The Star Trek Books FAQ

Well, I'd been waiting for a meatier reply (no offense intended Dayton), but perhaps I can clarify my request more thoroughly in a reply to this:

Got quotes? I've got some second- and third-hand info much like has been reported in this thread and of course in your own reply, but nothing solid.

And if you'll forgive me, I prefer things as close to first-hand as possible for a wide variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I prefer any errors to be my own.

How could I report, for instance, that "Paramount Licensing" says or does such-and-such as Christopher reported toward the end of page one, when in fact no such organization exists? (Reference here) What he obviously meant to refer to was Viacom Consumer Products (ignoring, for the moment, that the coming split is going to muddle that up a bit).

Surely you can understand that I'd rather have a direct quote than mere insistence by other interested parties.

The above is an example of what I'm referring to. It's a statement with zero supporting facts offered, and indeed we have direct counterevidence thanks to the late-2004 update of StarTrek.com's notes regarding the canon policy. I've got the full references on my site, and I linked to these earlier.

In short, your contention is supported by the following:

1. I have hearsay from Ordover quoted on my site. He works for a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Paramount Communications and, save for a couple of story ideas he sold to DS9, isn't involved in the production of live-action Trek. In other words, it's hearsay from a guy who is of questionable rank in the matter anyway.
2. Less a positive claim and more of a counterclaim against positions such as those on my page, there's the suggestion that Paramount's webmasters at PDE are mere licensees, and hence anything on StarTrek.com is of a rank similar to that enjoyed by Ordover, leaving it as a he-said-she-said sort of thing. I addressed this concept in my last post on this thread.

So far as I know, that's it. If you'll forgive me for saying so, it ain't much.

Don't get me wrong . . . I fully agree that anyone can hold any opinion they like insofar as their personal canon is concerned. You want TAS? Cool. Cox's iffy Khan books? Swell. T-Negative? Go for it. FASA? Rock on.

However, if one is going to discuss the canon policy and make claims about its contents, then we've gone beyond the subjectivity of personal canon and into a discussion of objective fact. "This is what it is, this is what it contains," and so on. That's why I try to make my page as well-researched as possible.

So, do you have anything in particular to support your statements?

Thanks in advance.

 

Editors post here regularly. Feel free to ask them. That's about as close to first-hand as you're liable to get.

Support my statements? Am I on trial here?

I don't particularly appreciate the implication that I must be pulling this information from the air or my ass. When it comes to matters pertaining to canon as it relates to the Star Trek fiction I write, I take my direction from the editorial staff at Pocket Books, who in turn takes their lead from the instructions provided to them via Paramount. That's really all the justification I require and as I've already stated, I deal with these people on a regular basis and am therefore inclined to believe they must know what the hell they're talking about.

 

Not under that name, perhaps. I'm referring to the people whose job it is to decide such things, including Paula Block and John van Citters -- people that I and all the other writers and editors cooperate with on every single Trek project we do.

This just goes to show that people who use the word "obviously" are usually wrong.

Oh, come ON! Let it go, already. You treat this like it's a federal case, like "canon policy" is some all-important law that governs whole lives or something. You're obsessed with something that just has no meaning. We deal with these issues as part of our jobs -- to you it's merely an abstraction. Can't you see how overweeningly obnoxious it is for you to assume that you're a better judge of this issue than we are? If you were really interested in a fair evaluation of the evidence, you would've accepted what we told you months ago. The fact that you insist on dragging out this ridiculous, pathetic argument and dismissing the insights of people far more qualified than you just goes to show that you couldn't care less about objective truth, only about legitimizing your own preconceptions. And it's really, really pathetic.

 

DSG2k, let me see if I understand your position:
Because the professional authors who write the Star Trek novels and the editors who select and oversee the production of these novels and the publishing house which prints and distributes the novels and the company which holds the license for producing all things related to Star Trek are all in unanimous agreement that absolutely nothing except the live-action television episodes and movies are canon, they are mistaken because the facts disagree with opinions posted on your website?

Despite your opinon that Paula Block and her department do not exist, those of us who do this for a living have to deal with every line we write being vetted as consistent with canon -- though it is referred to as continuity in house. We know exactly what we are talking about. There are no grey areas. And it's more than a little annoying to have someone who has contructed their own fantasy of "how it ought to be" accuse us of dishonesty and ignorance when we share this information.


