The Continuity of Days Gone By

[ryan123450]

I'm wondering about which novels back in the pre-TNG days accepted the Diane Duane version of the Romulans and the John Ford version of the Klingons?

Also I think someone, maybe Christopher, gave a overview some time ago of the old continuity pre-Richard Arnold. I think I have a pretty good handle on what all that entailed, but does anyone have more knowledge on the subject they can share?

Thanks!

[Thrawn]

The information in the "Charting the Novel-verse" thread pinned at the top of the forum should be more than sufficient.

[Therin of Andor]

ryan123450 wrote:

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James Ford

The late John M. "Mike" Ford.

Also I think someone, maybe Christopher, gave a overview some time ago of the old continuity pre-Richard Arnold.

Do you mean sharing of original characters? Security Chief Ingrit Thompson (with various misspellings of both names?) was shared by three or four novelists of the day, and Naraht the Horta popped up in a few places beyond Diane Duane. A few authors used an alien alternate communications officer, the grey-skinned Mahase, an Eseriat. A few also used the tentacled Sulamids as crewmen. Other than those, original characters and alien races usually only returned in sequels to an author's own work.

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

Dwellers in the Cruicible drew on both Ford's Klingons and Duane's Rihannsu.

Rihannsu language and references are still cropping up in the current Enterprise novels, and I think the Black Fleet was mentioned in (I think) Children of Kings.

[Christopher]

A lot of the mid-'80s novels drew on Ford's Klingons and Duane's Rihannsu; they pretty much came to be regarded as the definitive interpretations. Perhaps the one exception is Pawns and Symbols, which came out after The Final Reflection but portrayed the Klingons in an incompatible way.

As for what was included in the internovel continuity that gradually evolved at the time, I find that the simplest way to get a handle on it is to check the acknowledgments of Time for Yesterday by A. C. Crispin, the one book that drew the most heavily on earlier novelists' work, and is thus something of the linchpin of that continuity. In addition to being a sequel to Crispin's Yesterday's Son, it references the books of Diane Duane, Brad Ferguson, John M. Ford, Jean Lorrah, Vonda N. McIntyre, and Howard Weinstein. The Ingrit Tomson references tie J. M. Dillard's series of books into the sequence, and Dillard's The Lost Years references Diane Carey's Dreadnought! and Battlestations! And Uhura's Song by Janet Kagan references a character from McIntyre's The Entropy Effect.

Let's see, going through Voyages of the Imagination, I'd list the following as definite parts of the 1980s Pocket novel continuity, keeping in mind that it's a fairly loose continuity:

The Entropy Effect
Yesterday's Son
The Wounded Sky
The Final Reflection
My Enemy, My Ally
The Vulcan Academy Murders
Uhura's Song
Shadow Lord (references McIntyre's Sulu backstory)
Dwellers in the Crucible
Mindshadow
Crisis on Centaurus
Dreadnought!
Demons
Battlestations!
Deep Domain
The Romulan Way
How Much for Just the Planet?
Bloodthirst
The IDIC Epidemic
Time for Yesterday
Rules of Engagement
Doctor's Orders
Strangers from the Sky
Spock's World
The Lost Years and its sequels

The list is mainly in publication order, with hardcovers last, for my convenience. The in-story chronological order would be very different.

There are others I'm not so sure of. Maybe Enterprise: The First Adventure or Final Frontier could go in there too, but I don't recall any cross-references offhand.

[Turtletrekker]

Thrawn wrote:

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The information in the "Charting the Novel-verse" thread pinned at the top of the forum should be more than sufficient.

I'm really glad that people are finding that thread of use. I was afraid that nobody would care. What you would be looking for is listed in the TOS section listed under "The Rihannsu-verse", but I think Christopher actually listed more books than I did.

It's worth noting that the "The Continuity of Days Gone By" has touched upon the modern continuity in several ways. One of Diane Duane's characters appeared in one of KRAD's SCE tales, and the Romulan history created by Duane was largely been kept intact for the "Vulcan's ____" series, with only some revisions necessitated by later canon (Largely dealing with the planet Remus). Much of what Duane established about Romulan culture is still used in the novel-verse.

