The Fate of the Phoenix

Title:	The Fate of the Phoenix
Creator:	Myrna Culbreath and Sondra Marshak
Date(s):	May 1979
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Language:	English
External Links:	The Fate of the Phoenix front cover
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from Beyond Fiction #1 (1981), artist is Sharron Crowson, poem inspired by The Price of the Phoenix and "The Fate of the Phoenix"

The Fate of the Phoenix is a Star Trek pro novel written by Myrna Culbreath & Sondra Marshak.

It is a sequel to the controversial The Price of the Phoenix.

See List of Star Trek TOS Pro Books with Fan Connections.

In a Prior Form

See Never Mourn Black Omne, the fanwork that was the rough draft of The Price of the Phoenix and its sequel, "The Fate of the Phoenix", combined.

Summaries

From the book jacket: "With the Romulans approaching the boundaries of Federation space and the Klingons threatening to break the Organian peace treaty, Captain Kirk and his crew face a new peril in the person of Omne, the powerful and twisted creator of the Phoenix process."

From Carolyn Kaberline's review at Orion Press: "As this sequel begins, it isn’t long before Kirk and Spock begin to notice a series of "flames" in the galaxy, and while they believe some of these may be nothing more than chance happenings, some appear to have been engineered by Omne himself. Soon Kirk is appointed Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the Federation to preside over the naming of the new Regent of the Voran Dynasty, a world near the Romulan sphere of influence. It is on this isolated planet that all forces come together and the crew of the Enterprise must once again face Omne, the man who triumphed over death. Also on hand are the Romulan commander, who is suspected of treason for joining forces with the Federation on Omne’s world, and a disguised James. While Omne once again holds Kirk prisoner, a deadly ray is released on those gathered there, and many members of the assembly are injured. Spock seems to be severely affected and shows no sign of life; however, Kirk’s pleas cause Omne to resuscitate him. It is at this time that we also find that Omne has created a duplicate of himself—a duplicate that seeks to kill Omne and Spock as well. It is only by joining forces that there is a chance to destroy the duplicate and guarantee the safety of all."

Some Covers from Other Editions

• 

  an alternative cover featuring Black Omne, reprint edition

• 

  an alternate cover, reprint edition, 1980s

• 

  the Italian edition

Not Canon, and The Hands of TPTB

According to Marshak and Culbreath, Gene Roddenberry and Paramount were concerned that fans would assume the Phoenix novels were canon. While several tie-in Star Trek novels were out including Spock Must Die!, Spock, Messiah! and Kathleen Sky's Vulcan!, Marshak and Culbreath's were the first fan-written novels, and included notes about how they had worked closely with Roddenberry, collaborated with William Shatner on Shatner: Where No Man... and so on, so this assumption might not be as far-fetched as it sounds.

The authors claimed that Roddenberry had reviewed The Price of the Phoenix but as work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture progressed, turned subsequent reviews over to someone else (Susan Sackett, or possibly future Star Trek Archivist, Richard Arnold?). This unnamed reviewer demanded that James, Kirk's Omne-created doppelganger, must die, because with the film then in production, "there could not be a second, identical, real Kirk left in the Star Trek universe."

This explains the bizarre ending to the second novel; James, now committed to his new life as a Romulan, is about to establish a matrimonial bond with the Romulan commander, when he is teleported to an alternative dimensional planet where Omne has been exiled. Spock and the Commander believe it will be possible to retrieve him, but the novel ends there.

Reactions and Reviews

1979

Re Marshak and Culbreath and The Fate of the Phoenix: I am going to go out on a very shaky limb here. The book had excellent parts to it; the Romulan scenes were beautifully done. Alas—the ladies make one HUGE assumption, which brings us back to my original premise—they start their book exactly where the first one leaves off, which is totally bewildering to the novice reader who picks up the thing at the bookstore because it's with the STAR TREK stuff. A simple prologue would have solved a lot of continuity problems for a lot of people. I'm not even going to go into the philosophical arguments put forth by the characters, except to say that I don't agree with them. And the action becomes so furious that after a while you need a scoreboard to tell who is who, who is a clone, who is Omne, and who has been sucked into the Black Hole.

