That’s *before* the title page, which reads weird, since it’s “Star Trek: The Motion Picture. A novel”

Anyway there’s then a preface by Admiral Kirk where he explains that James is a family name, that he’s tired of explaining Tiberius, and that he has his dad’s last name because his dad was really conservative and most humans don’t follow that custom anymore outside of Starfleet.

Then comes a couple pages about how Starfleet found that of the people they sent into space, the best and brightest did the worst and his class at the academy was the first to be admitted in the basis of having “limited intellectual ability” by comparison.

This, of course, gets completely contradicted everywhere else in Trek, including in Roddenberry’s own descriptions of humanity in the future being basically all unparalleled geniuses. I wonder who wrote this book...oh, it’s Roddenberry

Kirk’s preface ends with a lament that he’s so widely celebrated when 94 people died during his 5-year mission, all of whom he blames himself for. He closes by saying that the rest of the book is 100% true.

Then comes “Gene Roddenberry’s” preface. He’s writing in the character of a documentarian who recorded Kirk’s 5 years and sent those missions back to Earth for the public to learn about what happens on a starship

But rest assured, the book will be 100% faithful to the events, because he had everyone depicted (except Decker and Ilia I assume) proofread and submit corrections

So the book itself starts with Kirk on vacation and a transceiver Starfleet put in his brain for emergencies sends him the opening sequence with the Klingons attacking the cloud. So remember, that sequence was recorded by a probe sent from Epsilon IX and beamed to Kirk’s brain while he was browsing the Library of Alexandria.

He understands that they’ve become “wall exhibits in hell” and then wonders where those words came from, but knows the cloud is heading towards Earth

There’s a funny footnote here about how the brain transceiver was secret because Starfleet didn’t want people to think it was doing brain control stuff like what led to “the bloody Mind Control Revolts of 2043-47”

And whew, chapter 2 is something else. Spock is finishing Kohlinar, and we learn that 9 seasons on Vulcan are 2.8 years on Earth. Then comes the footnote. The footnote with Roddenberry explaining this word that he invented for the book for Spock to call Kirk that means both brother and lover, but it’s definitely brother...

And to prove it, Kirk adds to the footnote that he didn’t even know about K/S and is completely open to the idea of it, but doesn’t want to think he’d be “so foolish that I would select a love partner who came into sexual heat only once every seven years”

So to recap, Roddenberry invents a word that means both brother and lover, says Spock must have meant it as brother and writes Kirk not denying that he and Spock were lovers.

and how does this chapter close? Spock hears Vejur (book spelling) and then when T’sai is mind melding with him, he hears his definitely-not-lover’s thoughts from a dozen ly away and T’sai is just, “*sigh* your answer lies elsewhere”

She’s flat out telling him that purging all emotion isn’t going to help him with the way he feels toward Kirk - feelings strong enough to hear his th’y’la’s thoughts from a dozen light years away. She knows, and we all do too.

Chapter 3 is Kirk going to a base on Gibraltar to talk to an admiral he dated for a year after getting back to Earth and we learn that Starfleet manipulated him into accepting a promotion as a way of keeping their now-famous captain out of danger, that McCoy was so angry about it that he quit, and that his relationship with admiral Ciani was set up by Starfleet so he’d forget all about the Enterprise (and Spock tbh)

There’s also a casual mention of how the Mediterranean had been drained and turned into a giant garden. Here’s a video on how that might turn out. Hint: not well https://youtu.be/fQh0CPNzSmY

Anyway, he was so out of it when he got promoted that he forgot that Will Decker was captain of the Enterprise based on his recommendation. He also realizes that since the cloud is going the unbelievably incredible speed of ciswarp 7, it’ll be at Earth before any other ships can intercept.

This doesn’t make sense since ciswarp 7 isn’t that fast in the TOS or TNG warp scales - it would take a week or two to cross a single sector at that speed.

An aside here, according to the ciswarp chart in the encyclopedia, an average of warp 8 would be all that would be needed for Voyager to cover 70,000 light years in 70 years. At ciswarp 9.9, which is below the ships stated cruise velocity, it would take 21 years.

Anyway, the year with admiral Ciani is described like this

“She has been perfection - lover, friend, wife, mother and in every other role and joy she supplied as he slowly recovered from the fatigue and emotional wounds of those five long years out there. They had lived the basic and simple one-year arrangement together - but those months had been memorable ones. He had not been aware, at least not consciously, that during that time she had been something of a surrogate Enterprise to him”

Uhh...I have some questions and thoughts

So the book progresses as any novelization would, Kirk’s arrival at Starfleet HQ, his brief exchange with Cmdr Sonak (incl that Vulcan’s consider someone calling out to you in a crowd an invasion of privacy), Kirk’s meeting where Nogura goes a record length without cutting someone off (12 minutes), Kirk going up to the centroplex to be ferried over to the Enterprise and then we get another gem, which is in the image description.

(For those who can’t see the image desc (and the next bit from the scene))

Kirk searched for some some phrase, some description that expressed what he was feeling. Was [the Enterprise] like a lovely woman? No; at this moment she was more than that to him. A fable? A myth come alive? Yes, that was it! She was as Aphrodite must have been when Zeus first raised her up from the sea, naked and shockingly beautiful.

“Raised up by who, sir?” It was Scott giving him a puzzled look. Kirk realized that he must have said some part of it aloud.

Kirk’s *really* glad to be back. He’s been gone for almost 3 years and is noting subtle differences in how the turbolift feels. The next bit plays out like in the movie, although Shatner played it much more coldly than the text implies, which is good for the overall character arc of the story (that Kirk was listless and depressed, until he got his metal wife and Vulcan boyfriend back). Then we get to the transporter accident.

The transporter accident, is pretty graphic in describing what happened (they materialized inside out), and we learn that the other person is admiral Ciani - the former girlfriend who was his surrogate Enterprise. He doesn’t know why she was trying to beam aboard, and the Enterprise killed her like a jealous lover?

It said earlier that her specialty was “zeno-psychspecialty” and if anyone knows what that is, @ me.