Christopher wrote:

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As for what was included in the internovel continuity that gradually evolved at the time, I find that the simplest way to get a handle on it is to check the acknowledgments of Time for Yesterday by A. C. Crispin, the one book that drew the most heavily on earlier novelists' work, and is thus something of the linchpin of that continuity. In addition to being a sequel to Crispin's Yesterday's Son, it references the books of Diane Duane, Brad Ferguson, John M. Ford, Jean Lorrah, Vonda N. McIntyre, and Howard Weinstein. The Ingrit Tomson references tie J. M. Dillard's series of books into the sequence, and Dillard's The Lost Years references Diane Carey's Dreadnought! and Battlestations! And Uhura's Song by Janet Kagan references a character from McIntyre's The Entropy Effect.

This was largely how I based what to include in the "Charting" thread.

Let's see, going through Voyages of the Imagination, I'd list the following as definite parts of the 1980s Pocket novel continuity, keeping in mind that it's a fairly loose continuity: <snip>

Uhura's Song
Shadow Lord (references McIntyre's Sulu backstory)
Dwellers in the Crucible
Deep Domain
How Much for Just the Planet?
Strangers from the Sky

Christopher: I'm pretty sure that all of these slipped my notice in the "Charting" thread. As I'm trying to find time to work on an update to the "Charting" thread, I hope you don't mind a few qustions on specifics? Any help would be appreciated.

You note Sulu's backstory for Shadow Lord, and I assume that the Klingons in Ford's "How Much..." were consistant with The Final Reflection, but the others? Did they just use the Klinzhai/Rihannsu models for the Klingons and Romulans, or were there other connections? (Characters/events?) It's been soooo long since I've read any of these books...

Thanks in advance.

[Christopher]

Turtletrekker wrote:

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Christopher: I'm pretty sure that all of these slipped my notice in the "Charting" thread. As I'm trying to find time to work on an update to the "Charting" thread, I hope you don't mind a few qustions on specifics? Any help would be appreciated.

You note Sulu's backstory for Shadow Lord, and I assume that the Klingons in Ford's "How Much..." were consistant with The Final Reflection, but the others? Did they just use the Klinzhai/Rihannsu models for the Klingons and Romulans, or were there other connections? (Characters/events?) It's been soooo long since I've read any of these books...

Uhura's Song references the felinoid security officer "Snarl" from The Entropy Effect.

Dwellers in the Crucible drew heavily on both Duane's Rihannsu and Ford's Klingons, and in fact I believe it was the first time that Ford's or Duane's versions of those species were utilized by a different author, so I'm surprised it wasn't already on your list.

Deep Domain was, I believe, referenced in Time for Yesterday.

Strangers from the Sky is referenced in Spock's World, although with minor adjustments; SftS claimed that the "official" human first contact was between a ship named Amity and the indigenous inhabitants of Alpha Centauri, but SW retconned the Amity's first contact to be with the Andorians.

[Therin of Andor]

Christopher wrote:

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Strangers from the Sky... claimed that the "official" human first contact was between a ship named Amity and the indigenous inhabitants of Alpha Centauri

An account of which Garamet memorized in a bookshop because she was too poor to buy it. The Amity log entry was in the ST:TMP tie-in, "Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology" by Fred & Stan Goldstein.

[Christopher]

^Yeah, maybe the Spaceflight Chronology should be counted as part of the '80s book continuity, since a lot of the novels drew on it. It was the source of the Federation history, chronology, and ship classes in The Final Reflection and the chronology used in Final Frontier/Best Destiny (so maybe those should be counted too?).

[Therin of Andor]

Christopher wrote:

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It was the source of the Federation history, chronology, and ship classes in The Final Reflection and the chronology used in Final Frontier/Best Destiny.

And the Andorian phrase, "thiptho lapth".

I loved how the Andorians, in one account of discussions of the formation of the UFP, "claimed sovereignty over all stars visible to the eye from Andor".

[ryan123450]

Thrawn wrote:

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The information in the "Charting the Novel-verse" thread pinned at the top of the forum should be more than sufficient.

I actually knew there was more to add to what's in that thread, so that's why I brought it up.

Therin of Andor wrote:

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A few authors used an alien alternate communications officer, the grey-skinned Mahase, an Eseriat. A few also used the tentacled Sulamids as crewmen.

