Ick. No, it was just tedious. If you want unusual/alien, I'd be more than happy to recommend "The Wounded Sky" or "Gateways: Challenger: Chainmail". The question was regarding one and two-time ST novelists. LA Graf has written lots!
Yes, but (which is why I listed Dafydd ab Hugh earlier) I took this part as a separate possibility or a "if-not-a-one-or-two-off-then-someone-you'd-like-to-see-return -who's-been-away-for-a-while".
No offense intended to Man of Steel, but I hope K.W. Jeter is never given the chance to so much as put together two Star Trek related syllables after his astounding tome "DS9 Warped." The thing killed major DS9 stories until the relaunch. As far as returns, hmmmm.... Marshak and Culbreath?! Well, more seriously, I'd love to see another Andrew Robinson Garak novel.
What does "major DS9 stories" mean? It didn't stop the Millennium trilogy, which was major. If you mean it was the only hardcover DS9 book for a long time, well, that's true. It's also true that for a few years the DS9 books were the lowest-selling Star Trek books, and it's entirely possible that any DS9 hardcover released when Warped was published would have sold as poorly as Warped apparently did. Oh, and for what it's worth, some of us liked Warped. That Warped could generate so much hatred in a universe in which Station Rage exists baffles me.
Easy: "Warped" was obviously playing with some clever, high brow, science fiction concept, but I had no idea what was going on, and the writing just plodded and plodded and plodded. Poor Rene/Odo even sounded at his wits end doing the audio version. (I hadn't minded Jeter's "Bloodletter" so much, but it's not terribly memorable.) "Station Rage" at least moved swiftly - that was the one with a Cardassian skull on the cover? Yeah, I was okay with that one.
To this day, I have never read Warped. It might be because of the bad reviews. I do have a copy of it which I bought for $1 at a library sale.
I have only read Engines of Destiny by Gene DeWeese, but he did another one too, right? I can't say I was impressed with EoD, I think it belongs in the Shitnerverse continuity, but hell, he could come back and dazzle us...he could, right?
I was with a friend when we saw MMPB copies for $1 on a bargain table and I stopped her from buying it. On the next table we saw a pile of "Warped" in hardcover - for just $2 - and this time I had to offer her $2 from my own pocket if she didn't buy it. Sounds mean to Mr Jeter, I know (but his royalties weren't forthcoming on remaindered stock anyway), but I dutifully paid full Australian hardcover price for my copy, when it was first released, and dutifully read it, and bought and listened to the audio as well (I'm a completist) - but it really was a dire reading experience, and even the abridged audio didn't help. I really wanted to like it. It was a ST hardcover, dammit. Quite a few. Gene DeWeese is interesting. His first novel, "Chain of Attack", was the very first ST original novel that many fans read, since it was the first one released after ST IV (and it even kick-started new numbering for Titan Books in UK), so it was heavily promoted and widely available. Since I'd been keeping pace with all new Pocket releases from way back at "The Entropy Effect", and had plenty to compare it to, I was disappointed with "Chain of Attack" - a bit too techie? - but many people have posted online that it's among their favourites, or at least is significant as their first ST book. DeWeese's later ST novels are variable. I remember liking "The Peacekeepers", a very early TNG novel, having mixed feelings about "The Final Nexus" (sequel to "Chain of Attack") and really hating the dire "Into the Nebula". "Engines of Destiny" I quite enjoyed, although another "let's rescue Kirk" novel seemed unneccessary. However, since it had been a "lost" ST novel for many, many years (see Roby's site) - someone only found out about the rejected manuscripts' existence after DeWeese donated his papers to a reference library - so I think I was reading it on several levels, and was rooting for the little novel that finally made it.
^^Chain of Attack was also the first Pocket novel to put the TV version of the Star Trek logo on its cover above the title. Before, it had just said "The new STAR TREK novel" or words to that effect in an ordinary font.
Didn't Jean Lorrah write more than one TOS book? I thought she wrote The Vulcan Academy Murders and The IDIC Epidemic... Edited to add: Oops, sorry about that! Always pays to read both pages of a thread before responding....
Most definitely. And I'm not joking. If you read other threads where I have commented on those Abominations I nearly always use that moniker.
By major DS9 novels, I meant the larger projects that Pocket at the time liked to put into Hardcover books. The next big project WAS Millenium, which I sometimes forget is not part of the relaunch. I'm sorry that I misspoke there. Everything I saw, though suggested that the poor results from "Warped" is one of the things that prevented DS9 event novels for quite some time--- until Millenium and A Stitch in Time. For the record, I didn't like Warped because so many things were so hideously out of character. Now, I can no longer remember exactly what it was that was so out of character, as I've never reread it, and I tried really hard to forget that I HAD read it! I seem to recall reading Station Rage and not hating it... but it really doesn't hold a place in my mind like Warped did. And then, there's the novel who's title I've forgotten that seemed to have a chapter break every other paragraph it seemed. I think it had a plot about gambling, but I just really don't remember it any more. So, yeah, there are some books that I don't like more than others, but by FAAAAAAAR the majority of novels that I have read I have enjoyed. (Even most of the Shatnerverse.) Anyway, I still don't want Jeter writing Trek again. I'm sure he's a fine writer... just not for Trek. I still always wanted to see what Asimov would have done with a Trek novel!
Will a comic mini-series do?: "TOS Year Four, Second Stage: The Enterprise Experiment", a sequel to "The Enterprise Incident". Coming soon from IDW.