Wing Commander - Pilgrim Stars

Peter Telep

This is the first novel I have read by this author, so I purchased this novel based on the fact that it was Wing Commander, not by who wrote it. That aside I think that he did a good job and that it was a well-written novel, it definitely flowed well and was some nice light reading.

The light reading comment may be purely based on the fact that I started reading it straight after the appendices at the end of the Lord of the Rings. The part that did me in was the section on the languages, I found it a little hard to follow due to the linguistic jargon used to describe how things should work in the various tongues of middle earth.

This novel had a very cool layout, the best feature of this layout was the little readouts at the start of each chapter. The readouts stated what part of space it revolved around plus a time and date, helpful for keeping track of things as well as being very different to what is seen in most novels. Usually you just have a chapter heading, this had actual information.

Pilgrim stars is a novel that is what I assume to be a part of a series, although this is the only book I have managed to find from it. It is based on a movie that was based on a series of computer games.

The Wing Commander series and assorted spin offs rates as basically my all-time favorite series of computer games. As of number 3 they went to live actors doing the cut scenes quite revolutionary really. First two are a little vague as far as my recollection goes since they cam out so long ago. First one that I really remember is Privateer, finished that and Privateer 2 (also had live action cut scenes). I finished Prophecy and am now going back to play number 3. Don't think I ever played the fourth one, might have to see if I can hunt it down after I finish 3.

I don't know how well the movie went, it only lasted two weeks in the cinema's here, relegated to the very crappy cinemas by week two, that is probably not the best indication though, since anything that isn't huge is lucky to last into week three unless it is in one of the independent cinemas. When I went to see it there was probably ten people in the theater and all of them were obviously there because they were huge fans of the computer games.

Basically the events in the book seem to be set not long after the events in the movie, the tiger claw has just taken on some re-enforcements after the climactic battle against the Kilrathi in the movie. The movie mostly revolves around the first game with some elements of the second.

For those that haven't played the games and therefore didn't go see the movie, a few things need to be pointed out about the universe, if I can ever find some of the other books I will cover all of this in the series overview, but until that time I am not going to do one so this will have to do.

Wing Command revolves around Terran(human) pilots, it is set some time in the future an the human race has gone off and colonised the stars with the help of a sub species of mutants known as the Pilgrims who with the use of their mutations managed to navigate gravity wells and find a way to travel quickly via jump points through space.

After a civil war at some point between the Pilgrims and the regular humans everything got back on track and the Humans had time to pick a fight with the Kilrathi. The Kilrathi are a warrior race that are basically giant humanoid cats, the have an imperial form of government with an emperor ruling over a number of clans. They are definitely not cuddly.

The human confederation is a basically a space navy that flies around with carriers etc doing what the military do best, fighting wars, killing and blowing things up.

This story revolves around the Tiger Claw and its crew (a carrier that has seen better days), a rogue Confederation super carrier that is being run by Pilgrim revolutionaries and a Kilrathi battle group that are out for revenge after the rogue carrier took out some of their number.

The Main character is Blair, a Confederation pilot who is half Pilgrim. He is also basically the main character in the earlier games. Mark Hamill played him in the games that have live action, although the character is significantly older by that point. Other supporting character for the most part are familiar, they were in the movie and were in the games.

This whole novel revolves around everyone trying to stop the rogue carrier or capture it, and a new drive that they have installed onboard that creates its own sub space disturbance eliminating the need to use jump points. This disturbance also doubles as a very nasty weapon.

The Author of this novel (Peter Telep) took the somewhat strange step of putting his email address in the back of the book so that people could contact him. It is as follows if anyone is interested. Peter Telep. Keep in mind that the book was published in 1999 so it may no longer exists, one would assume it has been thoroughly spammed to death my now. I am however seriously considering sending an email to say "look here is a review".

Reading the bit in the back it seems he has also wrote spin offs novels from the Space Above and Beyond series, I really liked that series but like most sci-fi is disappeared very quickly. I think I may have liked it because it was a lot like Wing Commander. He also wrote some of the Descent novels (another computer game).