Spock's Affirmation

Star Trek TOS Fanfiction
Title:	Spock's Affirmation
Author(s):	Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Date(s):	1970
Length:
Genre:	gen
Fandom:	Star Trek: The Original Series
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title page for this story from Kraith Collected

Spock's Affirmation is a 1970 Star Trek: TOS story by Jacqueline Lichtenberg.

It is the first story in Kraith, a well-known alternate universe. Originally published in the fanzine T-Negative #8 in 1970, the story, along with other Kraith fiction has been reprinted many times since in Kraith Collected #1, Tetrumbriant #1/#2, and is now also available online.

Reactions and Reviews

Spock's Affirmation: In this story the importance of the Kraith (a ceramic cup); the meaning of the 'Continuity of Affirmation' and the "Token" and "Motek" (a form of Vulcan folk-dance with, far reaching significance) are explained. We meet Ssarsun , a Schillian (man proportioned lizard) who is appointed Spock's bodyguard, when the Vulcan becomes 'Katayikh' (in simple terms, the leader of his clan) at Sarek's presumed death.

The more detailed definitions given in the story are best discovered at the 'reader's leisure. Suffice, to say that the story revolves around the journey of the Enterprise to Peda XII following the discovery of the precious Kraith, previously stolen. Five Vulcans from a dancing troupe and Spock join another fifty-one on the planet to make up a highly significant number for the 'Continuity of Affirmation'.

The ceremony is of extreme importance to Vulcans, and the mission, although incomprehensible to humans, is of great significance for the Federation. Failure to get the Vulcans to the planet would carry with it implied contempt for the values of other worlds leading to the possibility of Vulcan's secession from the Federation, accompanied by a bloc of other like-minded worlds. Complications arise and are overcome with the help of Pon Parr (as it has never been used before), Spock finds a wife, completes the Affirmation, and loses her. Those are the (very) barebones of an intriguing and very complicated introductory story to 'Kraith'.

As a piece of writing, Kraith is frequently flawed by unexplained mysteries which you have to read some other Kraith story and/or an appendix to understand. Any one having read Dune probably experienced some of the same frustrations. There were also purely mechanical things like typos and misspellings, but to get on those would be bitchy, and I'm determined not to be bitchy in this review — Lord nose I'm bitchy enough on Kraith talking about it.

The first tale, Spock's Affirmation, moves rapidly, a great deal happens. During the course of it Spock gets put through some pretty rigorous paces, from being charged with conducting an Affirmation(I can't begin to explain even the paucity I understand about the Affirmation) to the Enterprise being attacked by a Romulan raider propelled by a cyborg, which lands on a desert planet; Spock, in command because of Kirk's having been incapacitated during a previous fight with the raider, goes down with McCoy to find it and the two get marooned on this planet and to be rescued Spock induces the pon farr in himself, which comes to fruition in a few hours, because he is sort of falling for T'Rruel, this Tokiel dancer who's going to Feda XII to participate in the Affirmation, as a result of which the Enterprise finds them, Spock and T'Rruel are married, T'Rruel becomes pregnant and dies as a result of trying to Affirm, while with child...I don't know if Leonard Nimoy could keep up with that. I hardly could.

[...]

It would be great if the Star Trek people could read Collected Kraith and say, "Here's our movie." The first story alone, "Spock's Affirmation," would run almost three hours, none of the time wasted. Affirmation is a very busy story. I've read the whole book several times over and still lose a lot of the details.

[...]

There is a marked difference between the way Berman and Hall write and Lichtenberg's approach, even though all three use the same basic narrative form — third person omniscient, subjective, Berman writes sympathetically, as does Hall, with a sharp understanding of how her characters think. Her portrayal of Lieutenant Uhura is of a woman who is firm, intelligent, responsible, responsive, and human. Lichtenberg's Christine Chapel, in contrast, is horribly shallow and unmotivated in her behavior, almost, like Kirk and McCoy, right out of the Star Trek format. In Spock's Affirmation, she scoops to the I-Love-Lucy level of being jealous of Spock's attentions to T'Rruel and even goes so far as to try to squelch the Vulcan woman by telling her Spock is half human. It's true that the aired Star Trek itself shared this deficiency, but kindly remember that in 1966 when it was first put on the air the producers were fighting for even THAT much from NBC executives who thought television programs should he written on the level of lobotomized Rhesus monkeys and that Star Trek novelists, as Jacqueline herself pointed out, shouldn't have to put up with this attitude in fens and can write intelligently. It's great to make Spock capable of doing the innumerable things he did in Kraith, especially if it's supported, as it was. But why only expand Spock's capabilities? Lichtenberg writes about humans as though she were observing them with no knowledge of what they were like, not only when she writes from the viewpoint of a Vulcan, but always.