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Anslem is a novel by Jake Sisko, which he began writing in 2372.

Anslem was considered to be an acclaimed piece of literature in the 25th century. (STO novel: The Needs of the Many)

History and specifics[]

In that year, Jake was approached by Onaya, a non-corporeal psionic energy entity that "fed" on the creative minds of humanoids. She helped Jake channel his creativity into beginning Anslem until she had almost drained him to the point of death. Fortunately, Onaya was stopped by Benjamin Sisko, who told his son had written Anslem and Onaya had only brought out something which already existed in him. (DS9 episode: "The Muse")

Jake continued to work on Anslem, which was semi-autobiographical, into 2374. He had stopped and started the project several times. (DS9 - Millennium novels: The Fall of Terok Nor, Inferno)

Jake still had reservations about the work even when he finished it, and it would be several years before he published it. He had done so by the early 25th century. Melanie had read it twice in one night before she visited him in New Orleans. (DS9 short story: "Revisited")

When the multiverse was restored after the defeat of Lore, Benjamin Sisko read a version of Anslem that his son had completed before his father returned to the Celestial Temple. After the Prophets complimented his wisdom, Sisko looked down at the book while noting that the alien beings should look to his son for true knowledge, then shared several moments with his family, including Jake. Telling his son that the conclusion of his written work had been a brilliant ending, Sisko was subsequently transported back to the Temple, taking the book with him. (ST comic: "Omega")

In an alternate timeline in which Benjamin Sisko was displaced from time by the subspace inversion of the Bajoran wormhole, Jake wrote Anslem in his house in New Orleans. Melanie had also read it twice in one night in that reality as well. (DS9 episode: "The Visitor")

Contents[]

Afterword[]

I feel like I've been telling this story all my life.

I wrote the first chapter in that crib in my parents' house outside New Orleans, looking up at the swirling stars painted on the ceiling. They say you can't remember that early but they're wrong — hand to the Prophets, if I close my eyes right now, I can hear Al Jarreau softly playing from the other room as my parents sway and swirl beneath that drywall Milky Way. The first words were ones of love.

The story began to click in the days after the Saratoga, where my eleven-year-old grief became the center of every overly sympathetic room. Where once I had been a newly formed M-class world orbiting the binary star that was Jennifer and Ben, suddenly here I was: a rogue planet lit aflame and blazing across the dark. It was in those days that I first found my words for loss and sadness ... but it was also where I first saw you.

I never understood my story better than when I was telling it in your shadow. A walking shipwreck who deflected the pitying eyes of others and met them instead with resolve. A man who became a mission rather than another on a survivors list. Here I was, grasping at every cute Bajoran girl who looked my way and knocking over the latinum cabinets at Quark's with Nog, hoping desperately to find my story while yours was playing in vivid color across the galaxy for everyone to see.

A captain. A hero. A general. An emissary. A prophet.

You were a man wearing a dozen masks and I couldn't even pick one.

I resented it for a long time. Especially those three years where I couldn't see behind those eyes, where the only story I had was the one you told everyone else. I couldn't see at the time that you'd given me a gift. You and your story hadn't left me behind.

You'd left me space to find my own.

Looking back on these pages in the weeks since I finished, I find myself reading Anslem as the work of a boy becoming a man. It's a strange beast of a book, a recounting of every twist and turn my mind's made since the day I first looked up at those stars you left me. It's Mom. It's you. It's Nog and Nerys and Mardah and Garak and everyone in between. It's the me I was, the me who was growing all those years. It's the story I couldn't stop telling.

But I don't think it's me now.

I'll write that one next, Dad. Those are the stories I'll give to the world. The stories of Jake Sisko and the life he found out there in those beautiful painted scars. But this one? This one I want you to carry out into those folds between space and time. This is the Jake that can come with you where no one has gone before.

This one's just for us. (ST comic: "Omega")

Appendices[]

External link[]

• Anslem article at Memory Alpha, the wiki for canon Star Trek.