Hi everyone. I've got a timeline question. I just finished reading Covenant of the Crown and Better Man, both by Howard Weinstein. In the VOTI timeline they are listed as happening in reverse of their release order with Better Man happening first. However, when I read them I didn't pick up on a reasons why. Did I miss something? Is there a reason for Better Man to take place before Covenant of the Crown? Thanks and have fun, jsplinis
Glancing at Memory Beta, I wonder if it's just down to stardate order? In any case, The Better Man is a great book.
The Better Man explicitly takes place in 2273 according to in-story date references. But Covenant takes place 18 years after events during which Kirk was a lieutenant commander, and since he was a lieutenant when the Farragut was destroyed in 2257, that means the book has to be sometime after 2275 (I put it in '76 myself).
Also... When Covenant was written in the early 80s a lot of the writers assumed TMP came after a second five year mission, whereas Better Man was written after TNG had (at one remove, via the Chronology and Encyclopedia) established the current chronology, and its dates come within that framework. So some inconsistencies are understandable.
I wish there were more notes in the VotI timeline to explain why they chose certain things in a certain order, or why they placed certain things where they did.
There's no real inconsistency, though, because there's nothing in TBM that requires it to come after CotC. Remember, between those two, Howie wrote Deep Domain, which was at the end of the post-TMP 5-year mission, and then he went back several years for TBM. So there's no requirement for his books to take place in the order they were written.
True, but there was obviously something about the books which made the OP wonder why Better Man should be set earlier than CotC!
^Uhh, yes, and my previous post pinpointed exactly what that was, so I'm obviously not disputing that. I'm just saying it's not a problem that their chronological order differs from their publication order, that it doesn't create any inconsistency between them.
Thanks for the answers guys. Christopher is right. There aren't any inconsistencies between the two books and there's nothing wrong with them happening in reverse order of their publication. I was just curious what clues (if any) there were to show the order they happened in. With Deep Domain, the clue is easy. It's the Final Story of the Post-TMP 5 year mission. But with these two stories I didn't see clues that were as in your face. I suspected their placement had to do with references to other stories or events not in the two books, but was just curious if there were also clues that directly related the books to each other. I really enjoyed the books and will be reading Deep Domain next. Thanks again for the answers. jsplinis