1980

Here is the not-so-long-awaited sequel of THE PRICE OF THE. Why should you read this book if you didn't like the original? Well, plotting was the primary problem in the to a great extent. Another problem that readers had was with the continuous tension that never lets up. ' I rather enjoy intensity of that sort myself. If anything the "problem" is worse in this book. (That is if you believe that UNTO [Unto Zeor, Forever] is too compelling. If you do, by all means avoid this book. You'd better play safe and avoid the next Darkover novel too. That's likely to be a gut-wrencher.) I was actually pleased to see that Ms. Marshak and Ms. Culbreath were following the same paths my own mind might have taken.

What do you know about Romulans? You might have seen Anne Zeek's "Cytherean Cycle" or other fannish speculations of high quality if you've been following the zines. Nevertheless, almost nothing has been done with Romulans on the professional level. THE FATE OF THE PHOENIX takes us to a world within the Romulan Empire and shows us a slice of their culture. The profiles of this world's leader and her royal companion, Trevanian, are most engrossing. I wanted to see a great deal more of that pair when I was through, but I consider that a tribute to a job well-done.

The problem of the second Kirk created by the Phoenix and the question of identity Itself is also well handled. There are no philosophical treatises here, just people who are playing with some very elemental forces. Even Omne can go beyond his depth. There are no easy solutions for anyone. So you wanted an adventure story that's simple and relaxing. Forget it! Go watch reruns of SPACE 1999. What interested you in STAR TREK in the first place? I believe there was someone we know who said something about "tailored effects". They're all here. You don't even have to look for them.

There is absolutely no doubt that we've been subjected to a great deal of exploitative trash masquerading as STAR TREK novels. Let's not turn up our noses when Bantam comes up with something worthwhile.

THE FATE OF THE PHOENIX is marketed as a Star Trek novel. Except for names in common with the TV series, I don't see how anybody could make this mistake. In fact, I don't understand why Ms. Marshak and Culbreath bothered to make this a Star Trek novel. The book started out with innuendo and hidden meanings, half sentences and on • and en with power but no direction, no purpose," and no end which I could discern.

There is a heaviness that inhabits this writing team's books that was never in the Star Trek universe as portrayed on the screen.

What is the purpose of power? Where is its direction? Why is a second Kirk's continued existence essential? How does the development of a second Kirk help to evolve the nature of the universe? I see it as only causing chaos. The book portrays to me a disordered universe, while all the best science fiction, in my opinion, pleads the case for an orderly uni verse with direction, growth, and life as the ultimate goal.

Do the characters learn anything from their experiences? Do they change at all? Yes, they do, but they start out so different from aired Star Trek as to become unrecognizable.

This is hack writing by two women who could do a lot better, and that is the shame of it all.

I've just read your review of "The Fate of the Phoenix" in Zeor Forum. I don't understand why you refer to this book as "hack writing." I do have some problems with it myself — such as objecting to holes the size of sequels left at the ends of novels. And I know what you mean about the darkness of the book's underlying mood (at least, that's what I assume you mean by "heaviness"). I had to read it twice before making up my mind whether I really liked it or not. But then, I bothered to read it twice — something I wouldn't do with any other pro Trek I've ever seen.

Except for the Phoenix books, I wouldn't care if they made a big pile out of all the pro Star Trek novels and torched it. You are right, of course, when you say that Marshak and Culbreath have gone off on their own tangent. However, it seems to me that they've done so on purpose. The characters in their short stories in New Voyages II seem pretty true to the aired ones. If some of the experiences these characters have been put through in the Phoenix books were to happen to me, I have no doubt that I would be changed pretty extensively also. Chaos is exactly the point of the Phoenix books, as far as I can see. Omne himself is essentially a chaotic power. The thing is, that doesn't make him any less believable, rather the reverse. It seems to me that our real universe is not always just, simple, or aesthetically pleasing. It contains evil, or it couldn't be in the shape it is. I hate books where the good guys win automatically, without losing anything — I can't relate to that. The Phoenix books seem much more realistic, and therefore more interesting, because in fact things can go wrong. Life and growth are not the goal of everyone, and you have to cope with those whose values are exactly the opposite, and you can lose. Kirk II was emphatically not created by a man interested in "evolving the nature of the universe". He was created as a tool, a weapon, an experiment, and an object for a love/hate obsession. None of this was his fault, but now he, and the others on his side, have to cope with it. The only thing you said in your review which made me really angry was, "Why is a second Kirk's continued existence essential?" No one's continued existence is essential! We could solve the problem of James (or the problem of you or me for that matter) with a nice, clean, simple phaser shot. Or alternatively I rather think Omne would take him off, our hands, if we asked nicely.

