers were definitely a thing in 1990, and yet there aren't any in this book. There are robots, but they're just characters like anyone else. They don't do anything humans can't. Jake's house is automated, but that's basically a background detail. He never once looks something up on a computer. If he wants information he has to talk to people, either in person or on the phone. It's weird, because Star Trek had computers.

The worst writing of all though is the dialogue. Half the characters are Mexican, and they all do that thing where they pepper their sentences with simple Spanish words; they never say "yes" when they could say "si", never pass up the opportunity to refer to someone as "señor". At one point Jake reveals that he can speak Spanish, but even though he spends most of the book in Mexico, almost everyone speaks English almost all the time, amigo.

The fight scenes are pretty amazing though, because they're perfect descriptions of how Captain Kirk fights - which is to say, slowly and awkwardly. And like all the bits that are supposed to be tense or exciting, they're not at all.

There's one point were Kirk (sorry, Jake Cardigan - and I can't help but laugh every time I read that name) is in an aircar (because future) 600 meters in the air, and the engine stops. He has to get the back up engine, pull out the old one, put in the new one, then give it a thump because it doesn't work straight away. It sounds like a dangerous situation, but it's all treated as absolutely mundane and routine. Jake never seems to be worried or in any actual danger, and nothing comes of it.

As for the plot, it's plodding and painfully predictable. The ending is obvious from about a quarter of the way in, and there's only so much enjoyment to be had from how dumb it all is. It's a quick read, but it's really not worth it.

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

how anyone could read this book and give it more than one star is beyond me. Shatner's literary abilities rival those of a sea urchin. every character is introduced by a description of their weight, height, and eye color, with all the creative vocabulary of a driver's license. his priceline commercials are more gripping, his cover of "rocketman" has more depth.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a work of entertainment. Like a guilty pleasure movie, it is one that if you ponder too long or invite too much critique of, it will lose its polish and gloss. If, however, one wants to be entertained and engaged only in the entertainment and not critical analysis, then this work is a lot of fun. Will you find yourself quoting it a week later? Probably not, but I enjoyed it for the work that it was, an engaging little tale that does not aim to be the next work of William Gibson, but rather an everyman sort of cyberpunk tale that does not require too much knowledge of technology. I bought this book for sheer entertainment and I was entertained enough to read the follow up works. It is not necessarily Shakespeare, but it does not conspire to be the Bard, but rather just a piece of entertainment and at this, it is successful enough. The world is fleshed out enough to imagine and the characters, while generally stock, are likeable or engaging enough. Worth a view if you want a solid private eye in the future style novel... while some say T.J. Hooker meets Star Trek, the truth is I found it more Rockford Files or Magnum P.I. meets Blade Runner.

[Michelle]

Saw this in my feed today. I read this back in the day. The only thing I can recall is that I was not impressed.

[Jason Mills · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have a lot of time for William Shatner, so I wanted to like this; but it was nothing much. Our hero Jake Cardigan is a 22nd-century cop, framed and incarcerated for dealing in Tek, a kind of electronic wish-fulfilment 'drug'. (Why these Tek chips can only be used once remains unanswered...) Strings are pulled by a detective agency to have him released so that he can track down a missing scientist, who may have invented a technology that would destroy the Tek trade.

Shatner's is an endearingly old-fashioned future: domed cities, walkways between skyscrapers, laser pistols, cyborg assassins with power-tool hands... The chrome-plated robots are fully intelligent but still conduct official business by printing out forms from a slot in their chests!

A thriller in this environment has the potential for fun, but unfortunately the writing is flat. There is precious little characterisation - Shatner seems not to want to interrupt the action with psychologising - and thus nothing for the reader to engage with. Although there's a lot of running around and fighting, it's all kinda dull. Better SF writers would have pursued the ethics (are the expendable androids here fully sentient or just automatons?) or the metaphysics (the fantasies induced by Tek could have been a potent alternate-reality device). Shatner only presents a prolonged chase with no emotional depth, and his mostly Earth-bound yarn delivers little of the space opera colour promised by the title, cover and indeed author. It's a straight-to-video kind of novel. I won't be seeking out the sequels.

