The Autobiography of Mr. Spock

by Una McCormack

Genres: Media Tie-In; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

The iconic Star Trek character’s lifestory appears for the first time in his own words; perfect for fans of the upcoming Star Trek: Strange New Words.



One of Starfleet’s finest officers and the Federation’s most celebrated citizens reveals his life story. Mr Spock explores his difficult childhood on Vulcan with Michael Burnham, his controversial enrolment at Starfleet Academy, his time on the Enterprise with both Kirk and Pike, and his moves to his diplomatic and ambassadorial roles, including his clandestine mission to Romulus.
 
Brand-new details of his life on Vulcan and the Enterprise are revealed, along with never-before-seen insights into Spock’s relationships with the most important figures in his life, including Sarek, Michael Burnham, Christopher Pike, Kirk, McCoy and more, all told in his own distinctive voice.

Release date: September 14, 2021

Publisher: Titan Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

POINT OF ENTR Y–2387ShiKahr, Vulcan

IT HAS LONG BEEN MY CUSTOM, BEFORE EMBARKING UPON A GREAT VOYAGE, TO SET MY AFFAIRS IN ORDER. I am motivated, in part, by a desire to make this as straightforward and painless as possible for the executors of my will. But the practice is also—perhaps substantially—for my own benefit, providing an opportunity to reflect upon what has gone before. Nevertheless, although I began writing the story of my life once before, this was never completed, and I find that I contemplate resuming work on this with some trepidation. To revisit years and people long gone, to reflect upon what has been learned—who among us, even the most ascetic, after a long life filled with incident, would not find this task a challenge? Still, I leave very soon upon an uncertain mission, and I cannot leave this book unwritten.

If I were writing for a Vulcan reader, I would not need, I think, to explain the nature and the purpose of such a volume. And while I know you in particular, my reader, are a person not only of information but also of knowledge and wisdom, I must not assume that this tradition and ritual are known to you. What you hold in your hands is the product of a continuing series of rituals performed by Vulcans in old age. I will spare you the details of the rest—I suspect you can easily imagine the many and intricate meditations I have performed in recent years, with varying degrees of self-denial—but this one I shall explain to you in more depth. This book you hold is called the t’san a’lat, which translates (I give a rough translation here; certain nuances are, necessarily, lost) a “wisdom book”. It is the physical manifestation of the lifelong practice of t’san s’at, the intellectual deconstruction of emotional patterns in which every Vulcan engages in order to turn impulse into considered action. We are often considered a cerebral culture, my friend, but we are wise enough to know that our minds are embodied and take physical form. It is with this knowledge that the wisdom book is best understood: the summation of an individual’s life and experiences, gathered together in one place to pass on to whomever comes afterwards.

Allow me to explain in a little more detail the form that the “wisdom book” takes. I should note, before giving this overview, that my version will, by necessity, stray from tradition in significant ways. I am not, after all, entirely Vulcan. But were you to examine the many volumes held in the vast echoing undercrofts of the many archives dotted throughout our cities, a man such as you would quickly identify the standard form. The t’san a’lat guides us through the three “ages” of a Vulcan life. First, we have ro’fori, or the acquisition of information, that period of youth when the mind is most nimble and can seemingly learn an almost limitless number of facts. After that comes fai-tukh, the height of one’s life when this bedrock of information is operationalized as practical knowledge of the world, when we begin to see the patterns of life, and can draw upon what has happened before for each new challenge and dilemma. Last of all comes kau, that stage of life when our experiences become as rich as a tapestry wrought by the finest weavers of T’Paal, and the luckiest of us acquire a kind of wisdom—or, at least, continue to hold out the hope that wisdom might yet be acquired. Such a structure of life’s journey is not particular to Vulcan, of course. There are many similar ideas on Earth, of course, as I do not need to tell you. I am sure that you are thinking already of Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man, or the idea of the “late style” that emerges in writers beyond their hundredth year. I mention such things to evidence as early as possible in this text that my human education has not been lacking.

But my questionable half-humanity would soon become clear to any entirely Vulcan reader of this book. This is because I have deviated significantly from what one would expected to find in the t’san a’lat. Each section of a traditional wisdom book documents, meticulously, a situation in an individual’s life in which some dilemma or crisis or peril has been resolved through the application of logic. Logic must, after all, prevail. The intention is that by examining such situations, the reader steadily acquires a bank of wisdom upon which they may draw in their own life. In my time at the learning domes, I read over two thousand examples of the t’san a’lat, my friend, and while I did learn a great deal from them, not once did I find an example that reflected back my own hybridity. I have therefore broken substantially with this form. Much of what I have learned in the course of my long life has come through my encounters with others. My t’san a’latreflects this. The individual sections of my t’san a’latcontain reflections upon the most significant people in my life. A “true” t’san a’lat would scorn such an approach as subjective and therefore worthless. I leave you, and any other reader to whom you choose to give this book, to decide. You will see, therefore, that each section bears the name of someone whom I loved. On one occasion, I have used the word “Enterprise”. I note that here I might well also have used the word “family”. I believe that you, my friend, of all people, will understand.

