So What Are you Reading?: Generations

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by captcalhoun, Dec 22, 2011.

  1. Etoile

    Etoile Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Now that I've finished it - even better than I expected. He does some very bold things with Spock, and it works astonishingly well. The nuances of communication are also beautifully done, particularly when Kirk and Meshu cannot understand each other - rings very true to life for a deaf person in the hearing world, or the reverse.
     
  2. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Doesn't matter, since there's no continuity among the various Pike novels. Indeed, most Pike-era novels and comics are set either just before or just after "The Cage," so a lot of them are jostling to fit into the same narrow space.
     
  3. Reanok

    Reanok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I started reading Ancient Shores by Jack McDevitt I 've really liked reading his novels I found at a used book store.
     
  4. indianatrekker26

    indianatrekker26 Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    After wrapping up TOS: From History's Shadow, I've decided, since I'm in such a TOS mood, I'm going to keep reading the TOS novels in publication order from where I left off. I started TOS: The Vulcan Academy Murders.
     
  5. Allyn Gibson

    Allyn Gibson Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Finally finished reading Dorothy Sayers' Whose Body? As a mystery it was pretty thin. The plotting was simple, the resolution came in a massive indium, and the whole thing was tedious. I know the series gets better from here.

    As an aside, I'm surprised some television producer isn't chasing Downton Abbey's success by making a Lord Peter series.

    Also recently read, Marion Zimmer Bradley's Middle-Earth fanfics. In the early 1970s she wrote two stories about Arwen. They were interesting, but nothing essential.
     
  6. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I made a discovery at the used-book store: Mirabile by Janet Kagan, with "From the Bestselling Author of Uhura's Song" printed across the top and the author's name above the title. Trek books really were bigger sellers back in the day, weren't they? Anyway, it's a fixup novel of six Asimov's novelettes/novellas involving a group of colonists on an alien planet, dealing with the quirks of a colonization process wherein the genetic engineers back on Earth designed the colonizing plants and animals to have hidden gene sequences that could spawn other types of plants and animals to increase biodiversity, which sometimes interacts with the native conditions to produce strange hybrid creatures (Dragon's Teeth) with names like the Loch Moose Monster and frankenswine. I doubt that could actually work (flowers giving birth to insects?), but it's a fairly humorous novel. Some of the stories involve native Mirabilan life forms too, and there's some clever biological worldbuilding as the protagonists solve the ecological mysteries. Kind of fun, but it didn't really hold my attention the way Uhura's Song did.

    I also managed to find copies of some old Trek books I've been wanting to give another go, Crisis on Centaurus and Chain of Attack/The Final Nexus. I'll be starting on those next.
     
  7. JD5000

    JD5000 Captain Captain

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    I'm in a rut. I'm struggling through the second book in the 'Dominion War' four-parter by Diane Carey. I normally enjoy her novels, but as someone who has seen the equivalent of the full run of DS9 probably a dozen times, reading episode novelization does nothing for me. Most of the dialog and scenes are directly taken from the scripts. There are some interesting asides though, such as what happens to The Centaur and Sisko's old pal Charlie Reynolds after they run into each other while our heroes are on the Jem'Hadar fighter.

    I think originally, I bought all four books...enjoyed the first one which is an original storyline, then got about a third of the way through the second and just got bored. I can't remember if the third and fourth books have original plots or not, I'm not sure if I even gave them a chance. By golly, I'm gonna finish this one and move on and find out!
     
  8. Kertrats47

    Kertrats47 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I just posted my latest review, this time of an older TNG novel: Intellivore by Diane Duane.

    I recently read Christopher L. Bennett's Department of Temporal Investigations: The Collectors. Wow! That story went places I thought no Trek story could... and CLB pulled it off brilliantly!

    Right now I'm finishing up Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler, and reading Dark Mirror by Diane Duane.
     
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2014
  9. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    First and third are John Vornholt's original TNG duology; second and fourth are Carey's DS9 novelizations.


    Thank you!
     
  10. Lonemagpie

    Lonemagpie Writer Admiral

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    Read Elmore Leonard's Pagan Babies - about a guy returning from Africa who gets mixed up in a girl's revenge scam against her mob ex - which is a more recent one of his, and not bad, but it kind of petered out in a way I don't really expect from him. It was OK, though.