[Ben De Bono · Rating 1 out of 5]

TekWar is a novel that contains very little Tek and even less War. For whatever reason, Shatner decided to venture away from space opera into hardboiled, futuristic drug noir. This would be a great novel if it was written by Philip K. Dick. Unfortunately it's from the mind of Shatner and ghost-written by Ron Goulart. As such it's an exercise on how to successfully sustain dull plotting and shockingly awful style for 300 pages

[Barry Silver · Rating 5 out of 5]

I see a lot of negative reviews for this book. While not an earth shattering tale of epic proportions, it is still a fun story. I think to truly appreciate this style of writing you need to have grown up watching cheesy sci-fi movies.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This property became a big deal in the 1990's, with best selling books and a TV series, but is little remembered today.

A former cop, released from coma/prison is hired by a PI firm, and sent to Mexico to find a missing scientist.

Not too bad, but definitely reads like a screen treatment.

[Christopher Hivner · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Tek War, Jake Cardigan is an ex-cop who has spent four years in jail for crimes he says he didn’t commit. He gets out early after serving only part of his sentence. When he gets home he learns that his wife has divorced him, taken their son and moved to Mexico. He then finds out the person who got him out early was a man who owns a detective agency that Cardigan’s old partner works for. So they partner up again to find a missing professor and his daughter whose aircraft crashed in the jungles of Mexico. The professor has invented a device that will destroy all of the Tek chips in the world. The eponymous Tek are microchips that you use with a device that implants in your brain that allows you to create any fantasy you want and have it seem like it really happens. Cardigan was a user but was also trying to bring down the cartels who sold it. Cardigan’s partner gets hurt early on and it’s up to him to complete the investigation.

Tek War is more of a detective story than science fiction. Yes, it’s set in the future and there are sci fi buzz words like droids and laser rifles, but at its heart it’s a detective story. The overall plot is interesting but not spectacular. Shatner’s writing is passable. It gets you from point A to point B and moves the story along but there isn’t a lot of individual style. He uses vernacular at times that doesn’t fit the situation, especially in dialog. The things that seemed off could have been fixed by a good editor. Tek War was an ok book. It’s a quick read. If you’re looking for a real sci fi book this isn’t it, despite the author’s pedigree.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Christian Schultheiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

372 got me really curious and wanting to dive into this shatter ghost written cash grab, and really once you get done to actually reading the physical copy yourself you can really start to understand the whole love/hate of this whole series. Sure transportation is confusing and a lot of technologies seem unexplained, while characters are vastly over described, and we don’t actually get either really any Tek nor war in this book. I’d have to say if you can suspend your criticisms and live in that adventurous childlike reading space for a bit, this ends up not being a truly half bad old school future adventure, well at least the beginnings of one.

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked up “TekWar” for a nickel at Helping Hands and decided to give it a whirl. I was curious if William Shatner was a good writer, and also if the story was good. I was pleasantly surprised to find the book easy to read and highly imaginative.
The setting that is presented has no room for questions. It’s the future, robots are common (and very humanlike in their attitudes), cars fly, and otherwise life does not seem so different. There cops, clubs, video telephones, jobs, and drugs. The questions of societal impact by robots and other high technology are not asked or even alluded to. In short, the author talks about what he wants to talk about and leaves the rest to the reader’s imagination (or possibly sequels).
Unfortunately, the flaws begin to rear their ugly heads quickly. First, the technical execution of the whole story is not very good. While the pace remains fast, the dialogue is atrocious and it was easy to get bored at times. Certain characteristics were alluded to over and over again until they became placeholders for real character traits & growth (such as the protagonist’s partner’s hair. I am not sure why Shatner spends so much time reminding us of the current state of the guy’s hair). Characterization is fairly weak throughout, and the protagonist’s addiction to tek and the ongoing problems caused by it are largely ignored.
In the end, the book felt underwhelming. Most of the story is based in Mexico, which is one of the last places I’d expect the high technology of what is effectively a cyberpunk story. Though a big shootout at the end is hinted to, I was painfully disappointed as a sudden deus ex machina stepped in to neatly resolve everything.
I am not sure yet if I will give the other Tek books a shot. It would be my hope that Shatner’s skill would increase with each story, and he definitely has real potential there. But right now I am just not sure.

1.5 Characters
Unsatisfactory with positive exceptions
The characters are not very good, but have enough to keep them from being terrible. They feel like robots who have been programmed to want things, needs things, and dream of things, but don’t back it up really. The attention paid to “trademark” characteristics makes them feel shallow.

3 Pace
Good
The story goes fast, and it needs to. I only grew bored because of the characters or story, but never because things had become bogged down and I felt like the characters were not getting anywhere.

