Statement? I was nowhere near the place when it burnt down; you got nothing on me, copper. Ya hear me, nothing!
It all depends on IF David wants to return. I would love to read some more of his work. But I can understand he's upset with the way his work was sort of completely ignored by the editors. Note I said editors, since I want to make sure people don't go blaiming the other authors. From what I gathered, they basicly had to retcon David's work. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
I'd certainly be interested. IFM had a really different tone than anything else that has come out in the last couple years, and I like my TrekLit varied and full of interesting ideas.
I would definitely be up for more Trek from David McIntee. I really enjoyed enjoy IFM and was really disapointed when I heard it was apparently going to be his last Trek work.
I would love to see more Star Trek novels by David McIntee. IFM was the second Star Trek novel that I read after years of not reading any Star Trek. CLB:s Watching the Clock was the first one that I read and it blew my mind and I wanted to read more, but I was cautious as well, felt that maybe I just stumbled into something great and the other treklit is not as good. But when I read IFM it felt like I had come back to home, I really enjoyed the novel and after that I started buying more Star Trek novels as IFM showed that there are more great treklit these days.
I'm a huge fan of Lonemagpie's IFM. I can't point to a single other author who did Geordi quite so well since the days of TNG. No offence to the other authors who've tackled him, but McIntee was my favorite. When I heard that it took place on the Challenger, i was really hoping that this would be Geordi/Barclay/Ogawa/Scotty/Nog's new status quo. Challenger could be the home of new SCE stories...or the Challenger could have missions like Aventine and show up now and then in other books... The whole thing about the differences in this and DMack's Data trilogy are easy enough to overlook. DRG3 mentioned this story in Plagues, and they explained away the rank bump. The Brahms thing is easy enough to chalk up to not working out. Simple as that. Hopefully an editor interested in working with Lonemagpie will be in Pocket's, and our, futures..
I'd be a liar if I said I didn't hope that somebody at S&S might think that way for an SCE relaunch... Thanks for the other nice comments as well.
I'd say yes to an SCE relaunch, Lonemagpie's return AND giving it to him to write. Geordie and Nog are needed elsewhere though...
I really enjoyed IFM and even though David Mack was told to ignore it for the Cold Equations trilogy, I still include it in my personal continuity.
You know, I'm not sure that's what he was actually told. As I recall it, what he said was that he asked about IFM putting Geordi back with Leah Brahms and whether he needed to change his plans to advance Geordi's relationship with Tamala Harstad, and he was told not to worry about what IFM did and just proceed with his plans. I'm not sure that meant "The whole book is out of continuity" so much as "Just don't bother to explain what happened to Leah." As it happens, I was the one who first informed Dave about the Geordi/Leah thing. He was telling me about his plans for Cold Equations, and when he mentioned his intention to advance Geordi/Tamala, I pointed out that IFM had brought Leah back into Geordi's life, which he wasn't aware of at the time. He was concerned about the prospect of having to rework that subplot, since writing a trilogy is very demanding work and he was already under a very tight deadline, and having to go back and change things would be an added burden. So I'm thinking maybe he was just told "don't worry about it" as a way of sparing him extra work when he was already under a lot of pressure. I'm not sure it was meant to be anything more than that. I think that when fans heard that Dave had been told to disregard the Leah issue, they jumped to the conclusion that it meant the whole book was out of continuity. But I'm not convinced that's actually the case. Then again, there's still the continuity issue about Ogawa's presence in the Titan novels as a nurse vs. her presence in IFM as a doctor. After all, Fallen Gods is in November 2382 with Ogawa aboard Titan as a nurse, while IFM begins in January '83 with Ogawa serving aboard Challenger as its doctor, said to have "joined us from Titan some time ago." I'm not sure it's possible to reconcile the timing of that, even if you can rationalize someone going from a nurse to a doctor so quickly. I guess we'll get an answer when The Poisoned Chalice comes out shortly -- will Ogawa still be on Titan as a nurse or not?