Its hard for me to write a review about Star Trek, or anything tied into it, objectively. From 1987 to 2001, I watched some form of Trek on TV with my father on a weekly basis. From The Next Generation to Voyager my formidable years were shaped by those shows and the ideals. My dad will often lament the fact I remember DS9 the greatest since its darker tone and more cynical view of Roddenberry's 'future' in turn seemed to influence my sarcastic, cynical nature. That void though in my fannish life was never fully filled though. And then the re-launch began. Originally with Deep Space Nine, which by far has the unanswered questions of any of the 'newer' Treks, in recent years the entire novelization line has seen a dramatic shift towards continuing the franchise in that same vein.

Technically speaking Prophecy and Change is not part of the re-launch at all. Its actually a commemorative anthology celebrating the 10th anniversary of the show with stories that span from the first season to the seventh and even a little beyond. In the forward the Terry J Erdmann and Paula M. Block, the editors of the Deep Space Nine companion (which I dearly would kill to possess), talk about in the years after the shows finale they worked to gather material for the Companion book, rewatching reel after reel of footage. They realized how much they missed seeing Nog and Jake hang out on the balcony over the promenade, or watching O'Brien and Bashir have a friendly round (or few) of darts at Quark's. They missed the daily lives of the characters when they lived together. And so this anthology was born.

These aren't novelized versions of episodes but moments that happened before or after episodes. The moment when Kira realized that maybe Sisko really was the Emissary her people needed, the aftermath of O'Brien and Bashir's fight in the episode 'Our Man Bashir'...the consequences of the series finale and the emotional tumult thereafter. Each story has a small note before it, dating when it happens according to series chronology. With the grand exception of one story, Andrew J Robinson's, they are all set between seasons 1 and 7. Robinson, who played 'just a simple tailor' Garak, wrote a book called A Stitch in Time which has been retro-conned to fit into the re-launch and details Garak after the finale, wrote a story that is set after that novel about Garak once more.

It's not possible to read this anthology without any knowledge of DS9. I'd even venture to say its impossible to read without having watched the entire series. Every story depends upon several factors--the reader's knowledge of the characters and their relationships, an idea of the events that shaped many of their lives and an understanding of the show itself. If you didn't see the first episode, 'Emissary', then the first story "Ha'mara" will matter very little to you; you'll have no idea about the torment Sisko went through with the Prophets. If you haven't watched the show for five seasons, Quark regaining control of his bar will mean very little to you. In short, you won't find any interest or enjoyment in this book.

For fans though, this is a gorgeous, dedicated anthology depicting what DS9, and Star Trek in general, does best: a character's journey. These are, for the most part, important moments in these characters lives, but they're the sort of everyday importance that happens to everybody and no one thinks twice about. Sure everybody remembers when the Station was taken over by Gul Dukat once more--but who thinks twice about what Nog went through when he decided to go against every tenant of his people's beliefs to become a Starfleet Officer? Or how Dax felt when she decided to stop being a spectator to her past lives and start living her own?

This isn't to say that the stories were all A excellent writing--there's certainly flaws. Character decisions that I rather doubted or resolutions I felt were too neat considering. The first story for instance, "Ha'mara" both seemed likely, but unlikely. It didn't feel like it was the season 1 Sisko and Kira, it felt more like season 4 or 5 Sisko and Kira. It at least explained her drastic change in hair style from the pilot to episode 3.

In the end though, the book accomplished what it was meant to do--it gave me back a glimpse into lives I had forgotten I enjoyed watching so much. It renewed my love of the show and gave me the same feeling I always felt during those 14 years, a feeling I have long missed and welcomed back eagerly. ( )

