"refulgent"

I consider myself to have a good vocabulary. The last book I read that required recourse to the dictionary was "Father and Son" by Edmund Gosse, a fabulous book I couldn't put down except when recording in a notebook the words I needed to look up while reading it. There was at least one a page. I must find that notebook, I am sure "refulgent" is in there somewhere.

Trek books are not great literature. Often they are not particularly well written. A great Trek book may well be quite embarrassing if held up to other great fiction in terms of the actual writing. A Trek book is great if it captures the voice of the known characters, if it creates sympathetic and interesting new characters and if it carries the Trek story forward in a believable and wonderful way. There are many books that do all this and not much more is asked of them in the area of literary craft.

Therefore it is particularly annoying to me to come across obscure and/or archaic words in the middle of maudlin run on Treklit sentences. It conjures up the image of the author with thesaurus.com at the top of his bookmarks, hoping to add some weightiness to his work. One Trek book was peppered with such words like truffles embedded in Velveeta. It was quite hilarious; I looked up every one of them and they were all lovely but wow, were they out of place. I can't remember which book that one was now but as I recall it was an excellent Trek tale and I will probably reread it again. Next time I'll have a little notebook at hand, for my amusement and edification.

"Shenar responded in the same manner that Theras had; he gently took Theras's hand, his blind face refulgent with a look of almost religious ecstasy."

The Good That Men Do by Andy Mangels and Michael A. Martin, page 51



Painting is "Refulgent Reflux" by Jonas Gerard.