Obsessed With Star Trek

There are a lot of Star Trek trivia quiz books, going back to Bart Andrews and Brad Dunning's unauthorized Star Trek Quiz Book, published by Signet back in 1977. But nothing quite like Chip Carter's recent Obsessed With Star Trek. The 2500 questions range through every season of Trek (including TAS) and every movie. But that's not the main selling point. Not only is this one a hardcover, it's got a computer module built in. And the answers aren't printed in the book itself; you have to use the module.

Apparently there's a series of these but it's the first one I've seen. And I like it. There are multiple game modes. You can play solo or with a friend, and can play question select mode, where you enter the number of a question in the book, or random mode, where the module presents a number (like 2371 in the book cover image), you look it up, then press the A, B, C, or D button to answer. The game tells you whether you're right or wrong and keeps score. I played through 100 random questions, solo, and ended up with a score of 77%. Out of those hundred questions, there were three repeats, which isn't too bad. I wouldn't have thought I'd do very well on Voyager or Enterprise questions, considering how few of those I've seen more than once (some I still haven't seen at all), but these aren't really aimed at the most hardcore fans.

The book's pages tend to have eight or so questions; there are a lot of black and white photo illustrations, and occasional big special questions preceded by a few paragraphs of text. As for the module, the batteries can be replaced.

I was initially a bit skeptical about getting yet another trivia book but the game element really does make this different. I'd expect it could be a lot of fun at fan gatherings, but you can be entertained playing solo, too. Worth a look. If the $29.95 US cover price seems a bit steep, try online retailers like Amazon.