WEEKEND READING: Star Trek, Howard Chaykin, Buscema, and the Ultraverse!

Lots of great stuff this week on the internets, covering a wide variety of my geeky interests. Here’s a few of them to occupy you ‘til Monday.

STAR TREK CONTINUITY: to celebrate the release of J. J. Abrams new Star Trek movie, let’s revisit some classic Star Trek continuity, courtesy of Steve Ahlquist at Forces of Geek. (Did I mention that’s one of my favorite blogs?) He works his geek-magic on the continuity of the original series, the Gold Key Star Trek comic books, Vulcan poetry from Star Trek fanzines, James Blish’s novelizations and even Star Trek merchandise. Even if you only click the link to see Sky Diving Parachutist Mr. Spock, you have to visit.

HOWARD CHAYKIN: One of Howard Chaykin’s most recent pieces of work didn’t make it in the American edition of Christian Moerk’s debut novel, Darling Jim. At the author’s request – he’s a big fan, especially of Chaykin’s American Flagg! - Howard created an illustration for Moerk’s book. You can see a snippet of the excised art at the link where there’s a link to the much larger full-sized version. Thanks, GalleyCat!

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STAR TREK: J.J. Abrams, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and John Cho Make It So!

It’s finally here. I’m talking about neither killer bees nor swine flu, nor Arlen Specter’s vote on anything pro-Democratic. I’m talking about the new Star Trek movie by J. J. Abrams starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and John Cho (Harold Lee is Sulu? Inspired!)

I’m a fan of Star Trek, but I don’t get the vapors over every new ST movie or series, or any glitch in continuity, nor do I love all things Trek. Any time the Star Trek crew beams down to a planet where the background looks like Ape City from Planet of the Apes and all the inhabitants are wearing burlap tunics as they rebel against an evil alien force who’s using them for either meat, factory work, or target practice, I’m out.

I don’t refer to Star Trek as TOS (The Original Series), I don’t care how the animated series fits into continuity, and I don’t care if anyone calls me a Trekker, a Trekkie or “Romulan Praetor.” I know just enough Star Trek trivia to run a category on “Jeopardy,” (“I’ll take ‘The Jeffries Tube’ for $400, Alex.”) but not enough to debate Klingon military history with a guy dressed as a Klingon speaking Klingon.

But I do have some Star Trek cred – thanks to writer-producer Larry Brody, I’ve actually met and chatted with D.C. Fontana at a writer’s conference in L.A.; I edited the launch issues of Malibu Comics’ Star Trek: Deep Space Nine comic book and toured the set of the DS9 TV series (with artist Gordon Purcell); I had lunch with Alexander Siddig where we talked about our favorite video games; and I was once interviewed (by Mark Altman) for the official Star Trek magazine.

So I feel I have enough of a background in Star Trek to start a flame war by doing what all the other cool kids are doing: listing their five favorite Star Trek movies. Here are mine:

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