Literary Treks

[Enterpriserules]

New Literary Treks will be out on Sunday!

[Enterpriserules]

The new episode is out! We finish the Avatar duology.

[lvsxy808]

Just listened this morning. Excellent as always.

Regarding Avatar, it does tend to function as you say as the big two-part season opener, and I think the fact that it feels so much like that and so much like you're just watching another episode is what led people to start calling it "season 8." I know that the editors and writers have never liked that characterisation of the series, nor even the word "relaunch" (since that term was supposed to apply only to Avatar and not to the series as a whole), but one might almost say they were too successful at their task of making it feel like "more DS9" in that regard. It's just too much like the real thing for us to think of it in any other way.

Again, the two-part season opener style of the story can be compared to "The Search" or "Way of the Warrior" (and Picard's inclusion was deliberately intended to evoke "Emissary"). But I do think that if any novel was released today that looked as objectively thin on the shelf as Avatar pt 2 does, it would generate a s**tstorm of complaints from readers proclaiming that Pocket are sucking up our money for substandard product. Of course, at the time many if not most ST novels were of comparable length to Avatar 2. That's another way in which Pocket shot themselves in the foot with their too-good-ness - they raised the bar so high that our expectations were raised with it, and now we expect Twilight-sized doorstops with everything. And the DS9-R series was really where that rise in quality began. Still, I'd rather have an important, consequential-feeling slim volume than 700 pages of rubbish.

A lot of readers questioned how come Avatar came out as two novels, given how slim part 2 was. I believe it was in Voyages of Imagination that Marco Palmieri is quoted as saying that if he were doing it again now it would be one book (much in the way that Voyager's re-relaunch Full Circle was made into one book rather than two, perhaps), but that he had intended it as two full-length novels at planning stage, and at least this way we get two gorgeous covers. He's not wrong there.

You also brought up Vaughn seeming like a "new Sisko". If I recall, that was a minor bone of contention among some people, claiming that Vaughn was simply a Sisko re-run. Lost their partners to the Borg, raising their children alone, disatisfied with life, came to Bajor, encountered an Orb, new lease on life. When seeing it broken down like that one can see their point - except that all of those elements are explored in very different ways, and whatever their paths, their personalities are markedly different. I also believe, as you seemed to be implying, that those similarities were entirely deliberate on Marco and SD Perry's parts, and would have had story consequences somewhere down the road (if that road hadn't been left unfinished). Those similiarities created (for me ar least) an underlying sense that Vaughn was going to be some kind of back-up Emissary - a sense that was deliberately played with and then subverted in The Soul Key.

And a last note about furry Ferengi. I have speculated that Ferengi actually find furry things scary and unnatural because animals don't have fur on Ferenginar - it would be counter-evolutionary in the waterlogged environment. And that's why Daimons and Ferengi enforcers wear fur - because to them it's scary.

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[Enterpriserules]

lvsxy808 wrote:

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Just listened this morning. Excellent as always.

Regarding Avatar, it does tend to function as you say as the big two-part season opener, and I think the fact that it feels so much like that and so much like you're just watching another episode is what led people to start calling it "season 8." I know that the editors and writers have never liked that characterisation of the series, nor even the word "relaunch" (since that term was supposed to apply only to Avatar and not to the series as a whole), but one might almost say they were too successful at their task of making it feel like "more DS9" in that regard. It's just too much like the real thing for us to think of it in any other way.

Again, the two-part season opener style of the story can be compared to "The Search" or "Way of the Warrior" (and Picard's inclusion was deliberately intended to evoke "Emissary"). But I do think that if any novel was released today that looked as objectively thin on the shelf as Avatar pt 2 does, it would generate a s**tstorm of complaints from readers proclaiming that Pocket are sucking up our money for substandard product. Of course, at the time many if not most ST novels were of comparable length to Avatar 2. That's another way in which Pocket shot themselves in the foot with their too-good-ness - they raised the bar so high that our expectations were raised with it, and now we expect Twilight-sized doorstops with everything. And the DS9-R series was really where that rise in quality began. Still, I'd rather have an important, consequential-feeling slim volume than 700 pages of rubbish.

A lot of readers questioned how come Avatar came out as two novels, given how slim part 2 was. I believe it was in Voyages of Imagination that Marco Palmieri is quoted as saying that if he were doing it again now it would be one book (much in the way that Voyager's re-relaunch Full Circle was made into one book rather than two, perhaps), but that he had intended it as two full-length novels at planning stage, and at least this way we get two gorgeous covers. He's not wrong there.

You also brought up Vaughn seeming like a "new Sisko". If I recall, that was a minor bone of contention among some people, claiming that Vaughn was simply a Sisko re-run. Lost their partners to the Borg, raising their children alone, disatisfied with life, came to Bajor, encountered an Orb, new lease on life. When seeing it broken down like that one can see their point - except that all of those elements are explored in very different ways, and whatever their paths, their personalities are markedly different. I also believe, as you seemed to be implying, that those similarities were entirely deliberate on Marco and SD Perry's parts, and would have had story consequences somewhere down the road (if that road hadn't been left unfinished). Those similiarities created (for me ar least) an underlying sense that Vaughn was going to be some kind of back-up Emissary - a sense that was deliberately played with and then subverted in The Soul Key.

