Spoilers TNG: A Singular Destiny by Keith R.A. DeCandido review thread

*falls off chair laughing, bumping his skull on his drawing table corner on the way down...*

Now, here's the key question: is the book in Ottawa yet? Anyone here seen it?

 

Wow. Actually neither of those is among the names I noticed. I forgot all about

Spoiler: ASD

who George Sanders was, even though I was the one who gave Sanders that first name in The Buried Age. And I didn't recognize the name Sorlak at all.

So keep looking.

 

Yes, really.

 

Well, charmed as I am by the notion of spending yet more time poring over a list of fictional characters in the hope that one of them will ring a distant bell, I think I'll just wait for someone who can be bothered to help me out by identifying them, thanks.

 

In the casualty list in question, three are characters we've seen on screen, one is a name we've seen before, and one is someone from one of my previous books. I'll say who behind the box....

Spoiler: A Singular Destiny

The onscreen characters are B'Elanna Torres, Miral Paris, and George Sanders (whose death is then spelled out in the very next interstitial bit). The name we've seen before is Lt. Commander Thomas Alan Chafin, a fan who's been Tuckerized many times in the past, mostly by Peter David. The one from my previous book is Sorlak of Vulcan, who was a Palais lawyer in Articles of the Federation.

 

This thread is starting to need funeral music.

 

In the version I have in manuscript, there are two other names I recognized, both SCE-related:

Spoiler: ASD

Captain Anna Maria Amalfitano, who was Sonya Gomez's captain aboard the Sentinel, and Orenthal V. Hawkins, who I assume is Vance Hawkins.

Were they removed from the final list?

 

^ The first name was removed and your assumption regarding the second name is false.

 

I take it that the second name is named after one of your fellow contributors to The Chronic Rift?

 

^ I have no idea what you're talking about...............

 

Okay, thanks. But could all those people with the same family name be relatives of the character I thought it was?

 

Good grief, don't tell Lynx, she'll have a coronary...

It may be a little harder to find Trek books (this one in particular) in New York, Man of Steel. I just posted this in another thread:

 

In the future, there is only one family named "Hawkins".

 

I don't know what Borders thinks they're doing. This was the same message they had for Errand of Fury Book 3, and it doesn't seem like they intend to carry Shards and Shadows in store, either. Not putting new releases into their stores (even if its just the less mainstream titles that are being sacrificed) hardly seems to be the way to bring customers in.

 

Yeah, I guess they're targeting hardcovers...which are a SIN to buy at a B&M these days.

 

Given how common that family name is, I'd say no.

 

Agreed. I've ehard rumours of the chain being in trouble, and this does seem the wrong way to try and fix things. For my part, I've stopped going to my local Borders in lieu of a Barnes and Noble which is twice the distance and an extra bus transfer away. Their loss, I suppose.

 

Sorry, that makes no sense what so ever!

You hear a shop is in trouble so instead of buying which ever goods you need/want from them in an admittedly tiny way to help there profits and remain open, you decide to go to the competition and thus possibly contribute to the decline of the first shop.

 

It's all unnecessary hysteria anyway. The way their site works is that the date they have stamped as the "release date" prevents the "check store inventory" zip code box from showing up and instead it says "not available in stores". On that day (in some cases a day before) the box shows up like normal. As will be the case here.

I've even seen this happen in the case of Gods of Night where the site listed the release date as the 27th and thus "not available in stores" but on the 25th I went to my local borders and there it was. Then on the 27th the box showed up like normal.

 

It makes perfect sense. They have ceased to carry the goods (i.e. ST novels) that I want to buy, so I am instead going to a vendor who does carry the books I want. If they my (and presumably other folks) business and thus keep themselves from going under, they should improve their selection (which has gotten more and more sparse in many areas other than just ST books).

Maybe so, but a bit more recently the third Errand of Fury book remains "internet only" at my local borders. Nor have they stocked Shards and Shadows at all.

Over the past year, the two or three Borders stores I visit here in the Seattle/Tacoma area have been stocking fewer and fewer titles. It started with them not carrying as many backlist titles. Now they are carrying fewer and fewer new titles. Recently the store in Tacoma and the one in downtown Seattle have gone as far as to rearrange their floorplans/shelves to make it look like there are more books than there really are in the store. *shrug* For the last decade, Borders was my store of choice. Good customer service, efficient at ordering in titles for me, etc. The last 12-18 months this has gotten to be less and less the case. So, I'll just go elsewhere where the selection is better and the service more accomodating.