As fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation know, Q is the omnipotent extradimensional entity who so often causes whimsical havoc on the Starship Enterprise and elsewhere--for example, by helpfully introducing Captain Picard and his crew to the menacing Borg collective. Now this petulant demigod"s first-person story is told by John de Lancie, the actor who plays Q, and Peter David, author of successful Star Trek novels. It"s an irreverent romp through one bizarre scenario after another, as not only Star Trek"s Federation universe but the entire multiverse of alternative timelines looks set to gurgle down a metaphysical plughole. Q"s own wife and son vanish into the maelstrom, and his "Q Continuum" colleagues blither about calmly accepting apocalypse as a change from eternal tedium. Only Picard and Data the android accompany the questing Q, whose monstrous egotism and complaints that Picard never genuflects to him are barely affected when he loses his godlike powers and realizes that he may need mere humans. En route to the end of all things, they encounter other Federation characters, including Romulans, Klingons, Ferengi, and our captain"s dread cyborg alter-ego, Locutus of Borg. After a fast-moving sequence of fights, wisecracks, insults, old jokes, and ultimate despair, the fate of the multiverse is ... but that would be telling. Frothy entertainment. --David Langford