New blurbs for Raise the Dawn, Fallen Gods, and The Eternal Tide

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by 8of5, Dec 10, 2011.

  1. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    To me it sounds like they took the first couple of paragraphs of a longer outline or summary of the novel and stuck those in as a quick-and-dirty blurb.



    Yes. This was spelled out in The Struggle Within, summarizing the threads evident throughout the other novels. It puzzles me that there are some readers out there who are still determined to treat the Pact as a single monolithic entity, when the entire thrust of the series has been that its six members all have their own clashing agendas. The story of the Typhon Pact is not about the Federation against a united enemy, it's about the six nations of the Pact competing with each other to define the future of their partnership.



    I profoundly doubt she'd see it that way. After all, what civilization has only one "way?" The Romulans have multiple different factions and points of view just as any society does. Kamemor no doubt considers her "way" to be entirely Romulan, just a better way of being Romulan than the way endorsed by the previous rulers of the Empire.
     
  2. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Actually, I would say that in the end Destiny was the one of the biggest wins we've ever gotten in any Trek story. Sure there was an invasion, and lost of death and destruction, but in the end the Federation was able to defeat the Borg, who are one of, if not the, biggest threats to the galaxy. Not only that, but they defeated them through peacefully means, and in the process saved billions or maybe trillions of beings who had been enslaved by the Collective over the years. That's a pretty big win in my book. And the invasion also lead to the beginnings of the expansion Khitomer Accords, which created tighter bonds between the UFP and other neighbors. Which just adds even more positive points to it.
     
  3. captcalhoun

    captcalhoun Admiral Admiral

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    i can't understand how anyone can call Destiny 'genocide porn'...
     
  4. Brefugee

    Brefugee No longer living the Irish dream. Premium Member

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    Given that so much death and destruction occurred during the majority of the story and fudging the actual definition of genocide, I can see why some people could come to that conclusion.
     
  5. TerraUnam

    TerraUnam Commander Red Shirt

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    Kirsten Beyer is among the more tight-lipped authors about blurbs and spoilers, she likes to keep it all close to her chest until she the book goes on sale. I doubt she had much to do with the blurb. It doesn't even say anything not stated as ongoing plot points in her previous Voyager novels, so it isn't really a spoiler either.

    The publisher needed a description for a title in the catalogue and created one. :rolleyes:
     
  6. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^As a rule, blurbs are handled in-house by the editors or whoever. Sometimes the authors are invited to have a say in the blurb-writing, but that's not the norm.
     
  7. xortex

    xortex Commodore Commodore

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    Dropping quality and raising the price sounds like a brilliant marketing stratagy to me, not that I ever think about buying a Star Trek book. I did buy 'Children of the Storm' for personal reasons - thought she missed the mark, and 'Troublesome minds' because of the high mind concept, but the Typhon pact books just seem too literate for me and too dense. I like complex stories told in simple ways with high sci-fi concepts, not political drudges.
     
  8. JB2005

    JB2005 Commodore Commodore

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    ^ You can't tell a complex story in a simple way...
    From now on I'm going to call you President Reagan..
     
  9. xortex

    xortex Commodore Commodore

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    Reagan was a great President.
     
  10. JB2005

    JB2005 Commodore Commodore

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    Ronnie couldn't deal with complex issues, like you President Reagan and so he had to have everything in a one page memo...

    On the other hand, for those of us who don't have a "Hey, hey wait a minute...I don't want to have to read and think..." The 2012 line up looks pretty good!
     
  11. Sho

    Sho Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    That should be enough of that petty forth and back, I hope ...
     
  12. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Ummmm.......ok.:wtf:
     
  13. rfmcdpei

    rfmcdpei Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    For it to be porn, wouldm't there need to be a "gosh-ain't-it-cool" factor? Destiny didn't strike me as doing that: the Borg's actions weren't gratuitous, and did carry significant costs for the characters and setting that haven't been handwaved away.
     
  14. Turtletrekker

    Turtletrekker Admiral Admiral

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    Personally, I just roll my eyes at "clever" desciptions of Destiny, such as "genocide chic" and "genocide porn". :rolleyes:
     
  15. Edit_XYZ

    Edit_XYZ Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Sci

    You're the one shifting the goal-posts.
    I was talking about the present blurbs which continue the dystopian trend in recent trek lit.

    You analysed recent trek lit related to how the typhon pact appeared, but left out what didn't fit in the point you tried to make.

    Regardless of whether you like the term or not, Sci, the shoe fits:
    porn=television shows, articles, photographs, etc., thought to create or satisfy an excessive desire for something, especially something luxurious: the irresistible appeal of food porn; an addiction to real-estate porn.
    AKA porn is oversaturating with something, not glorifying said something.