Let me turn to you now; any book must, after all, consider to whom it is addressed. The traditional t’san a’lat is most usually addressed to children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. I have no direct blood descendants. No child, or grandchild, or great-grandchild to remember me fondly or respectfully. Posterity is another audience, of course, and while I am prepared to admit that many of my actions have had significance—or that, at least, I have been lucky to play a part in great events and changes—it is not within my nature to address the world so publicly. I have chosen you, my friend, not least because I trust your judgment as to whether there is wider value in the experiences I have documented here. You will know what should or should not be shared more generally, and when we reach those parts of my life when secrecy has, hitherto, been necessary, I will alert you—and trust to your discretion as to what should be kept secret, and what can now be revealed.

But there are, if you will forgive me, other reasons for choosing you as my audience, my inheritor. You, surely, will understand the nature of the mission upon which I shall be embarking in the next few days. You, surely, better than most, understand the draw of Romulus, and the Romulan people, and the desire to bring succor. I believe I do not have to explain myself here to you, of all people, who sacrificed everything for this cause. But I also give this book to you, Jean-Luc, because I hope you might benefit personally from what I have written. The twists and turns of history have, I think, dealt you some hard blows in recent years, ones that are not just reward for the man that you are, and the work that you have done. If anything in this book resonates with you, then by this alone the writing will have been justified. If this book shows you a path forward, then I will have done more than I dared hope.

Two years ago, after your resignation, you invited me to visit you in La Barre. It is, and will be, one of the great regrets of my life that I never had the chance to take you up on this kind offer. As the great friends of my early life moved on or passed away, the opportunity to cultivate new friendships has been a most treasured aspect of this, my later life. To you, then, Jean-Luc Picard, my friend, I give the book of my wisdom, such as it is, and I leave it to your own considerable reserves of wisdom to judge its value, and to decide what to do with whatever value it contains. I do not believe that I shall be here to see what you decide. I am setting out on another mission, one last voyage, in a long life filled with many strange and wonderful journeys. I hope that when you learn of my intentions, you will understand. I hope that you will read with interest and compassion. That, surely, is what we all, in the end, most desire.

 

RO’FORI—INFORMATION—2230–2254Amanda

ON VULCAN, CHILDREN ARE TRAINED FROM A VERY EARLY AGE in techniques that allow them to exploit their memories to their fullest potential. The rationale is straightforward enough: to be able to make logical and well-informed decisions, one must have as many facts at one’s disposal as possible. Hence the rigorous education which we undergo. As a result, many Vulcans, when asked their earliest memory, will recall learning quotations, most usually from Surak, or a philosophical couplet from a poet such as T’Nar, whose uncomplicated yet carefully worked verses form a staple of early childhood reading, asking us to consider, in the simplest terms, the importance of acting only after reflection, and controlling our baser impulses. Others might remember their first encounter with geometrical shapes, or even a mathematical equation. My earliest memory is of my mother. I recall her scent, of sweet vinver; I remember her dark eyes looking down with love, and—most piercingly—I remember my hand reaching up to touch the necklace that she often wore. In this memory of mine, and I have no cause to doubt it, even though I lack independent verification, my fingers weave through the gold chain of the necklace; gently, my mother untangles them, and instead places my hand upon the pendant that it carries. This, I think, is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, other than my mother’s face. After a century-and-a-half, and a life spent dedicated to exploration and the study of some of the most profound sights that the universe has to offer, I am still moved by the thought of this symbol, and all that it means. We travel so far, and yet still, inevitably, we come back to the place where we started.