From the FAQ section of the Star Trek submission guidelines:

I understand you have the most frequently visited site concerning Star Trek canon. As a service to those who visit your site, you should either post the truth or clearly state that the site reflects only your opinion and is a work of fiction.

 

"None of the books are canon. No exceptions."
- Marco Palmieri, Senior Editor, Pocket Books

Been repeating that statement for years.

Believe it, or don't believe it--it doesn' t much matter. It's the reality in which I work.

 

Of course not.

Then my apologies, for I was not attempting to suggest that the information must have been made up . . . simply that I had no source whatsoever other than your statement.

And, if you'll forgive me for admitting this, until you mentioned "fiction I write" it never dawned on me that you might be an author. Indeed . . . and I say this with more than a little embarrassment . . . I read "Foundations" about a year and a half ago. I've always been bad about remembering the names of author teams, though (except the Reeves-Stevens duo, but that's cheating).

I do hope you'll forgive my senility. This is why I try to have everything written down, which of course is the reason I have my site to begin with.

 

I treat it like a subject about which there are objective facts. Virtually any subject has some, and thus can be addressed with equal rigor.

You note later that the canon policy has no meaning. In many cases this is so, but not all. The very reason the concept gets brought up so often among fans is because their discussions frequently require an objective standard to start from . . . a basis of discussion.

An obvious and extreme example would be someone trying to say "well, in my fanfic I established such-and-such". And on the flip side, you get people dismissing anything from certain later Trek series. Somewhere between the two extremes, you might end up with folks wanting to discuss Federation history or technology or whatever and they're trying to decide between them whether such-and-such date from such-and-such non-TV non-movie source should be allowed. The canon policy gives an objective third-party (and important-party) guideline for how to deal with that.

This is especially true when you're actually comparing two separate universes. Unfortunately, my hobby (ST-v-SW.Net) requires this level of rigor, thanks in no small part to the 'loyal opposition' on the other side of the debate which attempts to rewrite the rules of acceptable evidence for both universes in order to aim for their preferred conclusions. I was actually amused when you said I was treating it like a federal case, since I recently compared all this policy debate rigor to the long and arduous discovery phase of a trial.

That would be absurd. However, it does help guide discussions about Trek.

It's not an abstraction . . . my hobby entails a lot of work, and that work is guided by the canon policy. Knowing what that is is as important to my work as it is to yours. The fact that I work for free doesn't make that need less concrete.

(Insert any "you get what you pay for" jokes here.)

While I'm dismissing the rest of your baseless personal attacks, I did want to address the above. Any discussion of canon policy is going to need to deal with issues of rank. If you were to say one thing and Roddenberry had said another (for an extreme example), then a third party encountering both quotes (such as myself) would have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Your understanding of the canon policy is framed from (if you'll forgive the mixed metaphor) "a certain point of view". Pocket Books is a licensee, and thus receives lower consideration than statements from Paramount-proper.

The issue of consequence in this thread is whether the say from Pocket Books personnel like Ordover (who previously gave at-least-tacit confirmation of the Taylor novels' canonicity) and Marco Palmieri (whose more modern statements dismiss it) outweigh the seemingly-paramount statements on StarTrek.com. Because the statements are in direct contradiction, some selection must be made.

I could either do this according to my own whim ("I prefer to believe so-and-so"), or I can do it according to the same rigorously-enforced guidelines that I've used elsewhere.

You'll note that my original post to Therin requested further information regarding the suggestion that PDE and StarTrek.com were no different than Pocket and a book. I still have no answer on that, but that's not my point.

My point is simply this: the only thing I'm guilty of is consistency. If that's obnoxious to you, then I'm truly sorry.

 

If by "opinions posted on your website" you refer to "statements made by executive producers and production staff of the actual television shows as quoted on the site", you would be correct. They outrank everyone on your list above.

The question of the moment, as noted in my last post, is whether the StarTrek.com statement is of Paramount origin or is to be considered as coming from a licensee. After that, of course, there's the issue of how to consider a situation where an executive producer's statements are both confirmed and contradicted by different licensees.

I was unaware that I held such an opinion. Thank you for advising me of the opinions I hold. I'm sure others find this service you provide as useful as I do.

