Paper Universe

Toysare getting increasingly expensive and complicated. Upon the creationof interactive games, the promise was held out that you could travelto other worlds, but it was still lust a promise. You couldn't reachout, touch, feel, and truly interact with those places. Wouldn't itbe great to be able to create a starship from something as vivid asyour own imagination? A ship that you could hold, but was lust asimple, inexpensive piece of paper? You could create and command afleet of starships in lust minutes.

Anancient art form can give you the ability to hold a piece of thefinal frontier in your own hands. Star Trek: Paper Universe presentseasy-to-follow steps and clear explanations of classic origamitechniques and folds. From a simple piece of paper you'll be able tocreate familiar vessels like the Starship Enterprise™, a Klingonbird-of-prey, a Cardassian battle cruiser, or a Borg cube!

StarTrek: Paper Universe brings you a whole new way to create your ownadventures. You'll be building your own starships, space station, andshuttlecraft at warp speed!

I'vealways had a love-hate relationship with origami. I love models whichmanage to capture the essence of a natural or artificial form using aseries of folds based on a single square of paper, but I can't standones that are just a cobbled, distorted representation of a beautifulorganic form. Hence I love some of the classic folds such as thefrog, but generally dislike all of those mammals and aeroplanes etc.Some shapes seem to lend themselves to origami and some shouldprobably never be attempted in my (completely uninformed) opinion. Ibought this book because I was amazed that someone had managed toentirely capture the essense of forms as complex and distinctive asthe Klingon battle cruiser and K. bird of prey using single, uncutsquares. A couple of the Enterprises look pretty impressive too (Ihaven't attempted them yet), although they are made from two sheets,which sort of spoils it for me.

Anyway,the two klingon models are amazing, although quite difficult. I'vedone little bit of origami in the past, but my first two attempts atthe battle cruiser failed. Some of the folds are just too tight evenwith a medium-sized square of paper. Only try this one with a bigpiece of thin gift wrap or material of similar ilk. Thebird of preyis quite a bit easier in this respect. I plan to learn this one byheart - producing a Klingon B.of P. from a stray flyer in the pub hasto be the ultimate nerd's party trick!