DeWeese Passes
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Star Trek author Thomas Eugene DeWeese passed away in March at the age of seventy-eight.
DeWeese was the author of half a dozen original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation novels, which he authored under the name Gene DeWeese.
The prolific DeWeese was a technical writer as well as a fiction author, writing manuals and programmed instructions texts for the Apollo space program. He became a freelance author in 1974 and published over forty books; including non-fiction, science fiction, horror, mysteries, gothics and children’s fiction.
His Star Trek novels include: The Peacekeepers, Engines of Destiny, Chain of Attack, Into the Nebula, The Final Nexus, and Renegade.
DeWeese won several writers’ awards along the way, and was nominated for a Nebula. Chain of Attack, his first Star Trek novel, made the 1987 New York Times bestseller’s list.
Married to wife Beverly for fifty-seven years, DeWeese is survived by her, and by his mother-in-law, brothers-in-law and various nieces and nephews.
Thanks to garamet for the tip.
About The Author
How sad. I always enjoyed his Star Trek novels.
Sad to hear this, especially since The Final Nexus is one of the first Trek novels I remember reading. Worth noting though:
1) “Chain of Command, his first Star Trek novel” should read “Chain of Attack”.
2) In case anyone missed it above (it’s in the article, but I breezed over it myself), this occurred five months ago. This is the first time I’ve noticed it posted on any Trek news site though.
His talents will be sadly missed.
I enjoyed Chain of Attack, but Engines of Destiny was the worst Scotty-centric novel ever – he just didn’t get the character at all, changing him from the tough, hard-bitten, authoritative guy we met in TOS to a whining drunk who couldn’t accept that people (including legendary Captains) died in the course of Starfleet duty. Haven’t read his Next Gen stuff, maybe that was better.
It’s also worth noting that the final copy of the novel Probe, even though it says Margaret Wander Bonnano on the cover, was apparently mostly written by DeWeese.
It went through several rewrites, you can find the whole saga on garamet’s website: http://www.margaretwanderbonanno.com/bio.htm
It’s probably his best book, even though his name isn’t on the cover.
I thought Chain of Attack was one of the better TOS novels.
Sorry to hear he is no longer with us.
$*#@! Missed that. At least it was another Star Trek reference. :p
Thanks.