There's also the possibility of doubling-back earlier in the 24th century novelverse continuity, outside of the Voyager line. After reading "Atonement" and the tease at the end of "Sacraments of Fire," delaying a hypothetical "Countdown to Prose" and getting a few "lost adventures" featuring some absent friends in exchange seems like a more than fair trade to me.
Theoretically could the books deal with the aftermath of the Hobus incident, like what Borgboy said, or would they have to avoid everything even slight related to the destruction of Romulus? Could they show the Romulans dealing with the loss of Romulus, as long as they don't explicitly mention what happened to it?
STO and the Litverse have already diverged and contradicted each other, they're entirely separate continuities. For one, Bacco survived to the end of her last term in STO and chose not to run again.
Indeed, "diverged" is the wrong word, since they were never compatible to begin with. When the "Path to 2409" history was first posted, it already contradicted the events of the DS9 post-finale novels, even though it borrowed ideas and characters from some of the other novels. And its versions of races like Species 8472 and the Iconians are incompatible with the novelverse versions. There was never any point at which the novel and STO continuities were mutually reconcilable.
Weird question, only asked because I know how weird and nonsensical these things can be: If the reboot Trek license is out of the question, couldn't Pocket reacquire the rights to Star Trek Online, then pick out the ST'09 elements of it's backsory (Supernova, Romulus kablooey, Vulcan squidships. Red Matter, tentacled Romulan deathships etc) to legally use in the novelverse?
It doesn't work that way. We couldn't "borrow" those movie-related elements from STO, because they don't belong to STO. They belong to CBS and Bad Robot, and STO simply borrows them. STO and the novels are both derivative works. We're both playing with CBS's toys. Everything in both of them belongs to CBS, and CBS -- and in the case of the new movies, Paramount and Bad Robot -- decides who gets to use what. More generally, no tie-in needs to "acquire the rights" to another tie-in, because the rights all belong to CBS. Anything that a tie-in licensee creates becomes CBS property and is free for other tie-ins to use. (STO has already cherrypicked a lot of ideas from the novelverse -- Bacco, the Titan, and various other things -- and I and other novelists have borrowed ideas from various Trek comics.) We don't need special dispensation to borrow from other tie-ins, because anything they create is simply an extension or elaboration of the screen canon, so our license to use the screen canon already covers it. But if a given licensee doesn't have a license to a particular part of screen canon, then they can't do an end run by getting the rights secondhand from another licensee, because that licensee doesn't own the ideas. Remember my earlier analogy about how different crewmembers aboard the same ship might have different authorizations about what sensitive areas they're allowed to enter. If you're not authorized to enter a given area, you can't get authorization from another crewmember who already has it; you and they both have to get authorization from the same commanding officers.
If fake Uhura can just exposit how "everything is alternate" to justify all of the flagrant continuity violations in 2009, then why can't someone in the 24th century just randomly toss out a line about the philosophical implications of alternate quantum realities, while noting how pretty Hobus twinkles on a clear Romulus night in January 2388? ...Or can't we? Does it just not work both ways, because the screen movies are as Gods to us? It's a frustrating thought that the novels are restricted to respecting 2009, while JJ Abrams gets away with having no respect whatsoever.
It's all equally fake, you know. It's a work of fiction created by people working under contract to CBS and Paramount. And tie-in fiction is derivative of it, secondary to it, borrowing its concepts. It's there to support the screen property and follow its lead. That's what we're hired to do. That should be all the explanation needed for anyone who's ever been employed. Again... we're hired to do a job. It doesn't work both ways for the same reason you don't give orders to your boss at work. It's not about "as Gods," it's about employers and employees and contracts. Don't mythologize or overcomplicate it. And I'm sure Abrams and his collaborators have enormous respect for Star Trek. Orci in particular is a gigantic Trek fan, as passionate and devoted to it as any of us. They just don't feel bound by your personal interpretation of it, and that's their prerogative, because they don't work for you. It's unseemly for fans to attack other fans just for having different tastes. Just because you don't personally like their movies, that doesn't entitle you to impugn their integrity or their respect for the property. That's not being a fan, that's being a bully and using fandom as an excuse.
When one is tasked with creating an entry for a series that is and always has been intensely continuity-driven, and one's resulting creation is rife with severe contradictions against huge portions of the existing body of material, one has done, at best, a poor job... And at worst, has deliberately compromised the vision for unspecified reasons. If the primary motive for having done so is financial, the endeavour lacks integrity. Do not mistake a lack of respect, on my part, for bullying. I get to choose who I respect. Respect is earned, not given freely. And when it comes to 2009, I am hugely disappointed.
