For our seventh Bantam adventure, we join the Enterprise as it explores one of science fiction's most interesting concepts - one that on-screen Star Trek would eventually bring out during the run of Star Trek: The Next Generation, ironically in an episode featuring a TOS character. It also introduces another author who will pen a pair of the Bantam novels.
"The Starless World" was penned by Gordon Eklund, and published in November 1978. Eklund will write one more Trek novel, also in the Bantam series, "Devil World" - yes, in addition to exclamation points, the Bantam authors liked to include the word "world" in their book titles. Eklund would eventually win a Nebula award for a non-Trek novel in 1974, after losing on his first nomination to fellow Trek writer alum Theodore Sturgeon.
The high sci-fi concept is, of course, a Dyson Sphere - a construct so large that it creates a sphere the size of a planetary orbit around a star, so that the entire interior surface of the structure is inhabitable and perpetual daylight. It seems, after reading this, that the TNG writers did not borrow much from this story except the concept.
Push play and see what Rob and Butch have to say about "The Starless World!"
