I haven't had any direct contact with Peter since his stroke. But I know that he's at home and recovering. He's attended at least one convention since, posts blog entries occasionally, and is currently planning to attend Shore Leave this summer. All of which I choose to take as very encouraging news.
Arg. Rebels was a trilogy I expected to really like, but ended up disliking so much that I stopped reading part way through one of the books and never went back to it. (I think I managed to persevere until the early part of book 2.) This hardly ever happens with me. I keep telling myself I should revisit it someday, but... yeah. I mean, at least I *finished* Warped...
I just got bored silly. I'm sure this was a case where, had the three books been compressed into one, the story might have been faster-paced. Just didn't seem epic enough for a trilogy, and the story is almost gone from my head, except I think a young pre-Vedek Winn was in it.
Yeah, Rebels sucked. The page count on each book was so low they could just have easily been one book, too. It was one of the only numbered DS9s I skipped when they first came out. They just looked lame to me for some reason, and I *love* DS9. I went back and picked them up used a few years back, during the dry spell after the DS9 relaunch had run its course. Sadly they lived up to my low expectations, I really wish I'd have skipped them.
You mean Devil in the Sky. It´s been a long time since I have read it. I remember something with a Horta inside the holodeck As to the Rebels novels I keep asking myself, who the f*** are the people on the cover. And I read it last year. It´s full of errors regarding technical terms. Regardless, it wasn´t that bad. Fallen Heroes was hilarious. Odo vs Quark like Bones vs Spock.
The biggest thing that stood out for me, that I remember despite not having read them in years, is that he made a much bigger deal of O'Brien's non-com status than the show ever did. As the Chief of Operations, the show always portrayed him as having the authority of a commissioned officer by default - his staff had ensigns and lieutenants, but he had authority over them. Yet in at least Vengeance, I recall O'Brien repeatedly deferring to Bashir because of his commissioned rank. It was something that always stuck out noticeably to me, and always bothered me, given that the show, aside from a few references in the time before the Bashir-O'Brien friendship solidified, never really made that kind of a big deal about non-coms like O'Brien deferring to commissioned officers.
O'Brien's position on DS9 seems like less of a non-com and more like a warrant officer, basically a technical specialist who answers to the commissioned officers for most things but has special autonomy in the officer's field of expertise.
I can remember a few times O'Brien had to defer to the officers - specifically I just watched a season two episode where Bashir and O'Brien where stranded together. I also remember Ezri pulling rank on O'Brien. I have to admit though that I don't really understand the difference in O'Brien's position. Did he not go thru Starfleet Academy and just went thru a Starfleet version of a trade school or something?
^ It would be the difference between Starfleet Academy (think U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis) and Starfleet Basic Training followed by technical specialty training.
For someone that doesn't know much about real-life military training either, what's the difference between those two? Like, what does officer training do that enlisted training doesn't do and vice versa?
Officer training is a four-year college-style environment, except far more immersive. Only several hundred cadets are accepted each year. Basic training lasts about sixteen weeks, followed by several months of specialized technical training, before the individual is posted to a ship or base. Thousands of enlisted level personnel rotate in and out of the system every month. Noncommissioned officers are promoted from within the enlisted ranks based on experience, performance, etc. Warrant officers tend to be skilled professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.) who receive "warrants" for service. They are more similar to commissioned officers than to non-coms, who they outrank.
I read Balance of Power, his TNG novel, last month. I didn't care for some of the Wesley stuff but I'll say this: I've recently read 4 other numbered TNG novels and while I can say BoP wasn't an awesome Trek book, at least I can remember what it was about which is more than I can say for the other 4 books. His blog hasn't been updated since May of last year. Wonder what he's doing now.