I was thinking in terms of Vulcans' sensory perception or certain knowledge of something called the All, although it's fair to say that Dwellers in the Crucible doesn't explicitly call it their seventh sense.
If Dwellers references that "sense of the All" thing, it's probably alluding to Diane Duane's books, not the TMP novelization.
I now desperately want a "Kevin Riley's sketchy beard" thread, tracing all of the descriptions of Riley's beard throughout the Novelverse. ...Riley's time as Kirk's assistant or his sketchy beard? OK, I know that many interpretations of TFF place it in the same calendar year as TWOK, but that seems a bit much, considering that there are at the very least three or four months between TWOK and TFF. How long was Carol taking to visit everyone?
So I wonder when the 2nd FYM prior to STMP would have been slotted in the 80s Continuity? I seem to recall that prior to Okuda (maybe in Okuda?) that there was an element of fandom that thought the TOS FYM was in the 2264-2269 range. That may be off, but just wondering about other folks recollections. With that being said, I'm just thinking out loud here.....would that 2nd FYM start in the 2270 range and end in 2275? Would be interesting to map out.
Those few '80s novels that did have date references usually went with the Spaceflight Chronology scheme that put TOS around 2207-9, I think (to reconcile the "200 years" reference in "Space Seed" with the "23rd century" references elsewhere). So the putative second mission would've been in the early 2210s.
I didn't think about it like that, but that makes sense. I suppose an argument could be made regarding travel times around the galaxy for a civilian, but I won't argue it. My earlier impressions have kind of been dispelled by revisiting the passage I was thinking of from the novelization. For a while, I had tentatively included TFF book on my reading list, because I suspeced it had a little bit of connectivity with the other books from the earlier book continuity, but I was hesitant about it. When I started a thread for reading the books discussed in this thread, I edited out TFF movie novelization from the list. I figured I would review it down the road to confirm if it did use continuity from them, and then add it back into the list and read it properly. I haven't thought of TFF movie as part of the 80's novel continuity for a while now. I'm glad to have confirmation that Sulu's flashback sequence is very much drawn from The Entropy Effect's ideas about Sulu's personal history. I've added TMP and TFF to my list.
I remember we were talking about concepts labelled the All, the Others, and the Other. I'm very keen to get the concepts straight, and I do a number of things in order to aid my memory, because sometimes I don't recall things as well as I would like. I've tried to take notes and index content in the books so that I can relocate an important passage; some of my indexing is guesses about what will be important in later books. When I hit on something that sounds familiar in books down the line, I check back with my notes and index, and there have been a couple of things I've added here and there. Out of Diane Duane's contributions, I've read The Wounded Sky and My Enemy, My Ally so far. I don't remember details from those books about the Vulcan sensory perception of a higher power called the All though, I'm sorry to say. My memory is very bad though, I admit that's definitely true; it's why I'm using additional strategies to keep the little details straight and help keep track of how the picture builds from book to book. This idea of the Vulcans being able to perceive a higher power or force that is what brought the universe into existence fascinates me, and I would love to pin down references in the Duane novels, and index them for referral, to keep them fresh in my mind. I'm glad I've marked the passages I have for The Wounded Sky, because as beautifully as I find that book to be, trying to find a passage blind without using my index is difficult; so many of the gems are scattered about in the prose. If I had to guess, Vulcan perception of the All somehow didn't grab me when I read through The Wounded Sky and My Enemy, My Ally and then subsequently seized hold of me when I was reading Dwellers and skimming around in TMP novelization. I was skimming through TMP extensively to familiarize myself with what its says about Deltans so that I could compare and contrast that with what Dwellers says about Deltans, and I stumbled on the footnote on pages 126-127 of the paperback copy I have, where Spock is meditating on the V'Ger presence and searching for the mental connection with it. At the back of my mind was Diane Duane mentioning that she had read several of the novel series in her interview for the Voyages of Imagination book. I imagine that the novelization was a pretty important book, being the only way to revisit the events of the first movie. I believe you when you say that Dwellers might have drawn from Duane's books for the Vulcan perception of the All...but I thought that Duane might have drawn the idea from TMP, the only way to re-experience TMP for years and years. I don't remember reference to the All in TWS or ME, MA. I do remember material in TWS having to do with the Others, which Dwellers brought me back to, so I made sure to index a passage having to do with them. Dwellers refers to two separate higher powers, the All and the Others, which I thought was an interesting detail. I also remember you mentioned that Spock's World explores the same or similar concept, but calls it the Other (singular rather than plural), so I included that in my notes, so I can keep an eye out for it when I reach that book and read through it. I assumed that Dwellers was mentioning the All because it differentiates two different things; and also because Dwellers has a lot of other stuff from TMP, but specifically stuff only found in the book version of TMP. It's using the same word, the All rather than the Others or the Other. I don't remember it being elaborated on as a presence that Vulcans sense in TWS and ME, MA. Very honestly, hat in hand, I hope this doesn't seem argumentative, or pedantic. I would be very happy to share what I've indexed; I know this is getting into very OCD territory, but if it is helpful for others as it is helpful for me, then hopefully no one will think it's content too dry to post. What I've indexed though is page numbers specific to the mass market paperback editions, it wouldn't be as helpful for hardcover or kindle editions. It may be OCD, but for me it's just to help me keep details straight.