2.5 Story
Satisfactory with positive exceptions
The story presents an excellent conflict as different parties fight over tek- an illegal drug that could be controlled or destroyed. Shatner falls short in exploring the consequences of the “war” though, and many opportunities are missed. There is no actual war!
The setting is interesting though. The author presents an automated world of robots, high-tech drugs, flying cars, and orbital prisons.

1 Dialogue
Unsatisfactory
Dialogue does not get much worse than this. Conversations are almost unbearably unrealistic. Future or not, people just don’t talk like this.

2 Style/Technical
Satisfactory
Most of Shatner’s writing is by-the-numbers and without much personal style. There is really nothing to set it apart. He is clear though, and if it were not for his dialogue and placeholder characterizations, the book would have been much better.

2 Overall
Satisfactory
TekWar had the promise of being a new “Blade Runner”, but comes across as a decent detective thriller in a cyberpunk setting with lousy dialogue. The characters are flat and the story is unfulfilled. Tek’s role in the story should have been expanded and expounded upon, and the story needed to be more gripping. Maybe the book series gets better, but this first entry is underwhelming in the extreme.

[Gav451 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a genuine fondness for William Shatner. He works hard, he laughs at himself and he is also a bit of a legend. I want everything he does to succeed a little because he does so much. He is a very watchable screen presence.

This was OK at best. Sci-fi noir at its core whicj is fine but I did have a few issues with it. I was not keen on the way he put plas or plasti before everything to make it more futuristic. PlasGlass, plaswall, plaschair. Glass wall and chair would have been fine. I wasn't that bothered what they were made of. I found the way bookshops of the future worked charming.

More of a problem was that there was a lot of dialogue but the characters did not stand out at all in the way they spoke. The jokes and quips all felt like they were in the same voice and it made the book less impactful. It also hid some of the plot points as well.

It wasn't awful. The story was quick so it did not overstay its welcome and I have more of these to read and may well do so but this was in no way a classic.

More power to the Shat but this is not great.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story and setting were good overall, but there was some very clunky dialogue and some missing exposition. I still enjoyed it, but I hope the rest of the series improves.
I mean, it’s William Shatner, aka CAPTAIN JAMES TIBERIUS KIRK! I will give him a lot of slack as an author.

[J. Griff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I'm nostalgic when I first watched the 2-hr made for TV movie I watched in my barracks room back in 1994 staring Greg Evigan (B.J. & the Bear & My Two Dad) as Jake Cardigan. Having seen some of the brutal reviews for this book, I still managed to enjoy this audiobook. The version of this audiobook was unabridged from Audible & narrated by Jeffrey Kafer. There's still an '80s/'90s sci-fi feel off the book & parts of the world building that could've been better explained. Some of the characters were overly eccentric while others seemed very one-dimentional.

Overall not the worst book I've ever read, but I may continue to the next book in the series to see if the writing improves.

[blake · Rating 2 out of 5]

The latest entry in the "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" features Ron Goulart's first TekWar novel. I can only hope they don't continue with this series, but it is a rich mine for parody. Goulart is a prolific writer and ghost-writer, so it doesn't have the "How was this even published?" feel of a Cline novel, but it also has nothing of the ebullient incompetence of the delightful "Eye of Argon". It's just 300 pages of slapdash scifi tropes that are neither internally consistent nor evocative enough to be fun.

This is kind of a shame because there's a good enough premise here: The world of the future has a drug problem called "Tek" which is a kind of addictive virtual reality that shows you your life as you want it to be. OK, that's stupid, and the basically the idea of the Nexus from Star Trek: Generations, which wasn't produced for five years (not at all ruling out the possibility that Shatner came across it at a pitch meeting before writing the outline for this). But it gives us some empathy for our hero—the improbably named Jake Cardigan—who has a Tek problem, which is less repulsive, probably, than a heroin addiction. (It was also very timely, with the first wave of VR on the horizon and people actually actively misremembering their pasts as a weird kind of therapy.)

The MacGuffin is that there's a guy who can turn this all off with the flick of a switch, or who's on the verge of being able to do so. That's interesting from the standpoint of "What would happen if you could render all the (bad) drugs in the world inert?" We don't get much of that. We don't get much of anything. One assumes this was planned as a series from the start, since so little actually happens in 300 pages.

So, Jake gets out of deep-freeze prison after being framed for Tek dealing, and in the four years of his absence, my, how the world has changed! This is very badly mishandled. At least Goulart doesn't forget that it happened, but Jake's happy-go-lucky nature is never dampened by the fact that, in his experience, yesterday he had a wife and child and today he doesn't. He just accepts it and moves on (as though he had experienced the four years time).