KingDaniel wrote:

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I think the Black Fleet was mentioned in (I think) Children of Kings.

Thanks to both of you for these little tidbits that I didn't know about.

Christopher wrote:

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A lot of the mid-'80s novels drew on Ford's Klingons and Duane's Rihannsu; they pretty much came to be regarded as the definitive interpretations. Perhaps the one exception is Pawns and Symbols, which came out after The Final Reflection but portrayed the Klingons in an incompatible way.

I had wondered if Pawns and Symbols was meant to tie into Ford's version of the Klingons, but didn't know for sure.

Christopher wrote:

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The Entropy Effect
Yesterday's Son
The Wounded Sky
The Final Reflection
My Enemy, My Ally
The Vulcan Academy Murders
Uhura's Song
Shadow Lord (references McIntyre's Sulu backstory)
Dwellers in the Crucible
Mindshadow
Crisis on Centaurus
Dreadnought!
Demons
Battlestations!
Deep Domain
The Romulan Way
How Much for Just the Planet?
Bloodthirst
The IDIC Epidemic
Time for Yesterday
Rules of Engagement
Doctor's Orders
Strangers from the Sky
Spock's World
The Lost Years and its sequels

The list is mainly in publication order, with hardcovers last, for my convenience. The in-story chronological order would be very different.

There are others I'm not so sure of. Maybe Enterprise: The First Adventure or Final Frontier could go in there too, but I don't recall any cross-references offhand.

That's actually the same list I had compiled myself as well, except I didn't have Shadow Lord or Uhura's Song. However the list I compiled contains The Abode of Life, Chain of Attack, and The Final Nexus. Ingrit Thompson appears at least in the final book of that trilogy.

Anyway, thank you so much Christopher for your help!
You're the new KRAD of amazing amounts of Trek-lit trivia.

Turtletrekker wrote:

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I'm really glad that people are finding that thread of use. I was afraid that nobody would care. What you would be looking for is listed in the TOS section listed under "The Rihannsu-verse", but I think Christopher actually listed more books than I did.

(snip)

I'm pretty sure that all of these slipped my notice in the "Charting" thread. As I'm trying to find time to work on an update to the "Charting" thread, I hope you don't mind a few qustions on specifics? Any help would be appreciated.

I for one have found your 'Charting the Novel-verse' thread extremely interesting and useful, Turtletrekker. I've actually mined it extensively already for a project I'm working on. Thank you so much for all the information. If I have your blessing, I'm working on a website that will list everything connected in the Lit-verse in chronological order, with notes, for each series, and then a seperate chronological list of the entrie Lit-verse. I got about 80% of my info from your work, so I'd love your ok before I publish my site. (The other 20% of the info is from hours of scouring Memory-Beta and a few other places on the web. I've found about 15 or 20 more connections than are in the 'Charting the Novel-verse' thread.)

I plan to have links to important Treklit sites and author anotations. I still lack about two month's worth of work at the rate I'm going and then I'll publish to the web. Then I hope to begin work on another page that will expand the chronological list to include every Trek story ever published. That should be a considerable feat. Even though mine will be mostly a reading order list and not a detailed chronology, as far as I can tell all the major Trek chronologies on the web haven't been updated in a long time. I'll keep everyone updated when I get the site up.

Thanks for all your help everyone, especially Turtletrekker.

[Christopher]

ryan123450 wrote:

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I had wondered if Pawns and Symbols was meant to tie into Ford's version of the Klingons, but didn't know for sure.

No, definitely not. It was before inter-novel continuity really existed yet, except between successive works by the same author. As far as I recall, nothing prior to Dwellers in the Crucible referenced Ford's Klingons.

That's actually the same list I had compiled myself as well, except I didn't have Shadow Lord or Uhura's Song. However the list I compiled contains The Abode of Life, Chain of Attack, and The Final Nexus. Ingrit Thompson appears at least in the final book of that trilogy.

Ah, okay, I was wondering if those three fit in. Though it's a reach to call them a trilogy, since the latter two books were quite a few years later, by a different author, and only a loose followup to Abode.

[ryan123450]

Ahh, ok. One problem I keep running into is that it's much harder to do something like this when I've only actually read a fraction of these books. But I also don't want to wait years to read all the dozens and dozens of older novels I still haven't read.