The pendant is a bronze disc, with a circular hole to one side. Across the disc is laid a silver triangle, and at the apex of the triangle there is a diamond. I remember how my mother held my hand to guide me around each part. I remember my enthrallment with the shapes, and my enchantment as she named circle, triangle, arc, jewel… I remember clasping the symbol, looping my fingers through the hole in the disc, connecting the tip of my thumb with the tip of my forefinger. Lamplight sparkling on the jewel, refracting many colors. Later, but not much later, my mother told me the name of this symbol, the Kol-Ut-Shan. Even as a small child, I realized that this symbol could be seen everywhere around my home: on the flags that stood outside big buildings; on pins and pendants worn by visitors to our home; even, as my mother told me once, in the way that a garden or shrine might be laid out. No wonder: the Kol-Ut-Shan is the fundamental principle of the Vulcan way of life, the first lesson that we learn: that life in the universe is infinitely diverse, in infinite combinations, and that we must acknowledge this diversity and respect it. This, above all, was the message that Surak taught, one of tolerance and inclusion. This is the principle that brought peace to Vulcan after so many years of bloody war, which has sustained that peace throughout the centuries, and which we brought—or have tried to bring—to the Federation of Planets of which we are a part. Kol-Ut-Shan, infinite diversity in infinite combinations. Accept difference, respect difference—come in peace.

Looking back over the long years of my life, I might wish that I had understood this lesson sooner and tried not to confine myself to one of the many labels which others sought to impose upon me. My life, I think, might have contained less struggle against the simple fact of my own nature. Let me be satisfied that I have come to such understanding. I comprehend fully now the sheer beauty of the overwhelming variety that exists in the universe, the impossibility of living reductively, the enlightenment—and, yes, the joy—that comes from embracing one’s fullest nature within a universe of wonders.

My mother was my constant companion in my early years. I learned to speak listening to her voice. I learned to walk holding her hand. And hers were the eyes through which I saw the outside world; the human prism through which I first viewed and came to comprehend Vulcan. I still, in many ways, see the world through her eyes. I know that many of my father’s peers believed that here lay his first mistake in my education, and there were times in my own youth when I myself wished that my humanity had not been so firmly, so indelibly marked upon me at such a young age. But now that she is gone, these memories of her are very precious to me, and I know without doubt that this human shaping of my Vulcan nature allowed the best parts of me to exist. It has been my observation that one of the gifts of middle age is to come to know one’s parents as an adult. To meet them again as peers. My mother died comparatively young, certainly by Vulcan standards, and even by human standards, and she and I were only beginning to come to know each other as friends and peers. In many ways, I feel that I never wholly knew her. Only after Amanda’s death, for example, did I come to realize how little I knew of the girl that she had been before she came to Vulcan. My mother was twenty-four when she met and married my father. She spent almost the rest of her life at his side. And despite the constancy of presence in my very early days, I am left with a sense that there was much about her that I never knew. It seems to me sometimes as if there was a shell around her that was almost impossible to break through, or as if she somehow already transcended the world, even in her youth. And yet, somehow, my father reached her. Whatever doubts and misunderstanding confused and complicated our lives together, I did not doubt that my mother loved my father, and my father loved my mother. I have never doubted this.

Over my years as a diplomat, I have encountered representatives from many species, and I have often needed to set individuals at ease. I have observed that one way to achieve this is to ask them to tell me the story of how they met their life partners. These stories naturally vary significantly depending on species. The shelthreth of the Andorians, for example, are constrained by the fact of their biology, requiring a partner from each of the four sexes, and with a cultural imperative for these unions to produce each child. The stories of meeting are highly stylized, ritualized, surrounded by ceremony. Even when species are more casual about their liaisons (I might include humans here), some tale is likely to be told. A version of this story-pattern can be found on almost every world. Even the highly solitary denizens of Kalestria, who rarely leave their hermitages, will tell of the fleeting encounters they have each equinox with their other-souls. (You may ask how I know this. I visited their world once, as an envoy from the Federation, and I met their representative for almost an hour. Hardly any time to me, after several weeks spent in flight to their world—although it was a lengthy meeting by their standards. Yet time was indeed found to tell exactly such a tale. “Look,” we often seem to want to say, as if to assure each other of our capacity to make connections, “we too can love.”)

But the story of how my father wooed my mother was not one told in our home. Later, when I visited on Earth and came to know my human family better, I learned the rough outline of events from my grandmother and my uncle. Amanda, during adolescence, became deeply absorbed in the history and philosophy of Vulcan, in particular the meditation practices which form such an everyday part of life on my homeworld. In part, this was a natural outgrowth from her maternal grandmother’s groundbreaking studies in xenology (my great-grandmother held a variety of chairs in her field at several prestigious institutions); in part, this was her own initiative. Something about the long history of that world fascinated her. Perhaps it was the contradictions: the bloody history; the stable present. Perhaps it was simply her romantic streak. Many adolescents become enamored with fantastical worlds, inhabiting them deeply and profoundly. It was simply that in my mother’s case, the fantastical world existed. My grandparents believed that the phase would pass, and that my mother was set upon becoming a teacher or educator, perhaps an educational psychologist, like her own mother. And so it seemed to be. Amanda loved teaching children and young people to explore their own capacity to learn, helping them discover the methods which were most successful for them to be able to develop not only their knowledge, but also their curiosity, and their capacity to frame questions, and their ability to then find appropriate means to answer them. These were the subjects she pursued at university.

