Star Trek’s Brent Spiner has written a semi-fictional “mem-noir”

Fan Fiction: A Mem-noir: Inspired by True Events by Brent Spiner. Image Amazon

FEBRUARY 2, 2021 - Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Picard star Brent Spiner has written an autobiography…sort of. In an interview with SYFY WIRE, Spiner opened up about his new book, Fan Fiction: A Mem-noir: Inspired by True Events, a fictional autobiography that blends Spiner’s real life with his own imagination.

Fan Fiction takes a dive into the personal life of the main character “Brent Spiner”. Set in 1991, with Spiner riding high on the success of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the actor receives a strange package and mysterious letters that send him on an adventure to save not only his career, but his life.

When it came to writing a memoir, the real life Brent Spiner felt the idea wasn’t quite right. Still, it was a concept he could work with. “I thought, maybe I can write something else, because I have a story I'd like to tell,” Spiner told SYFY WIRE, adding, “maybe I can combine the two and do a sort of hybrid.” While he admits the book is largely fiction, Spiner said the book has plenty of reality mixed in. “There are slices of my own life in it, and then there are also people I have known,” Spiner said. “It's a mashup: It's a thriller, it's a comedy, it's a dark comedy. And it's partially a memoir, but none of it's real, really, even though a lot of things actually happened.”

While we don’t know much more about the plot of Fan Fiction, Spiner did reveal that “fandom” is a central theme in the book.

Along the way, readers will run into some familiar characters, namely Spiner’s TNG costars. Readers shouldn’t be surprised when they find the fictional Patrick Stewart isn’t exactly like the real Patrick Stewart. Spiner explained the difference, saying, “They're not serious versions of themselves [...] They're a more heightened version of themselves, just like [the character of Brent Spiner is] a heightened version of me.”

If the concept of Brent Spiner writing a fictional story about Brent Spiner seems a little too meta, this isn’t the first time Spiner has created a character based on himself. In fact, he has done so on more than one previous occasion; see also the web series Fresh Hell and the musical short film Brentwood.

Spiner’s new thriller is complemented by a unique cover from designer Rob Grom. Fan Fiction: A Mem-Noir: Inspired by True Events will be released in October 2021 in hardcover, as an audiobook, and e-book. Fan Fiction is available for preorder now from Amazon.com and other retailers.