Introduction: "What We Left Behind" - essay by Terry J. Erdmann and Paula M. Block
Revisited, Part One - shortstory by Anonymous
Ha'mara - novella by Kevin G. Summers - shortly after Sisko meets the Prophets he is trapped in the catacombs on Bajor with Kira and two children. Kira has to face how she feels about Sisko
The Orb of Opportunity - [Star Trek: Deep Space Nine] - novelette by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels An Orb has been taken by the Marque, and Kia Win is desperate to get it back. She gets Nog to come along to be able to access a Ferengi lock box. Nog begins to see the possibilities outside of working for his Uncle
Broken Oaths - [Star Trek: Deep Space Nine] - novelette by Keith R. A. DeCandid how can Bashier and O'Brien repair their friendship after what happend on Bopka III?
...Loved I Not Honor More - [Star Trek: Deep Space Nine] - novelette by Christopher L. Bennett Quarks ex-wife Grilka needs his help. I loved Jadzia's analysts of Quark's taste in women
Three Sides to Every Story - novella by Terri Osborne Jake gets to know Ziyal
The Devil You Know - novella by Heather Jarman Jadzia faces the question: how far do you go to win the war? while working with the Romulans
Foundlings - novella by Jeffrey Odo's predecessor come to Deep Space Nine to investigate the destruction of a Cardassion ship
Chiaroscuro - novelette by Geoffrey Thorne Ezri receives a message from Jadzia
Face Value - novelette by Una McCormack Damar, Garek & Kira are trapped on Cardassia. Can the trust her old contact?
The Calling - novella by Andrew J. Robinson I felt like it was referencing thing that happened in the stage play "the Dream Box" which I hadn't seen, so the story was rather lost on me.
Revisited, Part Two - [Star Trek: Deep Space Nine] - shortfiction by Anonymous ( )

This seemed like a good book to read when the television program was fresh in my memory, since it weaves between its episodes. There are ten stories, plus a frame, though not every season gets a story, as we shall see, as the book is weighted toward the later parts of the series run. Not every character does, either; though the book does a decent job of giving each a tale of their own, poor Worf doesn't receive a tale of his own.

"Ha'mara" by Kevin G. Summers (Sisko and Kira, Season One)
Like a lot of stories in this book, "Ha'mara" slots pretty clearly between episodes, in this case coming shortly after "Emissary." Something my wife and I noticed when (re)watching the series was that Sisko's status as the Emissary goes weirdly unmentioned between "Emissary" and "In the Hands of the Prophets." This is especially a weird omission because the only person Kai Opaka tells about Sisko being the Emissary in "Emissary" is Sisko himself, yet by the time of "In the Hands," it's public knowledge. So when did this revelation happen and what effect did it have? That's the ground covered by "Ha'mara," where a group of Bajoran terrorists attack Sisko, Kira, and company on a visit to Bajor. Kira and Sisko have to work together to stay alive and save a group of Bajoran children; Kira's personal journey to accepting Sisko as the Emissary (I don't think the show deals with this until Season Three, bizarrely enough, though "Destiny" does try to explain why it's never been mentioned before) is the focus here, presumably a stand-in for the journey the whole planet will undergo. It's kind of an awkward story when it comes to the interpersonal interactions, but I think that's largely because Summers does a good job of capturing the awkwardness of the crew dynamics in Season One. (Bashir is a doofus.)

It was disappointing to me that there was no Season Two story, as I feel like early Season Two is one of the show's best periods.

"The Orb of Opportunity" by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels (Nog and Kai Winn, Season Three)
The team-up you never knew you wanted! When the Maquis steal an Orb that's being returned to the Bajorans, Nog proves to be Kai Winn's best hope of recovering it. It's a cute little tale, especially when Nog receives an Orb vision that opens him up to possibilities he'd never seen before. Martin and Mangels handle this well; the story could easily have drifted into "explaining" where Nog's desire to join Starfleet came from, but instead the Orb unlocks something within Nog that he didn't know was there before. The focus on Winn is a little less successful; she's a difficult character to get right, and Martin and Mangels are better than some, but not as good as others, and she doesn't have a very clearly delineated character arc.

"Broken Oaths" by Keith R.A. DeCandido (O'Brien and Bashir, Season Four)
Definitely another gap-filling tale, in this case: how did O'Brien and Bashir overcome the rift in their friendship that was caused by "Hippocratic Oath"? Keith, as always, captures the character voices well, but I'm not convinced that this is a story that needed to be told. Or rather, that telling it in the tie-in fiction does much good. The show could have done something with this, but didn't; writing a short story about it eight years later doesn't really solve the problem that it seems to have no ramifications for their friendship.

"...Loved I Not Honor More" by Christopher L. Bennett (Quark, Season Five)
It's a bit disappointing that the show never brought Grilka back (or even mentioned her) after her two appearances on the show; Bennett, of course, explains that for us. It's true to the characters, and I like how it points out that Quark was willing to compromise with Grilka, but Grilka was never willing to compromise with Quark, and that proves the divisive point that means they can't have an ongoing relationship. But like "Broken Oaths," I think it feels largely like gap-plugging.

