I apologize if this has been asked before, but is there a reason that the Voyager novels are set several years prior to the recent TNG and DS9 ones? I love Kirsten's direction for the VOY series, but it feels odd reading about the recent Borg Invasion and recovery efforts, whereas the other novels are beyond this point, set after the Full Circle fleet's mission is scheduled to end. I really enjoyed Destiny, and thought the four TNG-era series (including Titan) would be set during the same time period from now on. Was it decided that it wasn't a good idea to have the four series set at the same time? I'm sure there's a logical reason. I apologize if this subject has been brought up before, it's my first time here and I didn't see any similar posts
Kirsten is telling a long-form story and she already ploughed through 2379 & 2380 catching Voyager up to the end of Destiny. I'm guessing that the reason is the same as when the DS9 Relaunch also moved at a deliberately slow pace. The timeline moves at the speed of plot, and we don't want to just skip a full year's worth of story during a planned 3 year mission. As there is no one else out there in the DQ from Starfleet except the FC Fleet, i'd think it was safe for her to move it along this fashion. Kirsten would be the best one to answer this one though. Hopefully she comes by again soon
Oh, I enjoy her storytelling choices, I didn't intend to sound like I don't like her work. But didn't Titan (which was also on an extended mission) series skip large periods of time? I'm not even saying that's what should have happened with Voyager, I'm just curious if there was a conscious decision to keep Voyager separate from the others. Well, other than the fact that the Full Circle fleet is literally separated by a large distance from the others I won't post any spoilers, but the end of Protectors was great and its got me intrigued for the next novel.
Titan did skip big swaths of time, but Titan isn't one large story by one author. It's a multi-author series, so each book was kind of a "one-shot" if you will. Voyager, right now, is a one author series. I really dug Protectors as well. From what i've seen Kirsten post, it's intended to be the first book of a trilogy.
Excellent point about the VOY series being by a single author, I hadn't considered that. Oh, a trilogy? Thanks for the info, I guess book two will be Acts of Contrition? I'm looking forward to it.
From what i've seen, the trilogy is: 1-Protectors (Jan. 2014) 2-Acts of Contrition (Sep.2014) 3-Atonement (2015) I think a lot of people around here are also looking forward to them
Someone correct me if i'm wrong here, because I haven't gone and checked the publication dates, but I think part of the issue was that the original Voyager relaunch took place right after they got home in 2378 and came out before Nemesis. That relaunch was not successful, so they stopped doing Voyager books. Then years later, after Destiny they brought in Kristen to do another Voyager relaunch, and rather than jump ahead to where the rest of the books were they made a creative decision to start where the first Voyager relaunch left off and go at their own pace.
No, the first Voyager novel jumped to Destiny and then past it; since then is when the rest of the novels have gone ahead while Voyager has lagged. I think New York Times Bestselling Author Kirsten "MF" Beyer should do whatever the hell she wants, though. If it inconveniences everyone else, so be it.
Something of note: Full Circle itself does skip a good amount of time. IIRC the first part is mostly an Enemy of My Enemy follow-up in September 2378 and then mostly a Destiny follow-up from February to May 2381. I hope maybe in 2015 for the 20th anniversary of Voyager Pocket can do a follow-up to Distant Shores that maybe covers the gaps in Full Circle. I think you're right, but Homecoming, the first post-"Endgame" novel debuted in June 2003. Are you forgetting Homecoming, The Farther Shore, Spirit Walk: Old Wounds, and Spirit Walk: Enemy of My Enemy? Those all take place after "Endgame" and before Full Circle.
But the first Beyer novel started in 2378 correct and then moved quickly to Destiny and a bit ahead, but still didn't catch up all the way to where the rest of the novels were at?
Full Circle *did* catch up to the rest of the novels; it finished roughly the same time that A Singular Destiny and Losing The Peace did. Since then, the rest of the novels have gone much faster than the Voyager novels.
Protectors rather made me appreciate the time lag relative to the other series. Having the immediate (or near enough) aftermath of the Borg Invasion explored in this series - shall we say, "phase one of post-Destiny", while the others deal with "phase two" - politics and the rise of the Typhon Pact as a functional power - and "phase three" - clearing the cobwebs out and heading back to exploration/stability. It's more interesting to have a window into the Federation's recovery/progress as a society in different places relative to the "present".
The real issue to me isn't that Voyager is moving too slow. It's that the Alpha Quadrant series are moving too quickly. I would welcome a return to the slower pace that the original DS9 Relaunch had. Why rush and skip over months and years of story time.
I agree. I was disapointed when I realized that majority of the post-Destiny series were jumping over a year or more at a time. I know it's not usual for books in ongoing series to be set at these kinds of intervals, but I definitely prefer it if they set closer together, both in Trek and in non-tie-in series.
That's my jam! Yeah, all this years and years (in story) between books makes me feel like I'm missing out on too much. I know TV isn't books and the same rules shouldn't necessarily apply, but can you imagine if a TV show skipped time to such an extent? Yes, nu-BSG did it, Alias did it, a few others, but in those cases the time-skip was always part of the story, done to make things more interesting, and its events were covered later on in flashback. Whereas with these books it's more like, "Eh, stuff happened, you don't need to know about it, it's fine, let's move on." Personally I tend to think the original DS9-R (or DS9-R v1.0, or whatever we want to call it) went a touch too far in the other direction (18 novels and several short stories to cover only a year and a bit of story time). Surely there has to be a happy medium somewhere. But then, hey, where would we be if all the books series worked exactly the same way? At least this way there's a bit of variety. .