    :guffaw:
    Adversarial/Cold war, remember?

    Apparently, you read selectively, Sci.
    From Zero Sum Game:
    "Our best estimate is that sabotaging this program will buy us another decade of monopoly on slipstream, by which point we hope to have rebuilt the fleet and expanded our reach to new regions of the galaxy. But if we don’t shut down the Typhon Pact’s slipstream project before it launches a prototype, the Federation will become a second-rate power in less than a year. What happens after that, I don’t think any of us want to find out."

    And about the cloak:
    "“We didn’t think the Romulans had this kind of cloak yet.” Nechayev pointed out an isolated section of the graph. “Judging from these readings, I’d say the Romulans have put phasing cloaks into active service.”
    Akaar frowned. “If that’s true, they could be roaming at will throughout Federation space.”"

    Any military officer who doesn't worry about the other side having this kind of huge strategical advantage is an utter moron/incompetent. Old news - starfleet's strategic incompetence was amply demonstrated on many occasions.
    Plus - that was when Tal'Aura - which recently supported a plan to kill every living being on earth - was praetor. And just after the romulans used said cloak to help in sabotage against the federation.:guffaw:

    Whether Bashir - and others - were depicted horribly out of character is highly relevant to the tone of recent trek lit.

    As said:
    The DRG3 2nd blurb explicitly says the attempts to bring 'peace' failed, and, by the time of the second DRG3 book, said leaders are desperately trying to prevent a shooting war (as in, they are having trouble even maintaining the cold war status).
    I see how much support that moderate romulan praetor (installed by the federation-hating tzenkethi, masters of manipulation and prediction, to serve their interest) has. How much real power the pro-peace faction within the typhon pact has.

    From Paths of disharmony:
    "That someone,” Akaar replied, “either by accident or design, has accessed top-secret and potentially damaging information. These records were classified under multiple levels of security, including several layers of calculated distraction and disinformation. They were deliberately withheld from the materials provided to the various parties and organizations that requested genetic-engineering data in order to research the problem on Andor."

    Yes, Akaar didn't know it. But someone within starfleet did know/deliberately hid the data.

    Really, Sci? Yet another condescension/ad personam attack?
    Or was this supposed to be only a straw-man and you got overenthusiastic?

    The quality of your posting sure degraded.
     
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2011
  16. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    Mmmm.

    Mmmm.

    If you're not readin' 'em, and don't intend to, then leave 'em just the way they are for those who do like 'em.
     
  17. rfmcdpei

    rfmcdpei Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Porn, to draw from Umberto Eco's definition, is action without story. We see the good stuff removed from the context of actual life; we see the action, but we don't see a convincing depiction of how they met, or how they pay their bills, etc. The oversaturation comes in the reduction of life to, well, porn, a relative overconcentration.

    In the case of Destiny, it's not obvious to me that the Borg rampage is gratuitous, or at odds with their past depiction. We know that the Borg has destroyed civilizations of interstellar scope before, that the Borg has no problem with high death tolls, and that the Borg bear grudges. Having the Borg deciding to destroy the knot of civilizations tangled about Earth after an Earth-crewed starship devastated the Borg transwarp grid isn't arbitrary.

    Your definition of genocide porn might make it impossible for genocide--catastrophe more broadly--to be covered at all. I don't think this is a good thing, especially since huge catastrophes both artificial and natural do regularly occur in the Trek universe.

    I wonder if TV Tropes has anything to say about the issue.

    I read that bit of Paths of Disharmony in the context of ancient protocols relating to Shedai technology that, with very few if anyone alive knowing of their existence, further covered up the existence of data that wasn't indexed by any of the databases searched and triggered high-level security alerts only when Crusher initiated a search making explicit references to Shedai technology. The persons within Starfleet who hid the data did so a century ago.
     
  18. Julio Angel Ortiz

    Julio Angel Ortiz Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Having finished What Judgments Come last night, I caught a line about the old Tkon empire supposedly having terraforming technology, and that their empire extended into the Beta Quadrant.

    Titan seeking terraforming -> Ta'ith once great civilization -> descendants of Tkon? #Speculation
     
  19. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Well, there are plenty of great ancient civilizations, and terraforming technology isn't particularly rare.
     
  20. pookha

    pookha Admiral Admiral

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    but not every tos story had to do with the federation/klingon cold war.

    but the typhon pact story line is overwhelming even affecting titan's story line.
    really voyager stands out now as being the most tos like.
    and has become my must buy trek books.

    though the titan storyline sounds interesting enough i will get it.