As Amanda’s studies progressed toward doctoral level, her interests broadened into the training of the mind to its fullest potential. She began to study various meditative techniques, and here her interest in Vulcan practices was re-awakened. Before she ever set foot on Vulcan, she embarked upon some aspects of kohlinar. This word describes two closely related activities: the ritual by which it is shown that emotions have been fully purged, and also the series of mental disciplines undertaken to achieve this state. Not all Vulcans ever achieve this, and many human psychologists view the process with concern. My mother was rare in showing both interest and ability. She also became an expert on the concept of “flow”, that elusive state of mind that humans enter when they become most naturally and spontaneously creative, and which is so alien to the Vulcan approach of rigorous application of tried and tested methods. I believe that it is important to understand that she was not simply a convert. Toward the end of her postgraduate work, she was invited to attend a retreat on Vulcan devoted to the practice of t’san s’at, a relatively new discipline which seemed, as a result of its less stringent techniques, to have many potential benefits for non-Vulcans. Naturally, she went to this retreat—and here the information which my human relatives were able to supply becomes spotty. Amanda left for Vulcan, for, as far as they were aware, three months. Towards the end of her third month, she contacted my grandmother and grandfather to tell them that she was engaged to be married and would not be returning to Earth.

My grandmother, at this point in the story, would fall silent. My grandfather, if pressed, would say, “It was almost as if she were enamored…” An interesting word to apply to my father. I would not call him a charming man. He had gravitas, yes, and a quality that was not charisma, but which meant that one wished for his good opinion. It would be too easy, I think, to say that Amanda was somehow enchanted by Vulcan; that during that visit her adolescent imaginings were rekindled, and, coming under that world’s spell, she chose to remain there, to the end of her life. This is what her immediate family thought was the case, and I know, too, how saddened they were by her sudden and complete removal to Vulcan. My grandmother, right up to her death, believed that my mother’s chosen path had not brought her happiness. To their credit, my grandparents did not pass on to me their continuing bewilderment at her decision to marry my father. They did not like her choice, but they accepted it was hers to make.

But I knew what they thought, of course, and indeed at many times I have shared their puzzlement. Throughout my life, I often wondered what drew my mother—a woman not only of intelligence but also of passion, with an almost boundless capacity for love—to come to this world. Surely Vulcan—as an old friend of mine used to say—was cold-blooded and austere. Loveless. What, I would wonder, might possibly have drawn her to this world, and to my father, perhaps the most ascetic man that I have ever met? These questions must remain, to a large extent, unanswered, since both parties are now long dead. My mother, for all her practice of many Vulcan techniques, did not write a t’san a’lat, and, although I know that she kept a journal from her youth, and indeed I saw her writing on many occasions, I have never found it. Whether she destroyed it before her death, or my father destroyed it afterwards, I do not know. Perhaps it was only ever intended as a tool for her, a means to help her clarify emotions and bring peace of mind. But I might wish that some document existed, if only to clarify some of the choices she made, which are sometimes still opaque to me. Whatever private feelings my mother held about her decisions, her married life, and her children remain exactly that—private. All that I can know is what I observed—that their marriage lasted, from which I can logically extrapolate that she loved my father. I can say too, without any doubt in my mind, that she in turn was the deep and enduring love of his life.

And I for one cannot, of course, regret this choice she made. As I write these words, my mind’s eye calls up to me again most clearly the pendant that my mother wore, the symbol at the heart of Vulcan philosophy. I might wish that I had understood its full meaning much earlier in my life: that one should not trap oneself forever in a struggle between two imagined halves. The universe is a vast and wild place, and in this chaotic variety lies not disintegration, but the means to realize a fuller, more sustained unity of self. In embracing what is different in others, we become more fully ourselves. Perhaps that was at the heart of the choice that my mother made when, a woman of twenty-four, she left her home and her family for good, to marry a man much older than herself, and stay on a world that would always, to some extent, see her as an outsider.