    Not sure what's next - I did start the first few pages of a Buffy book, Night Of The Living Rerun, but it's so not doing it for me. I'll have to pick something else. Apart from the annual zip through A Christmas Carol, obviously.
     
  11. Gul Re'jal

    Gul Re'jal Commodore Commodore

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    Continuing my DS9 re-read, I just started "This Gray Spirit" yesterday.

    I should also receive my copies of "The Empire of Tears" by Jose Freches today, so it'll pop on the top of my reading list.
     
  12. Reanok

    Reanok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Dec 26, 2002
    I'm reading Star Trek TNG A Call to darkness by Micheal Jan Friedman the story reminds of the Tos tv show where Kirk and his crew had to fight in Gladiator games.
     
  13. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I started the second collection of Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra's comic book series Y: The Last Man, Cycles this weekend. I'm two issues in and loving it.
     
  14. EnriqueH

    EnriqueH Commodore Commodore

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    I'm looking to get started on "The Final Reflection" by John Ford.

    I've not read either one of his Trek books, but I've heard they're good.
     
  15. Joel_Kirk

    Joel_Kirk Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I just received issue one of my "Shaft" comic by the publisher Dynamite, which takes place in the late 60s before he becomes a private eye. I also received #38 of IDW's "Star Trek" six-parter 'The Q Gambit.'
     
  16. Lonemagpie

    Lonemagpie Writer Admiral

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    JLA- The Hypothetical Woman, by Gail Simone and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. Pretty good trade paperback of the 6-issue mini. Really loved the handling of Bats, J'onn, and especially Wonder Woman. Great that it's the John Stewart GL in this too, as he's my favourite GL. I was left a bit puzzled to who and what the eponymous Sybil actually was, though - not sure if that was something introduced or explained in previous stories.
     
  17. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Just finished Crisis on Centaurus. I'm reminded both of why I thought it was worth revisiting and why I sold off my original copy. It has some elements that are quite creative, particularly the depiction of the accident that befalls the Enterprise, and I quite liked the role the ship played in the climax. But the depiction of Centaurus and its society always bugged me for how identical it was to 20th-century America, right down to gasoline-powered cars and brand names like American Express, Baggies, and Sears Roebuck (which doesn't even really call itself that anymore). It's so oddly unfuturistic that as I was rereading it, I wondered if maybe Ferguson had initially written parts of it as a contemporary thriller and then reworked it into a Trek story -- maybe adding the damage to the Enterprise in order to explain the lack of transporters and easy communications and the like. Although there's nothing in his Voyages of the Imagination interview to suggest that. And come to think of it, his portrayal of 23rd-century Earth in A Flag Full of Stars was just as unfuturistic, and I didn't care for it there either.

    I'm also surprised by how small a role Joanna McCoy had in the novel, despite being on the cover. My memory of this was as her big featured story in Trek Lit, but she was very much a peripheral character; she had considerably more to do in her two Marvel comic appearances (as did her counterpart/"sister" Barbara in Gold Key's Trek comics).
     
  18. Kertrats47

    Kertrats47 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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  19. Reanok

    Reanok Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I just finished reading Book 2 of the Q trilogy by Greg Cox and now started book 3 I really like this look into Q's past and Picard's interaction with him has been a great read.:techman:And Riker having to deal with Q'S wife and son and the dangerous situation they're in is well written. I can't wait to see how this story is wrapped up. The villains are a nasty group I can't wait to see how they're finally caught.
     
  20. Cap'n Crunch

    Cap'n Crunch Captain Captain

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    Knoxville, TN
    Last week I finished Star Trek: Foul Deeds Will Rise by Greg Cox. For some reason, I'm not sure why, I wasn't too excited to read this one (even though I always enjoy Cox's stories) but I really enjoyed it. I found it to be a very entertaining whodunit, and was still guessing the killer's identity up until the reveal.

    I'm currently reading Star Trek: SCE: Interphase by Dayton Ward & Kevin Dilmore. I've already finished part one.