Author: Alan N. Shapiro

  • The Physics of Warp Drive

    Although light from the moon reaches us in about two seconds, and light from Mars in a few minutes, light from Proxima Centauri or Alpha Centauri takes about four years to reach us. A spaceship traveling at current rocketry technology speed would take about ten thousand years to reach any possible Class-M planet.

  • The Offspring

    After attending a cybernetics conference, Data spends all his off-duty hours in a locked laboratory, at work on a secretive project. Data learned of a breakthrough in submicron matrix transfer technology. La Forge, Troi, and Wesley are startled to hear that he has built an android clone of himself, endowed with a like positronic brain.

  • The Measure of a Man

    Arriving at the brand new Starbase 173 near the Romulan Neutral Zone for crew rotation and offloading of experiment modules, the Enterprise-D is visited by Admiral Nakamura and Commander Bruce Maddox,. Maddox is an Associate Professor of Robotics Science at the Daystrom Technological Institute (named after Dr. Richard Daystrom of the episode The Ultimate Computer).

  • The Enemy Within

    Captain Kirk, Lt. Sulu, Geological Technician Fisher, and three otherEnterprise crew members are approaching the end of a routine, one-day geological survey and specimen gathering mission on the planet Alpha 177. Helm Officer Sulu is tending to a doglike creature indigenous to the planet.

  • The Devil in the Dark

    Spock begins to demonstrate his unusual capabilities of empathy towards alien others in his mind meld encounter with the silicon-based Horta life-form on the mining planet Janus VI. The workers of the mineral production station are menaced by a hideous creature they are not sure they have ever seen.

  • The City on the Edge of Forever

    The City on the Edge of Forever is Star Trek’s most poignant time travel story. The technology of the Guardian of Forever’s Time Portal is not made explicit. Specification of the Vortex’s technoscience would have detracted from the emotion/meaning of Kirk’s fateful choice between his love for Edith Keeler and preservation of the galactic timeline.