"Three Sides to Every Story" by Terri Osborne (Jake Sisko and Tora Ziyal, Season Six)
Something my wife and I noted is that there's a period on the show where there are tons of kids running around: Jake, Nog, Ziyal, and Alexander are all there in late Season Five / early Season Six. Yet the show never does anything with this: I feel like there ought to have been one episode that brought these characters together. "Three Sides to Every Story" weaves through the Season Six Occupation arc (one of my favorite periods of the show) to invent a relationship between Jake and Ziyal. And it's brilliant. Suddenly these two characters we never saw interact on screen have a deep and meaningful relationship that makes perfect sense. Ziyal's death hits even harder in this context, and both characters get to show their stuff. Jake really falls by the wayside on the show after this arc on the show, which was a real shame, but "Three Sides" is Jake at his best.

"The Devil You Know" by Heather Jarman (Jadzia Dax, Season Six)
Jadzia is another character who fell by the wayside on the television series sometimes. The stories that deal with her as a Trill in the first couple seasons ("Dax," "Invasive Procedures," "Equilibrium") always make her a bystander in her own tale, subject to the minutiae of space biology. Later in the show, episodes that are ostensibly about her really become about her and Worf; her best moments really come as a side character in other stories. Like, she's great as a member of the ensemble, but the writers struggle to give her her own episodes. "The Devil You Know" falls into none of these traps, however, giving us a story that is very Jadzia and very Trill in a way that's revelatory: Jadzia Dax is tired of death. The war hits her even harder than it hits everyone else because she has already seen centuries of death by this point, and she is fed up with it. What she will do to stop this from happening gives us a side of Jadzia we never saw on screen, but one entirely consistent with it, and I appreciated this plumbing the depths of Jadzia's soul. Plus this story contains a surprisingly sexy Jadzia/Worf scene. Like, whoa. Way to go, Heather Jarman, and too bad the show never ever pulled that off.

"Foundlings" by Jeffrey Lang (Odo, between Seasons Six and Seven)
Lang's story reunited Odo with his predecessor as chief of security on Terok Nor, Thrax, a man we never actually met because in "Things Past," Odo substituted Thrax for himself in his memories. I like their interactions, and I'm a sucker for any DS9 story with an "Odo investigates" plot; like all of the writers in this book, Lang has a good command of his chosen characters. But the ending of the story reveals a plot too convoluted to believe; I don't buy why all the subterfuge was necessary.

"Chiaroscuro" by Geoffrey Thorne (Ezri Dax, Season Seven)
Geoffrey Thorne is a very distinctive writer of Star Trek fiction, with out-there, cosmic plots that function more on an allegorical level than a literal one. Sometimes it works for me (Sword of Damocles is the best Titan novel, and if you disagree with me, I will fight you over it) and sometimes it does not ("Chiaroscuro"). This is a weird story, where Ezri discovers that on a pre-DS9 mission Jadzia found a key to resetting the universe, set up a maze to access based on Dante's Inferno and knowledge of her past hosts, and then wiped the whole incident from her own memory. There's a lot of great imagery here, but it's used in service of a series of weird and arbitrary puzzles. Plus for some reason everyone in this story gives mission briefings that omit essential information, which may build suspense, but is hard to believe.

"Face Value" by Una McCormack (Kira and Garak and Damar, Season Seven)
Una McCormack can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned, and this story confirms it. Set during the Season Seven Kira-on-Cardassia arc, this story expands on its events, and lets us see more of how Kira and Garak were able to work with the man who killed Tora Ziyal. McCormack is famous for her capturing of the voice of Garak, but here she shows that she also gets Kira and Damar perfectly as well. A great story about how three people from very different walks of life can come together under a common cause they never even thought they'd have in common. (Also it has a shifty fellow in it named "Vilar," who is so totally Blake's 7's Vila, played by the excellent Michael Keating.)

