Gulliver's Fugatives
ISBN: 9781852862862
Description
When a crew from the Enterprise are beamed onto the planet Rampart - a world where works of fiction are considered the ultimate crime - they find themselves in the middle of a civil war. A war which will determine not only the future of the planet, but the life of Captain Picard as well.
Reviewed on 19th April 2025
The eleventh numbered Next Generation novel comes from 1990, and somehow has a feel of being science fiction from that era.
It’s a Troi-focussed novel, which does feel like a cool choice for during the series’ airing, and sees her experiencing other-worldly alien visitors to her mind, as well as her visiting a planet where fiction and imagination are entirely outlawed.
It’s a very interesting concept and there’s lots of cool sci-fi around how such a world might work. But I think what I was most interested in were some of the new characters that the author concocted to join the Enterprise crew, including a second blind character to work with LaForge and explore other assistive technology choices of the future.
As a narrative, I found it slightly hard going. The text felt somehow denser than in a 2020s novel, and so it took me longer than expected to get through, without the constant impetus to read that I get with some novels.