1983

I enjoyed the 'Phoenix' books by M. & M., although I thought the plots in both were convoluted with too many subplots and wordiness, besides which their own macho image of the superior male superseded Spock and Kirk's true characterization. At least it was a good attempt to provide some depth and soul searching within the characters' psyches.

1993

The first K/S story I ever read was Shelter, by Leslie Fish. And believe me, I would have hurled the zine across the room if it been mine to hurl. Aha! But why would I have done it? Not because I didn't believe, but because I did. Before reading Shelter, my only exposure to the notion of K/S had come from the "Phoenix" books, by Sondra Marshak & Myrna Culbreath, and it wasn't the kind of "exposure" I wanted. In short, though I found the books enjoyable overall, I didn't believe what they were trying to tell me between those professionally-written lines. There was something in the Phoenix books that made me squirm — and not in the same way Shelter made me squirm. The Phoenix books made me uncomfortable, argumentative, and downright bitchy whenever I encountered the concept of K/S. Though, like I said, they're great books in and of themselves.

[snipped]

In all fairness, of course, perhaps the Phoenix books would have affected me in the same way Shelter did had they been done as fanzines, without the need to write between the lines rather than on the lines. All I know is that reading the Phoenix books originally turned me into what's known nowadays as a "rabid anti-K/Ser". You see, the Phoenix books didn't convince me that Kirk and Spock might be lovers, or at the very least, were involved in some pretty kinky pastimes in the privacy of their own thoughts. Shelter, on the other hand, more than convinced me. And I, a stubborn, starry-eyed, 22-year-old girl, didn't want to be convinced. I kicked and I screamed and I yowled — my heroes wouldn't do this! But... Leslie made me believe they would. She made me know they would by showing me how it was possible - which is the mark of a good writer. (And when I got through kicking, screaming and yowling, I went straight to my friend's zine collection and promptly devoured all the K/S I could get my hands on — which, back in those days, wasn't a lot. But it was enough to get me started on the way to delightful perversion, where I've lived happily ever since...).

1995

... Every character - and they bear no resemblance to the people we know and love - talks in grand, meaningful terms, full of allegory and bullshit, basically. Marshak and Culbreath epitomize the worst of Star Trek fan fiction: they endow the Kirk/Spock relationship with a depth that is perilously close to that of lovers, making this entire book a thinly veiled description of Spock's infidelity to his captain. Kirk's interaction with Black Omne is more than just mildly homoerotic, and the whole thing comes across as a gay love triangle. In anything other than a Star Trek book, this might have worked: in The Fate of the Phoenix, it makes the book an extremely distasteful and very, very boring waste of time. Avoid this one at all costs.

1996

On the other hand I have to vehemently disagree with whoever recommended the Phoenix books by Marshall and Culbreath (sp?) These were/are truly awful and what is more they are not awful by accident. Unlike (say) [T]he Patrian Trangression, which is merely dull and badly written, the Phoenix books have a lush and exotic awfulness that can only the the product of great effort. This is not awfulness by mistake, this is awfulness that was striven for, they meant it to be like this and *this* is truly terrible. For a start their prose is so over wrought you could bounce pennies off it like an army bed and for a finish both authors are smitten by "ol hazel eyes", both have a sadistic streak a mile wide and neither have any built-in sense of the ridiculous so that both books read like a cross between a cheap gothic romance and a pulp 50's scifi without any of the fun of either. I finished it feeling faintly grubby.... I love K/S...and I love H/C and I still hate this book. I think it is the relentless sadism, physical and mental... it's the S without the M that turns my stomach. That and the lack of self-knowledge by the authors, much of what they write is by any standards ludicrous and they either don't know or don't care that what they write is so relentlessly flavoured with sexualised violence as to be (to me at least) embarrassing. Sort of like watching your maiden aunts throw their knickers on stage at a Tom Jones concert. YMMV of course.

I am not a big fan of K/S stuff. Mainly because I'm not much of a M/M fan. But when I heard about the Phonix books I went out and bought them and I read them both in one sitting. I looked, and looked hard, and the funny thing is, I never saw anything other than a profound friendship in those books (gee, thats gonna get me flamed), and I looked hard. The Phonix books are not my favorite, but they are by far the best Star Trek books I have ever read. When I want to curl up with an old friend I break out Uhura's Song, Dreams of the Raven, The Three Minute Universe. or Dreadnought and Battlestations. But the Phonix books are a very different kind of story. I don't like to read them because I don't have the stomach for that much violence. The story is H/C, but more of a four way H/C story in many ways. And the people get hurt really bad.