Back to the matter at hand, yes it's true that Paula Block doesn't appear on my page. There's a very good reason: I have no quotes on the matter from her. I searched around quite a bit a year or two ago for some, but none were available. If you can point me in the direction of publicly available comments from her, then I'd naturally be quite appreciative.

I have done no such thing, but I'd certainly have grounds to do so if you keep that sort of behavior up.

Happily, you do share some useful information in your post:

You'll find this quoted on my site soon. Thanks!

That's precisely what I'm doing . . . the former, mind you, and not the latter. I strive to be accurate, after all (and your quotation above furthered that goal).

Have a nice day.

 

No, you don't, because you've been given the facts by people far more qualified to know them than you, and have rejected them out of hand because they didn't fit your unwavering preconceptions.

And that's exactly the point. "Canon" is something that fans obsess on, but it's not something that the actual makers of the show care about that much. Canon is the show itself; everything else is supplemental. Paramount and the producers of the Trek shows and films are mainly concerned with the shows and films. The tie-in materials are read by at most two percent of the audience for the shows and films, so they really don't pay that much attention to them. So to them, canon is a non-issue, because everything they make is intrinsically canon, and everything else is incidental. That's why there isn't some big, important declaration of "canon policy" on their site or whatever -- because they don't need such a policy. It's just the way things naturally happen to work.

All these overblown fan debates and arguments are therefore just the fans manufacturing their own beliefs and problems and making all sorts of trouble for themselves. The people who make the shows know what canon is; the people who write and edit the tie-ins know what canon is. It's a very basic and simple issue: the shows are the canon, the original work; everything else is only a supplement. Whether anyone chooses to acknowledge a supplemental, tie-in work as "real" in their own mind is a matter of individual opinion, and no sort of formal "policy" has any bearing on it whatsoever. That's all you need to know.

It's ridiculous to keep insisting that there needs to be some official fiat defining matters of personal opinion and taste. There can be, should be, no "objective guideline," because it's a subjective question to begin with. If you want to believe something in a Trek novel is "real" in your personal version of Trek reality, go ahead! You have every right to, and nobody -- not another fan, not Paramount, not Pocket Books -- has any right to tell you otherwise. Just exercise your own judgment and imagination. It's as simple as that. If other fans disagree with you, that's fine, because you're each constructing your own personal, individual interpretation of the Trekverse. There is no absolute "right" or "wrong" answer, because it's only make-believe. It's all about imagination.

So stop treating it like some urgent debate where you have to prove your case or disprove others'. That's a pointless exercise, just arguing for the sake of argument. It's all made up anyway. Just read and enjoy the stories in your own way, and allow other people the freedom to do the same in their own different ways. There's nothing more futile than trying to prove "right" or "wrong" in a matter of personal opinion.

But you need to understand, again: Paramount has no interest in facilitating that kind of hobby. It's not something that affects them, so there's no reason why they'd bother to define some kind of absolute "canon policy" in order to satisfy the needs of your hobby. Their priorities are different, and their approach to the issue of canon is fundamentally unlike yours.

So you're never going to find the kind of "canon policy" you want from any Paramount source. Like I said, they don't need to define a formal policy for something that's self-evident to them. And canon is not about telling the fans what to believe or what is "right," it's about telling the writers for the shows what to remain consistent with. So the only "canon policy" you could ever have in your terms is one you define yourself. It's your hobby, it's your imagination and approach to the Trekverse, so you have to make your own "policy" to suit your own needs. Because those needs are apparently very different from the needs of Paramount or Pocket Books.

 

Christopher You do know that you this conversation is pointless, don't you?

 

Which is exactly my point. I'm trying to get across to DSG2k that there is no "policy" to begin with, that he's blowing the whole thing ridiculously out of proportion. If it's a hobby, he should just relax and have fun with it rather than asking that some higher authority hand down a gospel for him and others to follow.

Also to point out that the kind of "canon policy" he seems to be looking for is completely outside the purview of this thread and this forum, so he's wasting his time by debating about it here. This was supposed to be an FAQ thread, not a thread for endlessly arguing over one person's preoccupation with one narrow issue.

 

I was making the same point by not contributing.

