Question for authors: General 'rules' for tie-in media (any franchise)

[Christopher]

What Greg said. I don't own Star Trek, so I have no business getting proprietary about the ideas I come up with. If someone came up with a different interpretation of Future Guy in a separate continuity from the main novelverse, that would be fine, and I'd be interested to see what alternative ideas they could offer. In fact, to be honest, if I had the chance to do it over again, I'd probably try to find a better way of explaining Future Guy and the Temporal Cold War than I did the first time. I think there are aspects of it that could use improvement.

I've been reading Star Trek novels since before Pocket even had the license, so my perception of Trek tie-ins has always been that they encompass a multitude of distinct interpretations of the universe rather than just one. There have been occasional continuities here and there among the tie-ins, but there's never, ever been a single overarching one, and I've never wanted or expected there to be. And having multiple contradictory portrayals of the same event or character has been a part of Trek tie-in lore going back decades. Perhaps the earliest instance would be the depictions of McCoy's daughter and his divorce backstory in the '70s; the Gold Key comics presented one version, while Joe Haldeman's novel Planet of Judgment offered a different one. (And then Enterprise: The First Adventure offered yet another one that later novels tended to conform with, even while disregarding other elements of that novel.) Then there's E:TFA and DC's first Trek annual telling different versions of Kirk's first mission as Enterprise captain within a year of each other in 1985-6 -- and then Pocket and DC telling different versions of the end of the 5-year mission later in the '80s. And that was even before the new shows came along and conflicted with what the novels had established about the Klingons, the Romulans, the Trek timeline, etc.

[JD]

Does Shadows on the Sun use one of those back stories for McCoy? I haven't read it myself, but the back cover blurb on Memory Beta says McCoy runs into his ex-wife so I'm assuming their history must come up somewhere along the line.

[Nerys Myk]

xortex wrote:

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The source material for Trek is TOS and GR. You can't have TOS without TOS. The rest is a rip off.

Did someone state otherwise?

[DigificWriter]

I've officially given up trying to talk sense into people over on the TFN boards. I took the comments you guys left here and reposted them (with appropriate credit given), and yet it seems to have accomplished nothing, as people are still arguing about the exact same things vis a vis the SW EU and E7.

[Slurms MacKenzi]

DigificWriter wrote:

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I've officially given up trying to talk sense into people over on the TFN boards. I took the comments you guys left here and reposted them (with appropriate credit given), and yet it seems to have accomplished nothing, as people are still arguing about the exact same things vis a vis the SW EU and E7.

I keep reading that thread in the hope that common sense will prevail. Alas, it seems a lost cause.

Good effort on your part, though.

[Sci]

Christopher wrote:

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Then there's E:TFA and DC's first Trek annual telling different versions of Kirk's first mission as Enterprise captain within a year of each other in 1985-6 -- and then Pocket and DC telling different versions of the end of the 5-year mission later in the '80s.

And more recently, your 2012 novel DTI: Forgotten History portrayed a completely different set of circumstances surrounding the end of the five-year mission than David R. George III's 2006 novel Crucible: McCoy - Provenance of Shadows. So that tradition continues even today, of presenting multiple interpretations of major events in Trekverse history.

[James Swallow]

Christopher wrote:

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Whereas I've always felt that continuity didn't matter much in Doctor Who. The original series was breezily unconcerned with continuity, and it didn't bother them to present three different, incompatible versions of Atlantis over the years or to go back and forth over whether the UNIT stories happened in the near future or the same years they aired. And the new series has made it explicit that time is mutable and constantly rewritten by time travellers, which should make it quite simple to rationalize all the inconsistencies in Who canon.

My point was that while you may not feel continuity matters much in Doctor Who and even though the show itself provides a get-out clause, there's still an element of DW fandom - and indeed some tie-in writers for that franchise - who have constructed elaborate theorems to explain things such as how the multiple Atlantises (Atlantii? ) can co-exist, why two different Doctors have done variant versions of "Shada" or the "Human Nature" stories, and so on and so on.

At the risk of this turning into the endless debate on the nature of continuity and canonicity in fictional worlds, perhaps the best rule to stick to is: "Your Mileage May Vary."

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

Sci wrote:

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that tradition continues even today, of presenting multiple interpretations of major events in Trekverse history.

Such as three different ressurection stories for a certain pale android.