It's not about how I would approach it. It's about departing so brutally from all that has come before it. If you take an assessment of all the canon prior to the Abrams spinoffs, all that which collectively defines "Star Trek," and you compare it with the new movies, a strict compare and contrast clearly demonstrates that the new movies are objectively bad Star Trek. The departure isn't a matter of interpretation, it's not a subjective assesment about their quality as Star Trek. Rather, it is that they demonstrably lack the specific quality of being Star Trek.
Agreed. And while I am indeed mystified by Bad Robot's not letting the novels acknowledge anything from the Abramsverse, and would like an explanation from them on that point, I still don't think it's a lack of respect. It's just a minor annoyance. We will adapt.
Exactly how does differences between two timeline universes imply the differences are contradictions? This new timeline/universe has no impact whatsoever on the existence of the Prime universe.
False. TOS came out in an era of "intensely" episodic TV, where each installment was expected to be totally standalone. TAS was also completely episodic. TNG was mostly episodic with some recurring plot threads. DS9 experimented with more serialized storytelling, but less so than most shows today. VGR returned to a TNG-ish level of episodic storytelling, as did ENT for its first two seasons. Also, that "continuity-driven" franchise is fraught with enormous contradictions between different installments and within each installment. Trek continuity has always been a mess, ever since they changed Kirk's middle initial from R to T, and it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Some 35 years ago, many fans refused to accept TMP and TWOK as a legitimate continuation of TOS because of their massive changes in continuity, costume and tech design, and the like (Klingons don't have bumpy heads, how dare you???). Years after that, quite a few fans refused to accept TNG as real Star Trek because of its discontinuities with what had come before (how can Data be unique when there were so many androids in TOS?). Ten to fifteen years ago, a number of fans rabidly refused to accept Enterprise as the real thing because it contradicted their long-held assumptions about Trek continuity, even though most of those assumptions were based in offscreen material and fan conjecture rather than canon. And do you know what they all did in every single case? They asserted that all previous Trek had been a single, completely consistent and integrated continuity, and that the new incarnation was the first one that had ever contradicted what came before. They completely forget all the contradictions that their predecessors condemned in earlier continuations of Trek. Ultimately, it's not about continuity. It's just about being suspicious of the new and unfamiliar. That's a natural human reflex, but it's a reflex that Star Trek teaches us to mistrust and grow beyond. But you do not get to accuse other fans of acting out of disrespect toward Star Trek itself. That's the point. They have as much right not to be accused of disrespect as you do. Bull. It's no more "brutal" than TMP giving the Klingons ridges, or TWOK retconning Chekov into "Space Seed" and giving Kirk a hitherto-unsuspected son, or TNG making Klingons the honorable ones instead of Romulans, or DS9 ignoring nearly everything "The Host" established about Trill.
Obviously the subject of this thread is going to lead to strong feelings, given the strong reactions to ST09 - you all are doing a good job of staying civil so far, make sure it stays that way please
Hmm.... And I thought Wars had head-spinning continuity structures! Still, based on those previous cases, Christopher, would you suspect this current mess will be resolved in due course? As the sense I'm getting is: Right now, yes, it's a mess, but the books can step off the gas, take their time for a few years and, by the time the books have to address it properly, it'll be sorted.
I'm sorry, but that's patently false. There are differences depicted in 2009 that cannot be explained by Nero's incursion, and those differences represent inconsistencies. Like for example the ages of the characters being different, the divergent design aesthetics that started with Kelvin, these and other differences are too glaring to be forgiven like we do with minor continuity flubs between episodes. There is also the fact that (Christopher's excellent work in the non-canon DTI notwithstanding) changes to the past by time travel in Star Trek canon are exclusively depicted to erase and replace the future, so counter to your point, by all of the logic of more than 700 episodes, JJ's movies do, in point of fact, severely "impact whatsoever on the existence of the Prime universe."
In fact, it stands to reason that if Pocket publishes anything that takes place in the Prime timeline that takes place after 2387, they will by default be in contradiction with 2009. That timeline canonically ceased to exist. To state otherwise would be a violation of the terms of the license as articulated by Christopher, because it is a contradiction of 2009.