"The Calling" by Andrew J. Robinson (Garak, long after Season Seven)
This is a weird story, and I'm not convinced it makes sense. I like a lot of the individual components (the deterioration of Cardassia, Garak visiting Paris), but the story doesn't always successfully integrate them: if Garak is going to Paris to get help for Cardassia, why does he assume a cover identity and need to get a job while he's there? Robinson is, of course, the only person better at capturing Garak's voice than McCormack, so the story is worth it for that if nothing else, and it's filled with lovely Garakian insights into the human (and Cardassian) condition. I haven't yet read any Star Trek novels that take place after The Next Generation: Losing the Peace; do they deal with any of what's going on in here? I know Bashir becomes a Section 31 agent, which I guess could explain why Garak can't make contact with him.

"Revisited" by Anonymous (Jake Sisko, even longer after Season Seven)
The whole book has a nice little frame sequence that shows how "The Visitor" played out in the Prime timeline, where Jake wasn't warped by losing his father at a young age. (I shall remain convinced it was written by Marco Palmieri until someone comes forth to prove otherwise.) It's pretty nice, except that the whole thing is premised on a statement Melanie makes to Jake: "In all your writings, you never talk about the station where you grew up. About Deep Space 9." But Jake's first book is, according to "You Are Cordially Invited," a set of stories about the Dominion Occupation of the station!

During Marco Palmieri's time at Simon & Schuster, he edited four anniversary anthologies: Prophecy and Change for Deep Space Nine's tenth anniversary in 2003, Distant Shores for Voyager's tenth in 2005, Constellations for the original's 40th in 2006, and The Sky's the Limit for The Next Generation's twentieth in 2007. Together, they constitute one of my favorite parts of Star Trek fiction, and though Constellations is probably my favorite, Prophecy and Change is next. The richness of the Deep Space Nine tapestry means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; it's great to see the characters grow and change all over again.

Of the various Star Trek television series that have aired over the years, my favorite is Deep Space Nine. Unlike the rest, this series had an engaging backstory, intrigue, and a little mysticism thrown in for good measure. I was disappointed when the series ended, but evidently others feel the same way. A host of authors have continued the DS9 saga in print and this collection of short stories features their work. Read it.

Of particular interest are the stories by Andrew J. Robinson, the actor who plays Garak, Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels, and Jeffrey Lang.

This book, part of the tenth-anniversary DS9 celebration, was edited by Marco Palmieri and published in trade paperback by Pocket Books. ( )

This is an anthology of ten longish stories focusing on the characters of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine set from right after the pilot episode "Emissary" to well after the end of the series in the aftermath of the Dominion War. I find that Star Trek pro-fiction can be rather hit or miss--and at first I thought this would be a miss. Editors usually choose their strongest story to open an anthology, hoping those taking a look will be pulled in. I wasn't taken with Summer's "Ha'mara" and left it thinking that if this were a novel, I might have stopped here, but being an anthology, the other entries might prove stronger--and after all, going by series chronological order as this book was, this being the first didn't mean this was the best the anthology had to offer. I was in the middle of the Martin and Magels' "The Orb of Opportunity," centered on Nog, when I decided that rather than putting the book down, I could just skip to the next story. The next story "Broken Oaths" about Bashir and O'Brien and a crises in their friendship was in my estimation just okay.

It says a lot about how strong were almost all the following stories that I wound up rating the book so highly. I adored "...Loved I Honor More" a humorous story about Quark and his Klingon lady love. "Three Sides to Every Story" is a poignant tale about a friendship between Ziyal and Jake during the Dominion occupation of the station. I very much liked the thoughtful Jarman story, "The Devil You Know" centered on Jadzia--and the ending was both perfect for the story and ironically poignant given Jadzia's fate. Lang's "Foundlings" was another thoughtful story and deft character portrait--and as fitting concerning a story centered on Odo, a well-done mystery. Thorne's "Chiascuro" was not only a good Ezri story, but featured the strongest use of science fiction elements in the book. I thought McCormack's "Face Value" the standout story in the book, the one that provoked the greatest emotional reaction--the ending both gave me chills and made me choke up at the same time. I didn't feel Robinson's "The Calling" was a strong closer. Centered on Garak and written by the actor who played him, it was based on a post-Deep Space Nine novel by Robinson, and it may be that not having read that book blunted it's impact, that this just isn't a story that can stand on its own.

Overall I wouldn't say this is as strong as the other Deep Space Nine anthology edited by Palmieri I just read, The Lives of Dax--but ultimately, there were some fine stories here that raised it for me to a keeper. ( )