A better analogy would be movies. Long time jumps are odd in a TV series because it comes out on a weekly basis for much of the year -- although you often see time jumps of several months between seasons, since we live in a time when the conceit of shows taking place in real time is commonplace. But movies tend to come out years apart, and there are often gaps of years between them to reflect that. There's an interval of a decade or more between ST:TMP and TWOK, and an interval of six or more years between TFF and TUC. The four TNG movies have about the same intervals between them in-story that they had in real life, 2-4 years apart. And the second Abrams movie was set about a year after the first. The TNG/DS9/associated novels of the past few years have been following a similar pattern, staying relatively close to real time.
At least it is not as bad as the Enterprise books for the "Romulan War " where it was just pop into one month for a paragraph or two and then jump ahead 10 months. But I'm still waiting for the conclusion of the Iliana Ghemor arc that was left dangling in "The Soul Key", and now all we are really getting is that 'something interesting happened during that time, but you are not going to get to read it', even though a number of major character decisions occurred during this time.
Y'know I like how Spock's flashback in Star Trek 2009 was set in 2387, 7 years after Star Trek Nemesis in 2379/2002 in keeping with TNG era convention.
24 had irregular intervals between seasons, sometimes skipping a year, sometimes several years, between 'days'.
Hey folks, I think, for the most part, the original question has been answered, but just to confirm... The last time the editors decided to synch up all of the major storylines was the Destiny trilogy. (The lack of Voyager books during that time had nothing at all to do with the merits or success of Golden's first four re-launch books.)The development and release of Destiny caused the delay in the continuing Voyager books post Spirit Walk. Marco and I had already been talking for more than a year when I was told to put everything on hold until Destiny was at a point in terms of outline approval that I could review it and build from there. As Destiny was begin written, all of the writers who would be carrying the various stories forward post-Destiny worked very closely together, reading each other's manuscripts, fielding questions about characters and arcs and doing everything we could to make the continuity around Destiny as tight as humanly possible. So yeah...Destiny and its immediate aftermath were all intended to bring everyone into the same time-frame. After that, everyone was more or less freed to move at the pace their individual stories or other crossover stories developed. I am assuming that, like me, everyone is telling the stories they want to tell when and how they want to tell them. I can't tell you exactly why the Voyager stories are progressing the way they are except to say that: 1. We said back in Full Circle that this would be a three year mission and I've been conscious as I've been working that three years can go pretty fast in book-time. I'm not intentionally dragging my feet, but with every story I think about how far along in our intended mission we are and how much farther I want to push us at any given time. 2. Perhaps more than the other series, Voyager has required a lot of set-up. Once Full Circle moved us from the end of Spirit Walk through Destiny...which was around three years, I think...my instinct was to slow down. Full Circle had to cover the ground that it did. I could easily have told that story in two or three full books, but that's not how the editors wanted to do it. But once we had a direction and our new cast of characters, the work of building those characters and relationships took precedence in my mind over pushing the story forward at any arbitrary pace. I've written five novels since Full Circle and am writing the sixth as we speak. There has been a great deal of change just in those five books. Only now am I feeling like things are settling down in such a way that moving things along at a slightly brisker pace might be a good idea. 3. Every time I sit down to start a new story, I always look first at where we last ended and ask myself...what happened next? In every case, so far, the answer to that question needed to happen pretty much right away. Full Circle/Unworthy were designed to bring us through our first few days/weeks back in the Delta Quadrant. Children of the Storm overlapped with Unworthy in the Quirinal/Planck/Demeter sections. Eternal Tide picked up shortly after Children. And there were so many immediate fallout issues left after Eternal Tide that there was no way I could skip time. The latest trilogy...Protectors, Acts of Contrition, and Atonement was designed to bring us to the end of the first year of the fleet's mission, so together they cover six to seven months (I think.) For me, that's really picking up the pace in one big story. I had no idea as I was writing these how far I was really falling behind the other series. The only drawback to this choice has been that because we are so far behind, Voyager isn't really available to participate in some of the newer crossover stuff like The Fall. It's sort of a bummer. But I can live with it for now. I am contracted now to write the next book after Atonement, which would theoretically begin Year 2 of the fleet's mission. At this point, I can't begin to tell you how much time we're going to cover there or how things will work out. I'm too busy finishing Atonement. Just know that we are all aware of the time discrepancy now and no one is particularly worried about it. It's out there as something potentially to be considered, but by far the greater concern is always...what needs to happen next for our characters and what is the most exciting way we can tell that story. For now, it's been to keep the time short and the stories close together. That can always change, but there would have to be a really good reason for it to do so. Because Voyager is in the DQ doing their own thing, and can return to the AQ at any time, I have the unique ability now to connect what I'm doing with what I already know has transpired. It's a rather interesting advantage for me as a writer, and one I would be sacrificing should we push ahead too quickly. I'm not saying I wouldn't do it, but the story I want to tell next would have to require it. I think the biggest concern is that I would end up in a position where I would be forced to jump ahead and leave readers with a ton of open questions about stuff they might feel they had missed in the interim. But I promise you, as long as I am telling these stories, that would never be my instinct or choice. Hope that helps. Best, Kirsten Beyer