That's just the baldest example, but emblematic of the novel's general approach to these tropes. Like, we have androids, and they're very robot-y. Chrome and silver and gold. But they're also indistinguishable from humans when they need to be. But not quite, sometimes. And they have human feelings and emotions, as when the ridiculously hot scientist's daughter-bot falls for our middle-aged hero. But that's not need to get hung up on a machine that sacrifices itself to save him.

Not every novel wants to have detailed world-building. (I admire more and more the 200-page paperbacks of earlier eras which tended to be very focused and careful about world-building, and still economical enough to tell a full sometimes epic-feeling story.) But I can't think of a graver sin for a writer than to use the tropes without any thought of the implications—because inevitably the work ends up contradicting itself.

You can't just add "plas"-this and "laz"-that to everything and call your detective novel a science-fiction story. Because so little happens here (Jake travels through Southern California and Mexico meeting people, fights some robot bulls, sorta-but-not-really struggles with Tek addiction), you're kind of left examining the why of everything, and it's not pretty.

Because the MacGuffin is basically magic: It's going to disable Tek chips throughout the world and into space at the flip of a switch. But presumably it's not going to disable all the other chips that the world needs. And presumably it's operating on some kind of super batteries (maybe 6 or even 8 D cells!) to have the scope needed to reach all these chips which, apparently, cannot be shielded in any of the usual ways things are shielded from harmful radiation.

But the real magic here is the name "Shatner", because that's how we end up with 9 books in the series, and a TV show and comic book—a franchise that curiously no one seems interested in reviving despite virtually every other '90s craze coming back.

[Ray Daley · Rating 1 out of 5]

In 1990 William Shatner was between jobs and looking at what to do next in his career so he wrote a book. Its highly contested exactly how much of that book he actually wrote and how much was written or helped along by Ron Goulart who is claimed did most if not all of the donkey work for the entire series of books as it is very similar to the plot of a book that Goulart wrote called Brainz Inc in 1985.

In the acknowledgments page Shatner does thank Goulart stating "He did an enormous amount of work" so make of that what you will, regardless of who wrote it the book is a darn good read.

Set in the 22nd Century we follow the fortunes of Jake Cardigan, a disgraced former cop who is certain he was framed in a case involving Tek. Tek is the drug of the future and an idea blatently stolen from William Gibson in that it involves direct stimulation of the brain by electronic means, the description of the Tek brainbox reads like something straight out of a Gibson novel or short story. Tek itself comes in chip form and gives the user a fantasy of their choosing but is also addictive.

Jake has been in cryoprison for four years of a 15 year sentance and has been released early thanks to his friend Sid Gomez & the Cosmos Detective Agency on an insurance case to find missing scientist Dr Leon Kittridge and his daughter Beth who were both involved in cutting edge research dedicated to making Tek no longer a viable means by using oscillation to destroy all Tek chips all over the planet.

It is surmised that the Kittridges have been killed or kidnapped by a Tek Lord called Sonny Hokori who has risen from small time crook to big time crime boss in the 4 years Jake has been frozen in prison. There is also a family involvement for Jake as Hokoris partner is an electronics specialist called Bennett Sands who Jakes ex-wife Kate (who divorced him whilst he was on ice) is now shacked up with.

As an added confusion the Kittridges were last seen in a part of Mexico now run by an ex girlfriend turned Guerilla Leader of Jakes known as Warbride.

The book follows Jake as he traces the path of the Kittridges back to Mexico and his trials & tribulations with Cyborgs, Kamikaze Androids and just about everything else that could possibly get in his way including killer robotic bulls that breath fire.

Along the way Jake loses his partner Gomez to injury and meets a robot copy of Beth Kittridge who proves to be extremely helpful in many difficult corners.

We also have an encounter with Jakes son and get a generally interesting look into Shatner or Goulets vision of the 22nd Century. The book is fairly compelling and quite a page turner and will certainly keep you hooked into the story if this kind of scifi is your thing. I can highly recommend it for its various twists & turns, I can't say how good it is against its television counterpart though having never seen it.