[SicOne]

Therin of Andor wrote:

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And the Andorian phrase, "thiptho lapth".

What is the loose Terran translation of that phrase, Therin?

[Christopher]

Okay, since I can't resist making lists and chronologies, I've put together a list of the '80s novel continuity in approximate chronological order, drawing on some of the assumptions that applied in the '80s, like the timeline of the Spaceflight Chronology (which put TOS about 60 years sooner than modern Trek chronology does) and the implicit assumption of a second 5-year mission before TMP.

Note that for these purposes, I have excluded the sequels to The Lost Years, since those went with the later assumption that TOS was in the 2260s, and thus don't fit into the Spaceflight Chronology dating scheme. My intent is to represent the '80s novel continuity as it would've been interpreted at the time it was active, in the period of about 1981-1990.

Note also that I've added Diane Carey's Final Frontier and Best Destiny to the list, since the former does refer to the Romulans as Rihannsu and uses the Spaceflight Chronology dating. I'm not sure I should even include Best Destiny at all, since it came out in 1992, at which point the modern version of the chronology had been established. But it fits together pretty neatly with FF and avoids making any specific date references which would exclude it like the later Lost Years books.

I've also added the unpublished Music of the Spheres, the original version of the book that became Probe, because it's a direct sequel to Dwellers in the Crucible. And I've added The Pandora Principle because it references Diane Duane's books to an extent, and because it builds on the Saavik backstory established in Vonda McIntyre's movie novelizations (which are included because they in turn reference The Entropy Effect).

So here we go:

Before TOS:
2170s: The Final Reflection (body)
2183: Final Frontier (body)
2188: Best Destiny (flashbacks)

During TOS (c. 2207-10):
Final Frontier (frame) (just after "City on the Edge")
The Vulcan Academy Murders and The IDIC Epidemic (just before "A Private Little War")

After TOS/2nd 5-year mission:
Yesterday's Son (2 years after "All Our Yesterdays")
Uhura's Song
Shadow Lord
The Wounded Sky
My Enemy, My Ally
The Abode of Life
Mindshadow
Crisis on Centaurus
Demons
Chain of Attack
The Final Nexus
Dreams of the Raven
Bloodthirst
How Much for Just the Planet?
Doctor's Orders
Dreadnought!
Battlestations!
The Entropy Effect
The Romulan Way (8 years after "Enterprise Incident")

Interim period:
The Lost Years

Movie era:
Spock's World (shortly after TMP)
Rules of Engagement
The Pandora Principle (just after Saavik enters Academy)
Dwellers in the Crucible (during Saavik's time at Academy)
Deep Domain (Kirk returns to Admiralty)
Strangers from the Sky (frame)
Time for Yesterday (shortly pre-TWOK)
TWOK, TSFS, TVH (McIntyre novelizations)
Music of the Spheres (after TVH)
Best Destiny (just after TUC)


A lot of my placements in the "5-year missions" era are arbitrary, but here are some of my working assumptions:

Ingrit Tomson was a new security chief in Mindshadow. That means Chain of Attack, where she appears, must come later. I've put The Abode of Life relatively soon before CoA, but not immediately before, fitting the references in CoA. The Wounded Sky and My Enemy, My Ally feature a different security chief, so I've put them before Mindshadow. Note that The Romulan Way takes place about a year after ME,MA.

Dreadnought! and Battlestations! are near the end because The Lost Years referenced them as a recent scandal.

The Entropy Effect is put near the end because Sulu's promotion to lieutenant commander isn't reflected in any other novel. However, the Duane books in their original versions (before the Bloodwing Voyages reissue) had both Sulu and Chekov as lieutenants and Uhura referred to inconsistently as both lieutenant and lt. commander. This is a very loose continuity at best and full of holes.

Note that Yesterday's Son either takes place before "Yesteryear" (despite being 2 years after "All Our Yesterdays") or assumes that it never happened. A lot of early novels disregarded the animated series, probably due to the authors' unfamiliarity with it; this was before it was released on home video.

Anyway, your mileage may vary as far as the 5YM(s) chronology is concerned, but otherwise, I think this pretty much covers it. Note that there are other novels from the '80s that could be consistent with this continuity, at least as much as it's consistent within itself, but this list is limited to those that have explicit links.