Kor, Kang, and Koloth and the QuchHa prejudice

Hey. I'm re-reading Vanguard, and one of the things that I've enjoyed most about the series is how it's made mention of the rift in Klingon culture between the ridged Klingons and the 'QuchHa' (those without ridges), but it's also made me wonder something: have there been any novels that have explained how Kor , Kang, and Koloth were able to rise so high in the Klingon military when many of their fellow QuchHa could not?

 

Try Forged in Fire.

 

That is, in fact, the subject of "The Unhappy Ones," my Klingon anger story in next spring's Seven Deadly Sins anthology.

 

And it's one of the biggest elements of FORGED IN FIRE, as recommended.

 

Oh, man. I had no idea that Forged in Fire went into that. The Augment Virus explanation for the "Klingon Question" wasn't really what I would have picked out on my own, but I did want an explanation, and something along those lines was probably all that was left as a possibility after Koloth and Company showed up with Ridges on DS9. So, since that's what we have to work with, I'm always pretty interested to see how various authors approach it. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I'm even more interested in Forged in Fire than I was just thinking it was a Sulu story.

 

Forged In Fire is one of my absolute favorite fill-in-the-gaps Trek novels. It covers implications of the virus, Sulu taking command, Curzon's diplomatic career... so much that we know happened, but we don't know how it happened. It really ties Enterprise, TOS, and DS9 together in a realistic and satisfying way.

I think that narratively it has its flaws, and the pacing slows waaaaaay down in the third quarter, but as a work of continuity it's beyond reproach. One of those books that goes a long way towards making the Trek Universe feel like one giant place, rather than 5 different series with different interpretations.

 

I've read Forged in Fire a while back and I remember

Spoiler: spoiler

the Albino finally curing the virus, but I don't remember the details on how K, K, and K overcame their place in society. What's the story again?

 

I was just about to start DRG3's Serpents among the Ruins for some Sulu action (Demora, that is ), but now i'm wondering if I should read Forged in Fire first? I know I'll understand and most likely enjoy SatR without reading FiF...but I don't know. what do people think? Or does it not matter at all?

 

I don't think it matters one way or the other - Serpents takes place about... twenty or thirty years after Fire, and Serpents was published first, so really, I think it's completely the reader's choice on which to read first.

 

I think the IDW series Klingons: Blood Will Tell needs to be included in any reading list on this subject. It only delved briefly into the conflict itself, but it did show another perspective, from a highly-placed (as in: on the High Council) QuchHa family, in the same time period. The argument was that in the effort to prove their "Klingonhood", the QuchHa fuelled an entire new phase of expansion of the Empire. The prejudice existed, but was not insurmountable.

Also, it may be that a sufficiently large portion of the Klingon population was affected that keeping the QuchHa down completely just wasn't a feasible option.

(Looking forward to KRAD's upcoming story)

 

Nope, it was always going to be an Excelsior novel. It was actually the second book we were contracted to do, but kept getting put on hold while we got assigned other projects. In that time, the head ridges were explained, and we therefore had to incorporate that explanation into the story.

I don't recall all of the elements of our earlier plots, but I think we did deal with different Klingon castes and the head ridges from the start in the story development because obviously we had to deal with K, K, and K's physical transformations between one time and another.

 

Blood Will Tell offers a rather different take on the status of quchHa' than Forged in Fire and Vanguard do; the novels portray them as a minority excluded from power, their role in the fleet being basically that of cannon fodder, while BWT portrays them as having higher status, with seats on the High Council. However, I like to believe they can be reconciled if you assume that what we're reading is filtered through different viewpoint characters' biases. For instance, BWT is from the perspective of a quchHa' who may be exaggerating the prominence of his people in his reminiscences, while conversely the characters in the novels may have an overly pessimistic view of the status of the quchHa'. You have to squint a little to make them fit together, but I think it's doable.

 

The two are completly unrelated, so you can read them in whichever order you want.

 

Sweet. Thanks JD & DGCatAniSiri. I'm only past the prologue of SatR at this point. It's pretty good so far. I like Harriman more at this point in his career .

 

you will have an amazing ride!

I recently re-read the book and despite that it's probably the third or fourth reading I still read it until I can no longer keep my eyes open and realising I need to get up in 2 hours' time!

 

^I actually started reading just before I was off work, and I ended up staying an extra 10 minutes because I didn't pay attention to the clock. A good sign .

 

I don't think even squinting is necessary, just staying open to a wider perspective. Making the prejudice too strong and all-encompassing seems a bit more limiting, storywise, than a more textured and nuanced conflict.

Admittedly, I'm probably pregudiced from being an old FASA RPG-head, where there were numerous factions: some with strong prejudices vis a vis the Imperial Race vs (genetic) fusions, others fairly indifferent, and still more with varying degrees in between.