[Michael Drakich · Rating 2 out of 5]

I approached this book with some trepidation. Was the reason it was published because it was as good as the promos on the cover, or because it was authored by William Shatner, a famous actor with no previously known skills as a writer. By the third page of the book i knew it to be the latter when reading sentences such as: "Obviously," answered the mechanical man in his deep metallic voice.
Seriously? That sounded like the writing of a ten year old. Now I'm not saying the entire novel is written that way, but there are enough instances throughout to make any avid reader to groan audibly.
Then there is the science, or, in my opinion, the lack thereof. This novel was written in 1989. You would think a man who, as Captain Kirk, held a communicator in his hand for decades prior would have introduced some better form of communication other than stationary vidphones. Flying cars, okay, but robot drivers, really? Then there is the illegal Tek. I wonder if he thought of the name by dropping the r from Trek. The stuff is practically harmless. The drugs being fought against by the United States in its war on drugs throughout the 80's were far more harmful. Really sad. Then worst of all is the penalty for crime. They put you in the Freezer, a in space prison where you are in frozen sleep to serve your crime. Really stupid. First of all, you wake up after your term of however many years like it was the next day. Where is the penalty? And why is the prison in space? Like what convict who is asleep can escape?
The plot, where Jake Cardigan, the hero, joins a investigative agency to search for a Professor Kittridge and his daughter is laughable. The professor, working on some secret project that no one is supposed to know about, is missing. Yet everywhere Jake goes he runs into someone he knows who is fully aware of the professor's disappearance and what he was working. Like what, this was headline news? Jake, who has been in the Freezer for four years, can't go five feet without running into an old acquaintance who puts him on the path to finding the professor.
Because I liked William Shatner as Captain Kirk, I refrained from giving him a one star and settled on two.

[Stephen Ormsby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will open this review by saying I wanted to like this book. It is William Shatner, legend of stage and screen for shagging alien females of all colours. You can’t really say shapes and sizes as they were always curvy by human standards. I expected this to be Star Trek-ish with a healthy dose of James T. Kirk thrown in.


What did I get? A novel that I don’t think was written by Shatner to start with. Ron Goulart had a huge part in doing the leg work for this book and is even acknowledged by Shatner. So did Goulart act as a ghost writer, or did Shatner write the atrocious dialogue we find in this book?


It is so bad at times that I laughed aloud at it. The story itself is passable but nothing special. The bit I did dislike was the ending – that bane of all writers. The deus ex machina. Yep, it happens.


So we have crappy dialogue and the bad ending. But apart from that I actually found myself continuing to read it until I had finished. It was interesting and silly and grabbed me. What can I say? Sometimes you need something that does not venture near seriousness on the odd ocassion.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is William Shatner's first work of fiction. He creates an imaginative future populated with robots, androids and flying cars. It is unique in that it begins with our hero being released from prison; a former cop, Jake Cardigan was convicted of being both a user and a dealer of a dangerous, addictive drug called Tek. The drug is a type of computer program the user hooks to his mind, allowing him to create any fantasy desired. However, not only is the drug addictive, it can also eventually destroy the mind of its user. Although an occasional user, Jake was never a dealer. Though most of his former associates are still convinced of his guilt, Jake is released from prison early by the Cosmos Detective agency. The agency offers Jake a job, and a case that only can solve, involving the possible murder of two scientists who were in the process of creating a program that, if broadcast, is capable of wiping out all tek on the planet. Fast-paced and easy reading, I recommend this book to everyone.

[Robert Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the mind of one of the main characters from one of my favorite TV shows, comes a surprisingly good book.

I originally grabbed this off on of the shelves in Half Price Books because I noticed it was written by William Shatner; an actor in Stark Trek (James T. Kirk), and a number of other TV shows and movies. I am a fan of Star Trek, so I figured a book by an actor of Star Trek would be pretty interesting. I wasn't wrong.
I liked this book, but honestly not as much as some others I've read. Aside from that, I liked that it looked to the future, like a true sci-fi book, incorperating facts and fiction, inventing a New York like style filled with robot-ran taxi servises, Android operators, and plenty of...well, I'd be given some stuff away if I listed everything.
Another reason was that while it may have listed the start of a few, shall we say *coughs* inappropriate things, it never got into or mentioned it, focusing on the story at hand.
Beyond that, I mainly just liked it because it was written by one of my favorite actors.

[William · Rating 1 out of 5]

What struck me at first was how unsubtle the writing is, but as the book progressed the weird thing was the MC's voice. He kept not matching the plot, like simply muttering to himself when something genuinely traumatic is happening. It kind of reminded me of Warrior of the Lost World, only without a motorcycle (Megaweapon! Megaweapon! Megaweapon!). It did have a bunch of other weird robots, though.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story itself is passable, but one feels that an editor should have had a heavier hand with the finished product. Shatner probably only got this published because he was famous to begin with.

[Fangirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice mix of science fiction and detective novel.