2000

I'm reviewing both [The Price of the Phoenix and "The Fate of the Phoenix] together -- (Slashy, strange story in which Kirk must battle a superman named Omne who progressively gains the skills of his opponents.) Includes the Romulan commander from "The Enterprise Incident," like all good slash. Kirk gets cloned and she keeps the clone as an, uh, body servant. The worst thing about these books is the elliptical, "insider" dialogue, which no sane person save the authors could make heads nor tails of. Yes, I was harsh because I wrote this during my little anti-slash period. Not all slash features the Romulan commander, after all. But I still think they suck.

2003

Their novels, _Price of the Phoenix_ and _Fate of the Phoenix_, are explicit slash, but written in code so that if you don't know you're looking at slash, you don't see it (you just get confused as hell). If you do know it's slash . . . well I got through exactly 3 and a half pages of _Fate of the Phoenix_ the last time I had a go at it. The cognitive dissonance was too fucking much. They may have thought what they were doing was very clever; I just got a headache.

Fate Of the Phoenix was the only ST book that I bought and didn't get through. Just seemed like way too much mind meld!

2011

The one thing all of [early Star Trek tie-in novels] had in common was simple: it was all still largely unnoticed by its nominal parent company, Paramount Pictures. Spin-off novels about a canceled series? Somebody somewhere in the vast motion picture conglomerate might have cared a bit, but the corporation sure as hell didn’t.

And the way to tell that somebody somewhere cared at least a little? Those early Star Trek novels steered further and further away from the sado-erotic excesses of the earliest fan fiction. Even with the earliest professional novels, somebody somewhere must have said ‘Kirk and Spock can’t die, or be tortured, or kill out of anger’ – even though those three things were staples of fan fiction.

So it’s only fitting that this whole era of Star Trek fiction would end not only a pair of novels that actually dare to revive almost the whole of fan fiction’s bag of naughty tricks – but a pair of novels that also beat out all the rest for sheer entertainment. This era of Star Trek fiction goes out with one hell of a bang.

Of course I’m referring to The Price of the Phoenix and The Fate of the Phoenix, by the writing team of Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath.

I’ve praised these two before, but here they come into their own for the first time: here they write the Star Trek fan fiction novels to end all Star Trek fan fiction novels.

[...]

The Fate of the Phoenix is a longer novel by a third than its predecessor – and in every way it’s also a bigger novel, grander in scope, wilder in action, more sweeping in its moral and philosophical debates. Those debates once again center on the ethics behind the Prime Directive, but such a description shouldn’t lead you to imagine this is a book lost in intellectual maneuvering – like the first volume, The Fate of the Phoenix is first and foremost a character-driven action-yarn in the classic Star Trek tradition – space opera with brains. Omne’s Spock-double (here called the Other, if only for simplicity’s sake) has his own agenda – and a biological dead-man’s switch, a time bomb lodged in his Phoenix-generated body that will kill him if he can’t coerce the original Omne to counter it. The Commander is facing the threat of blood vengeance from a headstrong planetary princess in her own Empire, and the Federation is facing secession by a gigantic consortium of worlds who might like to ally themselves with the Romulans, or Omne … and who would certainly rip apart the galaxy to possess the Phoenix device, if they knew it existed. Add some great action sequences, some nifty quotes, a curiously believable mountain-climbing scene, and some prehistoric monsters, and you still have only a fraction of what’s going on in this fat, satisfying sequel.

The Price of the Phoenix and The Fate of the Phoenix sold very well, but more importantly, they were very much loved by Star Trek fans eager for the novels they were reading to more faithfully mirror the show they loved. Both books have been reprinted several times with an array of different cover illustrations – including one for The Fate of the Phoenix that features Kirk kneeling before a shadowy figure we only see from the rear and must assume is Omne – reflecting the fact that in the entire course of both books, Culbreath and Marshak never once explicitly tell us what color Omne’s skin is – he’s called Black Omne, but that’s easily interpreted as a reflection of his malevolence only, and sometimes our authors will refer to his ‘heathen idol face’ – but again, the truly telling specifics simply aren’t included.

2013

Oh no, please. Another monumental fan-fiction release by the hellish fan authors Sondra & Myrna. Extremely awful, I absolutely hated it all the way. Made me think twice about doing this whole Star Trek reading project, but I’m sure that the rest of the the authors are nowhere so absolutely hateful.

