Dwellers in the Crucible

Did You Know?

• Fantasy Review recommended the novel despite its minor flaws, calling it an excellent study of values.
• Author Keith R. A. DeCandido recalled in 2009 that Dwellers had a cool story and that he didn't know a Star Trek book could do that.

Plot

On Vulcan, each Federation world provides a hostage, called a Warrantor of the Peace, who is executed if their planet attacks another. During a Romulan abduction, the Andorian hostage is killed, and Klingons working for the Romulans torture the three Deltan hostages to death. The story centers on the cultural clash and growing bond between the two survivors, T'Shael and Cleante.

Themes

Bonanno's concept of Warrantors of the Peace implements Roger Fisher's 1981 proposal that the officer accompanying the U.S. President with nuclear launch codes should have those codes implanted in his heart, to be cut out by the President in the event of war. In a 2019 interview, Bonanno described the practice of taking hostages to maintain peace as a custom going back to ancient times, where a leader's son was raised by a former ally and sacrificed if either side invaded.

Controversy

In 1992, Bonanno was contracted by Pocket Books to write a follow-up to Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Her manuscript, Music of the Spheres, reintroduced Dwellers characters Cleante and T'Shael and focused on them rather than familiar television characters. By 1992, Paramount Pictures had introduced standards outlawing extensive use of original characters. The story was heavily rewritten, then rewritten by Gene DeWeese, and published as Probe with Bonanno still named as author. Bonanno stated that only one page of the published novel resembled what she had written.