Science Fiction Book Review: The Autobiography of James T Kirk

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A picked this up in a charity shop recently, and I decided it would make a decent bit of light reading to start the new year with. "Edited" by David A Goodman, this paperback book purports to be written by Captain Kirk after his retirement from Star Fleet and shortly before his supposed death at the start of "Star Trek Generations". A paperback book of just over 260 pages, it doesn't go into a lot of detail about Kirk's life, giving a couple of pages here and there to some of the key events in his life, from living on a farm to moving to Tarsus IV as a teenager (where he experienced the catastrophic events described in "Conscience of the King") to joining Star Fleet Academy, where he has a tough time and is almost expelled. Then seeing him work up through the ranks until he becomes Captain of the Enterprise, followed by a troubled career involving being promoted to Admiral, temporarily leaving the service, getting the Enterprise back for a second five year mission, and the events of the movies. Kirk meets various people in his early life who become important to him later on, and the book forcuses more on his personal relationships and psychology than the events of the series and films. One aspect that disappointed me was that the author completely ignored the events of the animated series - except that it's Captain Robert April who takes the Enterprise on its first mission to bring aid to the population of Tarsus IV, and who influences Kirk to join the Academy. The most interesting part of the book was that it goes into Kirk's psychology, as he exercises a lot of self-criticism, focusing on some of his more disastrous mistakes (including showning mercy to Khan in "Space Seed"), his growing over-confidence towards the end of the first five year mission, his blind ambition leading him to push for promotion to Admiral (a job which he then hates), and his inability to forge lasting relationships with women such as Carol Marcus, due to him putting his career first. It wasn't a badly written book, and as I read it I was hearing the words in William Shatner's voice, but there's not really much substance to it and it's not one that I'll read again. I'll be putting this one in the pile of books to be sold. 2/7 - Not terrible, but not worth going out of your way to read.