The books carry on and on in endless dialogs, internal angst and anguish in very long long diatribes and philosophical musings. Action is very very thin and the plot is difficult to follow. Their fan adoration is served thickly all throughout, and it would not be so horrible if they would not try to pair up Kirk with Spock in horryfing thinly veiled “slash”, not to mention the extreme violence and fetishism. The characters are NOWHERE near what they would normally say or do, and seem like twisted sock puppets being forced to perform.

This book was only printed because they had already previously published, and sold to unsuspecting fans, their badly written trash passing it on as a Star Trek stories. I’m sure it would not pass muster on any current publishing house.

This was the absolute worst of the whole Star Trek collection. The authors did keep on writing tons and tons of fan-fiction, but fortunately those have not been officially published. Stay away from these authors!!

2019

I finally just finished this book. It usually takes me about 3 weeks to maybe a month to read a book. I started this one back in September and just finished it. It was a struggle to finish. It is a sequel to their earlier book "The Price of the Phoenix." A lot of the homo-erotic overtones present in the earlier book I found to be largely gone in this book (I'm not sure if the editors or PTB told them to tone it down a bit but I didn't really see any of that in this book). As far as the story goes there's a lot of undeveloped bits that could be interesting but were just left unresolved. There's interesting bits about worlds thinking about seceding from the Federation and having issues with Federation laws and regulations, including the Prime Directive. But these are largely brought up and ignored until the end of the book when it's simply noted the Federation is always open to discussing it's policies. Another is Omne, the villain himself. He has the potential to be a very interesting character, and there's little tidbits about an almost forgotten history that is just left hanging. The book ends with the potential for another sequel but as far as I know this was the final book in the Phoenix series.

I also found the book incredibly confusing at times. There's Omne, then there's the "Other" that is a copy of Omne that appears like Spock. Then there's a copy of Kirk, referred to as James, who is taken in by the Romulan Commander (from "The Enterprise Incident") and they eventually fall in love with one another but James is banished by Omne after Omne is banished, leaving the potential for a future story as the Commander vows to try to find James. But because of that there are times in the novel when you don't know who's who. There's also the Doyen, who I guess is the leader of a group within the Romulan Empire, though I'm not sure if they are subjects or allies, or whatever. I stopped caring. And the Doyen has a prince who's subjected to her and he tries to help James at points, and I think maybe he was copied at one point, I'm not sure.

Really, it got to the point I just didn't care anymore. I really didn't care for this book at all. I rarely find a book that I just don't like. I never give up on a book so I read it to the end. But it's unfortunately because I think there are a lot of interesting bits but they were just left hanging. And Omne had a lot of potential, but there were too many loose threads. Not only his history but his motives were hard to discern as well. Why was he trying to destabilize the quadrant? He seemed like a much different character in the past, what changed? He's apparently a Romulan but how does he fit in with the Romulan Empire? And sometimes he is helping the heros (Kirk, Spock, the Commander) and other times he's trying to kill them. And the motives of the Other aren't well developed either. Why couldn't they join forces? Why can't they co-exist, they'd be stronger together. Other than some vague plotlines that Omne basically couldn't stand having his 'other self' roaming the galaxy there's no real resolution there. Maybe others have a different take. I just found the story overly complicated in some areas and I found poor development in other areas. I found it a chore to read.

I hated The Prometheus Design with the heat of a thousand undying suns. The plot was fine from what I can remember of it, but the characterization of Kirk and Spock in particular was way off, and too tied up in Marshak & Culbreath's weirdo ideas about Vulcans for it to be anything close to the Star Trek I recognized.

Unknown Date

It often seems that sequels are nothing more than pale imitations of the original; however, that is definitely not the case with this novel. During the course of the book, not only do we catch a glimpse of life and intrigue in the Romulan Empire, we also find in Omne a villain extraordinaire. At the same time, however, we see him in the role of the tragic hero whose fatal flaw is his hubris in making a duplicate of himself—a duplicate with his own agenda. We again see Kirk in the role of the "son of moral certainty" as he faces an enemy who has cruelly defeated him and with whom he must now join forces if he is to survive.

While the characters are all familiar to us, we see new depth to their portrayals as they face a world where death is not necessarily final and learn to cope with all that it means. While this book can be read as a stand alone novel, it works best as a continuation of the story begun in The Fate of the Phoenix. But either way, the recommendation is the same: give it a try and you won’t be disappointed.