And a last note about furry Ferengi. I have speculated that Ferengi actually find furry things scary and unnatural because animals don't have fur on Ferenginar - it would be counter-evolutionary in the waterlogged environment. And that's why Daimons and Ferengi enforcers wear fur - because to them it's scary.

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Every week I look forward to your notes on the episode. Thank you so much! I agree with your thoughts on the two books being one if they were released today. Honestly, I didn't have an issue with it then; I do wish that the ebook had been combined though (even though I know you can get them in the omnibus). I have never seen Vaughn as a rehash only a deliberate homage to Sisko, but with his own path.

[Patrick O'Brien]

Another great show, thanks guys. I will read Avatar in the near future as a result

[Enterpriserules]

Patrick O'Brien wrote:

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Another great show, thanks guys. I will read Avatar in the near future as a result

Let me know what you think!

[Spocky8492]

For the moment I cannot listen all your show because I try to avoid spoilers, but I listened the number 9, Galatic Doctors without borders and I enjoyed it a lot. I read the Leonard McCoy: Frontier Doctor comics and I liked it, but your show helped me to go deeper in each story, made me realise things I didn’t realise, and even helped me understand things I didn’t understand.
As you mentioned your favorite issue of Leonard McCoy: Frontier Doctor I wanted to say that my favorite issue is Medics, particularly in order to discover how this people divert the purpose of the transporter. But all the issues are good, even if I agree with you that some story are too short and deserved a better development.
Anyway, thanks for this show.

[Enterpriserules]

Spocky8492 wrote:

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For the moment I cannot listen all your show because I try to avoid spoilers, but I listened the number 9, Galatic Doctors without borders and I enjoyed it a lot. I read the Leonard McCoy: Frontier Doctor comics and I liked it, but your show helped me to go deeper in each story, made me realise things I didn’t realise, and even helped me understand things I didn’t understand.
As you mentioned your favorite issue of Leonard McCoy: Frontier Doctor I wanted to say that my favorite issue is Medics, particularly in order to discover how this people divert the purpose of the transporter. But all the issues are good, even if I agree with you that some story are too short and deserved a better development.
Anyway, thanks for this show.

Thank you so much! I really loved those comics and Dr. McCoy is just a great character to read about!

This week we have Tony Daniel on the show to talk about "Devil's Bargain"!

[Enterpriserules]

This week we have a fun crossover episode with our other show The Orb and we talk to Una McCormack about Garak!

[Defcon]

Defcon wrote:

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We had another podcast that started out as being about Trek Lit and developed in a different direction relatively quickly. They still do stuff about TrekLit from time to time, but it isn't the focus anymore.

I hope Enterpriserules doesn't mind if I correct me on this a bit and point out that the G&T Show actually has gone back to their roots somewhat. Not really on the main show, but over the last month or two they have started some side shows that focus more on the books / writers:

Their Supplemental Logs, where they interview people, from TrekLit. They had William Leisner, David R. George III and Kevin Dilmore on in the last few weeks and a Michael A. Martin interview should be up soon.

And their Book of the Celestial Temple Book Club, where a panel discusses Trek novels, in their first episode they discuss Destiny.

[Enterpriserules]

Defcon wrote:

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I hope Enterpriserules doesn't mind if I correct me on this a bit and point out that the G&T Show actually has gone back to their roots somewhat. Not really on the main show, but over the last month or two they have started some side shows that focus more on the books / writers:

Their Supplemental Logs, where they interview people, from TrekLit. They had William Leisner, David R. George III and Kevin Dilmore on in the last few weeks and a Michael A. Martin interview should be up soon.

And their Book of the Celestial Temple Book Club, where a panel discusses Trek novels, in their first episode they discuss Destiny.

No problem, I'm glad to see a focus on Trek Lit again.

[Patrick O'Brien]

Just finished listening to the last episode with James Swallow. He was a great guest as always.

[Enterpriserules]

Patrick O'Brien wrote:

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Just finished listening to the last episode with James Swallow. He was a great guest as always.

James and I could talk for hours, we always talk 30 or more minutes before and after. Greg Cox is up next!

[Reanok]

I can't wait to hear your interview with Greg Cox.I really liked his novel Weight of Worlds,Ithas great character story arcs for The Enterprise crew.And the alien Crusaders were interesting adversaries in the novel.

[Enterpriserules]

Reanok wrote:

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I can't wait to hear your interview with Greg Cox.I really liked his novel Weight of Worlds,Ithas great character story arcs for The Enterprise crew.And the alien Crusaders were interesting adversaries in the novel.

Yeah, I am working on the review today, but I agree, I really liked the book.