If Not For Brent Spiner, I’d Be Illiterate.

Okay, this is not entirely true. But, it’s pretty close.

Here’s the deal: I love to read. I’m always reading something. I can’t walk into a bookstore without walking out with something. As soon as I read the last sentence of one book, I immediately read the first sentence of another. But, when I was a kid, I hated to read. Hated it. Hated. If I had to write a book report in elementary school, I’d read the back cover and skim the first and last chapters to get a vague idea of what the book was about.

What the hell happened? you ask.

This happened:

I was a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I recall seeing a handful of episodes from the original series on Saturday afternoons as a kid, but TNG was what really introduced me to the Trek universe. So, imagine my surprise when I came across this book. A novel. About the crew of the Enterprise. Holy shit, right? I devoured it, followed by several other ST:TNG novels. I was a reader…and it was all thanks to the media tie-in novel. (Okay, I think the Sherlock Holmes stories probably came first…but, otherwise I stand by the previous statements.)

From then on, if someone wrote a book based on a show or movie I liked, I’d usually check it out. I’ve read books based on The X-Files, Quantum Leap, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, various iterations of Star Trek, Farscape, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones. I’ve read books based on comic books, too. The medium doesn’t always translate well to straight prose…but, Andrew Vachss’ Batman: The Ultimate Evil stands out as being an excellent example of literature of any genre. On my bookshelves at the moment, I have tie-in novels of Bones and Criminal Minds waiting for me. I’m tempted to check out the novels based on Monk, Psych, and Burn Notice. I’d kill for novels based on the new Abrams-verse Star Trek or Leverage.

Why am I telling you all this? I don’t know…maybe because I can.