I think it's more likely that she was subtly incorporating her own spiritual views into her books. Her Trek work shares a lot of concepts in common with her original SF and fantasy, and there's a fair amount of spirituality running through much of it, though not in a heavy-handed or polemical way.
Neat! There are a lot of things I like about the fifth movie, including Sybok and the way the character is portrayed in the film. I enjoyed reading the novelization, and will look forward to reading it again with some new context in mind. Those books seem to have been written and release very close to each other (and with respectable page counts, too), it makes sense there would be some synergy between them. They are still a ways away for me, in the reading/publication order, but I'm glad to know about their connection; I might have made the decision to postpone reading TFF, but I'm glad to know that there will be some benefit to reading TFF before tackling The Lost Years, in order to get the full effect. Thank you for sharing that broader perspective; it's been at the back of my mind to dabble a little in the Young Wizards series (and the related cat books). I expanded the scope of my reading beyond reading a Diane Duane ST book every other book, with some other major ST novels between, because reading TWS and ME, MA in such close proximity didn't agree with me. But with the expanded list, and trying to angle a little more toward publication order, this increased the gap between ME, MA and The Romulan Way. I thought of adding a few of the Young Wizards books in, on the side, to smooth the gap a bit, and get a wider perspective on her storytelling tendencies.
Well, they're explicitly set only about a month apart, so in chronological order, they should be pretty close together. But maybe that's not the reading order you wanted.
It just seems so strange to assume that Carol is personally flying around to who knows how many different parts of the galaxy, just so she can break the news of her colleagues' deaths to their relatives face to face. It would be like my father dying unexpectedly, and my mother traveling several states to tell me a day or two later, when a simple phone call would have sufficed.
Yes, I think you're right, that wasn't the order I wanted. I didn't know it right away. Generally I like bouncing around a lot between different authors, and different genres. I prefer science fiction and fantasy, but I won't ever read two Star Wars novels or two Star Trek novels in a row. I used to be able to read several Doctor Who novels in a row (not anymore, these days) because that's a series that visits very different settings for every new story. I think I knew better, even when I was making my early list for TOS books. And after I read TWS, The Final Reflection, and ME, MA, I knew that I needed more variety of authors for reading full length ST novels (and this was with many other books read between those ST books). It was the reading order I thought I wanted, but maybe I knew deep down I wanted to be more ambitious. Because I'm a slow reader, it's as though I'm negotiating with myself, starting with small lists. When I expanded the list, I then tried to pin down which were essential, and which I could get away with skipping and coming back to later (It's still has a residual Duane-centric focus, wanting to get to The Romulan Way and Spock's World, with a little more context from surrounding novels). And when I had my larger, slightly streamlined list, I grouped them into smaller lists within the larger one.
The Lost Years was written first, but the novelization of The Final Frontier was published first. (There was an excerpt for The Lost Years in the back of the movie novelization, as I recall.) And both, though for different reasons, deal with Vulcan society and those who pursue kolinhar and other secret knowledge, so there's some overlap of characters and ideas. I'd definitely read them in publication order.
It's been a looong time since I read those novelizations, but as I recall, McIntyre had Carol Marcus very close to one of the Deltan researchers and his spouse, killed by Khan. And there was something about Deltans having large family structures and/or elaborate end-of-life rituals. So she was expecting to stay with them an extended period of time, sharing in the grieving process. Plus, what did she have to go back to? Her lab was the site of a mass murder. Then shortly afterwards, her son was killed, the Genesis planet blew up, and her life work was at the center of an interstellar incident. So I suppose it's plausible that she was taking an extended sabbatical, goodness knows where. Long enough to miss Kirk's call at the beginning of TFF? Possibly?
That's another advantage e-books have over paperbacks, a lot of the apps give you the ability to add notes and highlights and things like that.
I've been tinkering with my own list, and I suddenly remembered that Mahase, the relief comms officer from Duane's novels, also appeared in Crossroad; Memory Beta tells me Ghost-Walker as well. That's two out of three Hambly novels-- is there any link between Ishmael and any other OG novelverse book?
I believe that Carol Marcus, in the novelization, only learned of the death of her son when she got to the Delta homeworld.
Question- do any of the old DC/Marvel/Malibu comics fit into the pre-1991 Trek Lit Universe? Does inculding the comics change the Trek reading order or continutiy much?