 

I came back to give the good Mr. Palmieri thanks for his quote and to let him know that I'd updated the page (and to note to Kevin Killiany that I'd gone ahead and uploaded some tangential quotes from Paula Block regarding novel continuity). From my perspective, as a fellow who has evidently asked the proverbial 'too many questions' in the course of trying to keep my canon page at its best, I figured this would be a good way of decreasing this peculiar hostility I've found.

Instead, I find more flames and character attacks from Christopher, here.

Chris, I gave you the chance to back down from your behavior by taking the time to explain to you why I asked the questions I asked. I didn't flame you back, question your intellectual integrity, tell you that your books are ill-considered poorly-written crap, or ask you if you'd ever done any research regarding whether authors who engage with their readers but are hostile jackasses sell better than those who engage nicely. (The third would've been entirely unfair since I've never read anything of yours, and though I'd been considering Ex Machina lately I'm not sure I want to bother now.)

The fact is that I have the utmost respect for what you fellows do, and there are a lot of great books and book-derived concepts that ought to be Star Trek canon. It is perhaps unfair that Jeri Taylor had the chance to canonize her own material. However, getting in a huff over the fact that you can't do the same isn't going to help you, and while flaming a guy for keeping track of the canon policy might make you feel better, that doesn't help you either.

Regarding my "basis of discussion" idea for why Trek fans discuss canon so much, you dismiss it as a fan obsession and say Paramount cares little, noting:

And probably two percent of people actually get involved in in-depth discussions on Trek minutiae (historical, technical, et al.) online. Is it really so hard to believe that these two two-percent groups overlap significantly?

Ever see the StarTrek.com FAQ? I've pointed it out several times and linked to the relevant answers more than once in this thread. I'm amazed you missed it.

Sure, it's not a big policy in legalese designed to withstand attacks by the same sort of quote-warping fanatics that I have to deal with, but there are multiple frequently-asked-questions pointing to two multi-paragraph answers, including the "rule of thumb" answer. For most purposes that's all that would be needed.

Elsewhere on the site we have additional statements (even in the "Introduction to Star Trek" for newbies) and the concept is discussed in episode podcasts. The concept has even been discussed by the show writers here on TrekBBS.

We both agree that people can and should have their own subjective canon. However, the notion that fans should apply this subjective view in the company of other fans while discussing Trek is absurd. You participate in other forums . . . how many times have you seen threads degrade into discussions of canon? Can you even begin to count them?

Do you really think that's only a TrekBBS phenomenon? Do you really think that's only a Star Trek phenomenon?

And do you really think that there would be any improvement if there was no canon for people to fall back on? It would serve as an end to discussion. There are posters here at TrekBBS who reject much of the live-action Trek we've seen. How could you possibly have a thoughtful discussion with someone about, say, the Borg when you get some guy saying "well, I don't think they exist" or "they never came to the Federation, because I reject everything after "Q Who?"" or even "well, in my fanfic I established . . . "?

This is the very reason that religious groups, Sherlock Holmes fans, and a whole lot of other fan groups and producers thereof trouble themselves to make canon policies to begin with. (The idea even appears in soap opera fan pages . . . a group more likely to be female than the male-centric list above.)

Now I agree that the idea of a canon policy . . . itself a uniting influence . . . can be taken too far when people seem bent on meddling with one's personal canon. However, I'm not attempting to meddle with your personal choices about what you want to accept. My purpose with the canon page and with my messages in this thread has been to clarify what that third-party uniting influence actually says we're uniting towards.

And regarding my page, thanks to some subjectivists who believe what they want to believe while claiming they are speaking objectively, I'm having to be damned careful about it, too. That's the very reason I popped up in this thread to ask for clarification in the first place.

Your gross misunderstanding of me notwithstanding, I intend to continue pursuing that goal as I see fit.

This sounds great as a paper ideal, but the history of threads devolving into discussions about acceptable evidence makes it pretty clear that this just won't work in practice.

Religions work the same way. Everyone wants their religion to be objectively valid. And, sad a commentary on humanity as it is, the same is usually true of our other beliefs.

I mean, hell, just look how fast you started flaming me in this thread. No offense, but you certainly can't claim to embody this pro-subjectivism happy-hippies view of everyone's individual interpretation about canon being okay if you're sitting there flaming the crap out of a guy for having a contrary opinion!

And actually, I'm gonna stop right there, because that's game, set, and match . . . QED, and all that jazz. With your behavior you disproved your own argument.

