I just finished Starhyke: A Dark Future Past (2025) by A.S. Charly, published by Starry Eyed Press and I must say it doesn’t disappoint.

The novel is based on the 2009 British television/comedy Starhyke (Starhyke as in “hike”, “Star Trek.” Get it?).

I’d never heard of the television show before I became aware of the book, but it seemed like an interesting concept. The Amazon blurb for the TV show says:

In the year 3034 the human race has found a way to make itself emotionless and has taken over most of the galaxy, subduing or destroying any alien race it discovers. The last race to oppose the humans are the peaceable Reptids, who are determined to stop them at any cost.

Basically, in this galactic space opera, Earth people are the bad guys, having suppressed all of their emotions. the alien Reptids are fighting back, trying to give humans back their emotions with a virus so they’ll stop being so aggressive. Seems intriguing, but apparently, there’s a reason the show was cancelled after one season. Again, according to an Amazon review of the show:

I love sci-fi, am a huge fan of Claudia Christian in the Babylon 5 universe and I love sci-fi comedy like Red Dwarf, The Orville etc. But they need to have a decent plot and the humour has to be well…funny. This is just bad slapstick with lots of sexual jokes with a weak ill thought out plot set in sci-fi spaceship setting. The acting is awful. Even Claudia – by far the best in the cast – isn’t at her best. If you must torture yourself, watch it with friends and have something else going on.

And that was that.

Until the author and publisher contacted series creator Andrew Dymond. You can read the detail in an interview with the author. Season two had already been plotted out, so there was plenty for Charly to work with in writing a book.

I contacted her and asked how much I needed to know about the show to be able to read, understand, and review the book. She assured me there was enough preamble info in the book to bring me up to speed.

I almost didn’t need it.

The crew of the Nemesis, Earth’s flagship, had been infected with a virus that restored their pesky human emotions. That included their soon-to-be-sapient computer core Daphne. Pursuing their enemy the Reptids, they end up not only traveling back to the 21st century but being stranded here.

A rogue sapient hologram called “Hologram” takes over the Nemesis. Most of the crew escapes and one of those trapped onboard, Sally Popyatopov, torturously becomes the new computer core. Only Reg Duck manages to stay on the ship and escape detection.

But that was five years ago. That’s a long time to fight a guerilla war hiding in the sewers of the ship.

Now the Hologram and reprogrammed cyborg Dotty-Ky, along with a group of mercenaries and bounty hunters use the Nemesis to roam 21st century space committing whatever heinous crimes that come to mind.

On Earth, the crew has been scattered for the past five years. Captain Belinda Blowhard is a long-haul trucker. Engineers Hole and Wang run a pizza joint in Venice, California, and Wu Off and Ox have more exotic (violent) career paths.

But it’s Commander William Cropper who finds one of their crashed escape craft in the arctic and recovers the computer core. With a duplicate of Daphne, they hijack an antique Earth space craft, retrofit it with a futuristic drive, and seek out their old ship, all with the help of a member of the enemy race the Reptids, Commander Sark.

A lot of the character names reminded me of Star Trek characters, specifically Star Trek: The Next Generation. You may have picked up on that, yourself.

As far as comedy goes, the book didn’t exactly have me in proverbial stitches, but then comedy is hard to write. I found that the concept and how Charly expanded it served just as well as a drama, so I was satisfied.

I read the book in digital format, but in print, it’s 255 pages long, a very quick and easy read. Actually, I thought it was a little too quick. There’s a lot in a TV show that can be presented with a quick glance, but books have to describe all that in more detail. I found myself wishing the novel would have taken more time to explore the lives of stranded space conquerors from the future and how they had adapted to life in the past for five long years.

I did think that stealing an old, decommissioned NASA space craft at a science fiction convention in Salt Lake City and refitting it with 31st century technology in a few hours, making it not only space worthy but FTL capable was more than a stretch, but I guess comedy hath its privileges.

Of course the book is set up for sequels, or I hope so, because as far as I’m concerned, the adventures of the crew of the Nemesis are just beginning.

Kudos to A.S. Charly on a fine piece of adaptation and expansion on the original concept. I’d like to read more.

Five stars on both Amazon and Goodreads.