[Jim Gamma]

Not an author, but I suspect that a similar "issue" cropped up when the original TOS movies and TNG-era stuff first aired. There was this great mass of literature by people like Michael Jan Friedman, calling the Klingon homeworld Klinzhai, and a whole heap of speculation about Klingon and Romulan culture. Almost all of it is now defunct, because it was overruled by the new continuity being established.

Check out the Signature Editions of some of the Trek novels to see how things have changed... I particularly recommend "Worlds in Collision" (a collation of two Reeves-Stevenses' novels) and "The Hand of Kahless" (a combination of one by John M Ford, and one by Friedman) as perfect examples of this. They even have forewords by the authors reflecting on the stories after however many years it's been since the novels were published. Extremely informative, they are.

On the subject of the Star Wars EU, frankly I'm OK with them overwriting the novels. It's just a story, no matter how great I think it is, and where the novels take things is different from where the films will, is different from where I would, or you would, or anyone else would. I love reading/hearing about other possible directions for stories - else why would I be reading the old novels?

[Christopher]

JD wrote:

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Does Shadows on the Sun use one of those back stories for McCoy? I haven't read it myself, but the back cover blurb on Memory Beta says McCoy runs into his ex-wife so I'm assuming their history must come up somewhere along the line.

Essentially everything since Enterprise: The First Adventure, including SotS, has used the basics of what McIntyre established, such as that McCoy's ex-wife was named Jocelyn. I think they've all stuck with the idea that it was Jocelyn who got custody of Joanna in the divorce (although the earlier Crisis on Centaurus said that Bones got custody).

Sci wrote:

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And more recently, your 2012 novel DTI: Forgotten History portrayed a completely different set of circumstances surrounding the end of the five-year mission than David R. George III's 2006 novel Crucible: McCoy - Provenance of Shadows. So that tradition continues even today, of presenting multiple interpretations of major events in Trekverse history.

Oh, yes, I'd forgotten about Crucible. And there's also a version of the end of the 5-year mission in Strange New Worlds 10, the story "Empty" by David DeLee. That makes seven different versions to date that I know of. (Maybe eight, depending on how you interpret Black Fire.) That may be a record for the number of different retellings of the same event in professional Trek tie-in fiction.

James Swallow wrote:

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My point was that while you may not feel continuity matters much in Doctor Who and even though the show itself provides a get-out clause, there's still an element of DW fandom - and indeed some tie-in writers for that franchise - who have constructed elaborate theorems to explain things such as how the multiple Atlantises (Atlantii? ) can co-exist, why two different Doctors have done variant versions of "Shada" or the "Human Nature" stories, and so on and so on.

It can be a fun creative exercise to try to concoct such rationalizations. The problem is that some people take it too seriously or get too invested in a single interpretation.

[Jeff_Mariotte]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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Not Batman, but when I went to see The Amazing Spider-Man this summer, as I left the theater I heard a man in the lobby trying to explain to his girlfriend how ASM fit with the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man trilogy. Never mind that ASM and Spider-Man have entirely contradictory versions of the origin, that the power set of Maguire's Spider-Man is vastly different than Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man, etc. Yet, this guy insisted that ASM fit with the Maguire trilogy and was trying valiantly to justify that belief.

Which is the moment when you really wish you had Stan Lee hidden behind a potted plant, so you can pull a "Marshall McLuhan" moment, a la Woody Allen in Annie Hall. "You think that's the same Spider-Man? I happen to have Stan Lee right here, and he'll tell you why..."

[Christopher]

^No, Stan would offer a No-Prize to the audience member who could come up with the best explanation.

[Ian Keldon]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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not being any sort of active Star Wars fan I'm sure there are nuances and backstory that I'm completely missing.

You are. A LOT of the BS being thrown KS' way was coming from rabid pro-Wars "vs" debaters, who were po-d that she wasn't following in the footsteps of Curtis Saxton (sp?) and deliberately writing her books making the SW universe's technology uber-super-supremely powerful so they could use it as "canon fodder" in the then-ongoing Trek/Wars vs debate.

When she wouldn't play ball, they got all butthurt and took it out on her. There were even rumors of threats.

So she quit, and I can't say I blame her.

[Greg Cox]

Christopher wrote:

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^No, Stan would offer a No-Prize to the audience member who could come up with the best explanation.

True!

[Nerys Myk]

Greg Cox wrote:

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True!

Believer.