STAR TREK novelisation trivia
June 10th, 2009 (02:57 pm)
File under "things I didn't know before today:" the TOS novel KILLING TIME, by Della Van Hise, was pulled from the market, re-edited, and reprinted. This was because the first edition was, um. Heavy on the, um. ...apparently nobody at Pocket Books realized that Della Van Hise had come out of slash fandom, OK? The official story is that Pocket Books "accidentally" printed an "early draft." Really, they'd totally caught the gay stuff; they hadn't missed it totally and then done a hasty rewrite for reissue and put a second printing out without telling anybody what had happened.
From STAR TREK: THE LOST BOOKS:
There are at least fifty changes from the first version to the revised version, some as short as a single word, others as long as a paragraph or two. Most of the excisions involve scenes in which there is physical contact between Kirk and Spock (for example, describing the warmth of Spock's hand on Kirk's face during a mindmeld). But there was also a sentence that described Spock's realization that Kirk was the person Spock was meant to spend his life with.
Copies of the original can still be found in used bookstores and at conventions, so this book isn't completely lost yet. If the cover has raised letters for the title, it's likely to be the original; if not, check anyway, because at least some copies without raised lettering have the unexpurgated text. Better yet, just check page 41 for a passage that begins, "I understand that you were probably playing with dolls and wearing lipstick until you were twenty!" That appears only in the original.
So, there ya go -- these are little-known facts that now, you know!
... Oh good lord, I apparently read the original version years ago. Maybe THAT's what warped my understanding of their relationship so much so early in my fandom training. Or maybe I've always been a sick puppy who loves Kirk and Spock together way more than is healthy.