 

If my mother was the constant of my early years, then my father, Sarek, was a more distant figure, but I felt the weight of his formidable presence and achievements early on. The house in which we lived was a monument to our forebears; as I grow older, I reflect upon how heavily this family history must have weighed in turn upon my father. At the time, of course, he seemed little different to me from those graven images of Skon and Solkar that seemed to look down from every corner of the house. This long line of ambassadors, entrusted to represent our world at the very highest levels, formed alliances and forged treaties, and, at the same time, were men of culture and learning, and the arts. My great-grandfather, Solkar, the first Vulcan ambassador to Earth, was also one of the finest musicians of his generation. My grandfather, Skon, with decades of service on the Federation council, translated not only Surak’s work into English, but thousands of lines of poetry from the sonorous, even languid, pastorals of T’Palaath to the vigorous epics of Serat to the crisp, cool verses of Saum. And my own father, venerated ambassador in his own right, who meditated twice daily, was one of the best players of kal-toh whom I have ever met. Such were my forefathers, and this history, this pedigree, I memorized at a very early age. The names of the dead were in many ways more real to me than my living human family back on Earth, to whom I spoke only from a distance. The faces of my Vulcan ancestors were always there—even if they did not speak or offer guidance.

I was aware early on that I was expected to follow in the family tradition and, in turn, become an ambassador at the very least. I was, after all, my father’s son, with all that implied. I was aware, too, perhaps earlier than my parents realized, that the expectations that I would perform well were heightened because the previous son had proven so disappointing. My elder half-brother, Sybok, was not a constant presence in my early years, but his name, if mentioned, would cast a pall over our home. Whenever we received news of him, my father’s lips would invariably narrow; his expression grow stonier. I would see his eye fall upon me—the second chance, yes, but a risky one, given his human side—and I would feel a little more weight fall upon my shoulders.

I was naturally eager to prove myself a worthy inheritor of this great family tradition. This was not, I told myself, a matter of pride or some other emotional impulse, but an entirely rational wish to make the best of the privileges of my upbringing. Twice a week, my father would take time out of his schedule to tutor me. His aim was to instill in me what he believed were the fundamentals: the principles of logic; a rational and scientific mindset; how to set one’s mind in order to be able to work with discipline and care. First, we would meditate for a while, and then turn to the business of the day. Simple logic games, that taught cause and effect, and deductive skills, and how to show proof. Scales upon the ka’athyra, (an instrument that you might understand as lying somewhere between a lyre or a lute), building steadily to more complex arrangements. How to systematically order and arrange data.

These sessions with my father were a source of both vast inspiration and deep confusion. As long as I could rely upon my memory, I faced few difficulties. If he read out a simple aphorism from T’Lor’s Meditations, for example, I would only need to hear it once or twice to repeat it back. Music, again, I could quickly play by ear. But, in other respects, it was clear that I was struggling. Simply put—I could not read. Most children on Vulcan are reading fluently in their own dialect by their third year, and in a second and third dialect by their fifth. But this was a code that I could not crack. The shapes on the page seem to shift and move. What was up became down; what was left became right. I could not make sense of these strange and ever-changing symbols. The presence of my father, so close to hand and without expression, surely did not help. He would listen for a while, then take the book and close it. Nothing more would be said. We would play kal-toh together for a while, an ancient game of strategy, using small rods, or t’an, to create complex spheres of other three-dimensional shapes. One might play alone, in the manner of the human game of solitaire, or against an opponent, each player selecting a different shape and attempting to maneuver the construction in that direction. Or one might play the way that my father and I preferred, working together toward a common goal. Slowly, we would create order from the chaos that lay before us, constructing the most beautiful and orderly shapes. Kal-toh has always had a calming effect, on both me and my father. These quiet games together, where we communicated not by speech, but by the simple pleasure of a shared desire for order, simplicity, and beauty, are amongst my finest memories of my father. Sometimes, having solved a particularly difficult set-up, my emotions—my pride—would get the better of me.

“Control your responses, Spock,” my father would say. “The solution is its own reward.” And I did learn to do this, taking pleasure instead from the simple fact of being with my father, and the knowledge of an activity shared.

But none of this could hide the fact that I was not a success. By this point—I must have been four or five years old—it was becoming clear to everyone that something was not quite right about this halting child. And, never spoken but always somehow in the background, the suggestion that my trouble arose from the unfortunate fact of my half-humanity, a condition that I could not escape, and which would surely prevent my ever reaching the heights achieved by those omnipresent forefathers. Solkar, Skon, Sarek… Dimly, I was starting to grasp that some of the people around me believed there would be no fourth name placed in line there, no successor as illustrious as those who had come before. How could the second son, the half-human child, be expected to succeed where the first son, the full-blooded Vulcan, had failed? It was plain to everyone that I was starting with too great a disadvantage. Everyone, with one notable exception. My mother. Whatever doubts other may have had, Amanda never doubted for a second that there was a key to understanding me, and that with time and patience and thought, she could unlock what lay within me. Such certainty means the world to a child.