Now I’ll let someone else talk about me. Specifically, in a discussion on the TrekBBS about the depictions and influences of politics on Star Trek literature, my fellow Treklit author Christopher L. Bennett had this to say about my work:

“I can’t understand how anyone can read a David Mack book and see only a simplistic, black-and-white moral parable. His books are full of unnerving, ambiguous situations, stories where the heroes have to make uneasy moral compromises and questionable choices, stories where the nominal antagonists can be sympathetic and admirable, stories where it’s unclear whether anyone has really done the right thing. If you think Dave is endorsing or celebrating any of the dark actions taken against the antagonists of his books, you’re not paying attention at all. What Dave is doing is not letting his characters off the hook. That’s his trademark as a writer. He doesn’t pull his punches. He doesn’t just bring characters to the brink of death, he kills them hard. He doesn’t just have characters flirt with the line between good and evil, he shoves them across it and down the slippery slope, so that they have to face the full, horrifying extent of what it means to make an ethical compromise. He doesn’t leave them, or the readers, the comfortable recourse of pat, easy answers.”

As one might imagine, I was quite pleased with his description of my oeuvre. So, with his permission, I’ve quoted it here. Because, as the expression goes, I could not have said it better myself.

Thanks, Christopher!