'Star Trek: A Paper Universe' Review

Over at the Trek Nation, Amy Hightower has put up the first in a series of Star Trek book reviews, this time looking at Andrew Pang's 'A Paper Universe'. Here's part of her review:

'The Paper Universe' is a somewhat unusual and rather effective little time waster that is quite likely to see you winding up ankle-deep in misshapen balls of paper that were meant to be the USS Enterprise. The premise of the book is simple enough – Andrew Pang, a member of both the British and Chinese Origami Societies and a keen Trek fan to boot, attempts to teach his fellow trekkies (or trekkers if you prefer) how to fold paper in interesting shapes, with the bonus option of ending up with something that looks like the Enterprise (original, A, D or E), the Defiant, DS9, Voyager, a couple of shuttle craft (types 6 and 9) or various alien ships (including a Borg Cube, Ferengi Marauder and ever-popular Jem'Hadar attack ship). All in all, there are about 15 ships to choose from. Unfortunately, origami is one of those things that is very difficult to learn out of a book and I found it to be an incredibly frustrating experience.

I have no previous experience whatsoever when it comes to origami – the closest acquaintance I've had with this art form was primary school art class, those little pick-a-number fortune-teller things and my own special brand of paper air plane that I always thought looks remarkably like a stealth bomber and does really great tricks – so, when I first opened this book, I wisely decided to start by learning the various ways in which to fold paper, of which there are many. The basic folds are, well, basic, and I had no trouble doing them, but the 'bases', in particular, the Starbases, require a little more effort – in fact, after several days of attempting it, I have still failed to actually succeed in making 'Starbase II' at all.

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