Have a great day.

 

Oh, lighten up. That's all I've been saying all along -- just relax. Stop making some huge contentious issue out of this, stop being so condescending and hostile toward people who disagree with you, stop demanding proof and hard evidence as if this were some criminal trial, and try to remember that this is supposed to be entertainment. We're here to have fun, not to try each other in court. And your refusal to let go of this fixation of yours is making things a lot less fun for the rest of us -- especially when you stubbornly refuse to listen to our every sincere attempt to provide you with information and answers and just treat us with dismissal and denigration. If you treat people like that, you have no business accusing them of flaming when they react badly to it.

So just let it go. Lighten up. This is supposed to be fun.

 

FOR GOD'S SAKES, GET A LIFE! IT'S A TV SHOW!

 

Thank you for that post, Christopher.

Seriously, this is completely out of hand. This thread isn't even meant for a canon debate. If you want to continue this, start a new thread.

Nonetheless, I'm considering closing this thread and letting Steve start the FAQ newly refreshed, especially since it desperately need to be updated. For the time being, I'll leave it open, but if this debate doesn't go away, I'm going to close it, but leave it pinned.

 

Despite protracted effort and search strings including the quotes you provide later in this post, I am unable to locate any posting of this memo on Usenet archives. If you can remember anything else about it . . . length, responses to it, participants in it, tangential comments about it . . . anything like that might be helpful.

You quoted that on TrekBBS some time ago . . . I was able to locate it and quote it. So, if you ever need to make reference to it, feel free to use this link.

Really? Excellent. Thanks!

Hold your horses, kemosabe. Hearsay is hearsay because it isn't first-hand data. That's why your quoting of the DC Comics thing is in the Hearsay section. Ordover's in there because I got his words off of some untrustworthy folks. And besides which, the statements I have where he talks about Paramount's position are also hearsay, though I usually put such comments in my non-hearsay section as a quote by the person making the hearsay statement.

I know my excessive caution and rigor is frustrating, but it's necessary for my page given the people I deal with. Besides, if something can't stand up to a little logical rigor, what good is it?

Well, as noted, even Paramount.com is maintained by Paramount Digital Entertainment, so unless there's a separate licensing agreement for every single Paramount-related website I don't see how this works.   (Further, Pocket Books info on the internet is on the website of their parent company Simon & Schuster at SimonSays.com. Even the parent company's site is maintained by Simon & Schuster Online, though, and not Simon & Schuster itself.)

To be sure, PDE are the guys who maintain StarTrek.com, but there's no evidence to suggest that there's a licensing agreement in place. The site itself reads "This site and its contents TM & © 2005 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved." This is different than we saw with, say, Star Trek: The Magazine, a licensed publication. On the June 1999 edition I happen to own it simply says "Officially authorized by Paramount Pictures" and, inside, "STAR TREK and All Related Elements ™, ® & © 1999 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved." In legalese, that means there's no apparent claim by Paramount Pictures as to the contents of Star Trek: The Magazine beyond their trademarks and copyrighted material . . . whereas with StarTrek.com, they're claiming the whole thing as their own.

Don't get me wrong . . . I'm not trying to bust your chops, here. It's just that for my page, I just can't go dismissing the StarTrek.com statements based on a second-hand report that they only count as much as Pocket Books statements. I'll see if I can catch up with Paula Block, though, since you've noted that she posts here . . . perhaps she has some insight.

Thanks for your help!

 

Hey kids!

Sorry to barge into this thrilling debate on cænon, but I am going to honest-to-goodness update this felgercarbing thing this weekend (Renly's Roseboy, hold me accountable here), and wanted to see if there were any suggestions. What should be cut? Added? Revised? Redacted? (What's that word mean anyway?) Rescheduled? Repurposed?

 

I think most of the stuff can and should stay, but updated (e.g. Rihannsu #5, Captain's Glory [with note saying why it's being pushed back], DS9R, SCE, and the TNG section definitely needs a revamp etc.). A few things that I think could be added are:

* Enterprise relaunch, with link to Margaret's answer from few weeks back.

* maybe Voyager relaunch? eg. why isn't there any new books? or why is it being written by one author only?

* and for 'questions to never ask': why are there gay characters in the books.

that's all i think think of for now.