Brent Spiner is best known for his work on Star Trek: The Next Generation as the android Data. During his years on the show, he had some intense fans. Now, he’s opening up about those years and telling us all about it, in a part-fictional, part-autobiographical story filled with inside views of Star Trek and Hollywood and becoming an iconic character in the minds of fans.
One day, the Paramount mail guy brings a box to Brent’s trailer as he’s removing the yellow Data makeup. The smell alone makes him worry, so he goes for backup—LeVar Burton. But even LeVar’s sage smudge stick isn’t enough to touch that, so he calls Paramount security to come and take a look. What they find is a severed pig penis, so the head of security takes that right away.
Brent is unnerved, but it’s not until he finds the letter the next day that he is truly worried. The letter—no return address, of course—is mildly threatening and signed, “Lal.” Fans of the show may recognize that name. There is an episode called “The Offspring,” where Data tries to create a child for himself. Sadly, the “child” ends up suffering systemic neural failure and cannot be saved. The fan writing this letter (and sending pig parts) thinks she is Data’s daughter and repeatedly calls him “Daddy.”
Eventually, the police get involved, and Brent meets Ortiz, the Head of Obsessives. He’s a big fan of the show, so he understands the significance of “Lal.” In fact, at the end of their meeting, he hands Brent a spec script he’s written for the show, “Ortiz and Data,” where Data time travels to modern day and solves crime with Ortiz.
But when one of the Lal letters includes a razor blade that ends up cutting a postal worker, the FBI gets involved. Agent Cindy Lou Jones shows up on Paramount’s set to talk to Brent and his co-workers about the stalker letters, and that’s how he finds out that Jonathan Frakes’ wife, legendary soap actress Genie Francis, has also received a letter from Lal.
Then Brent starts getting letters from Mrs. Loretta Gibson, who talks about the flirty phone call they shared, and he gets a mysterious phone message telling him to check with a psychiatrist in Duluth, Minnesota about the fan letters, Dr. Sandra Ogilvy from the Franklin Kurtz Mental Health Facility for Children. Brent talks to FBI agent Cindy Lou about how he’s getting worried about his safety, so she suggests a personal bodyguard, namely, her twin sister Candy Lou Jones.
As Brent tries to stay alive and navigate the strangeness that is Hollywood (the pizza delivery driver who steals a roof tile from his house, having famed neurologist Oliver Sacks suddenly appear in his trailer, embarrassing himself at the urinals of Chasen’s by saying the wrong thing to Gregory Peck, etc.), he is also dealing with nightmares that incorporate his present day situation with a time in his childhood under a physically and emotionally abusive stepfather.
As Brent’s stalker gets closer, he gets closer too, to the healing he’s been craving and the love he’s always wanted. But will they catch his stalker before she takes that future away from him?
Fan Fiction is Brent Spiner’s first novel, and it is a masterful blend of truth and fantasy. Getting to hear bits and pieces of his real life on the Star Trek set, including moments with each cast member that feel authentic and warm, is a bonus for any TNG fan, and his love of the show business comes through in each chapter. There are lots of references to old movies he loves, classic stars, and Frank Sinatra songs.
My favorite thing about this novel is the characters. Everyone is interesting, and it seems like each character is more interesting than the last. There are twists you can’t anticipate and will absolutely not see coming. But underneath the wackiness of the story, and this surprised me, was a bittersweet honesty about his personal struggles with inadequacy and childhood trauma. I’m not sure how much of that was true, but it reads as being believable to the main character.
This was a fun read that I couldn’t wait to dive into, and I was not disappointed. My only disappointment is that I got the book and not the audio version, which Spiner reads himself. Next time I read Fan Fiction, I will not make that same mistake. I will listen to the author read it to me as he wrote it, and I will enjoy every word.
Egalleys for Fan Fiction were provided by St. Martin’s Press through NetGalley, with many thanks.
