DTI: Forgotten History by C. L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoilers!)

[Sci]

timothy wrote:

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We vastly approaching 2387 when will we see data's return?

Hopefully never. The authors who post here have been fairly unanimous in not wanting to bring Data back, and Pocket Books has no obligation to do so just because a different tie-in work did.

And will the dti show themselves to fix nero's fiasco?

How could they? Christopher's DTI books have established that new timelines branch out from the original if the time travel mechanism is one way -- if information only goes downtime but never travels back uptime from the downtime point. Since the timeline of ST09 branched off of the Prime Timeline, that means that information from 2387 only ever travelled downtime to 2233 and 2258 -- nothing ever came uptime.

And that's on top of the Red Matter portal apparently being located deep within Romulan space, not Federation territory.

So not only would the Federation DTI have no way of knowing that time travel had taken place, but they'd have no reason to get involved, since it didn't actually threaten their timeline.

[King Daniel Into Darkness]

Since interaction with black holes possibly causing time travel and spacial displacement is covered in both DTI novels as well as Ex Machina, there could be grounds for something of an investigation afterward, be it by the DTI or their Romulan equivalent (assuming they survived)

And, I wouldn't exactly consider this a positive, since it sounded like fanwank to me, but Section 31 inexplicably knew about the Mirror Universe in either "The Good That Men Do" or "Kobayashi Maru"

[Paris]

I finished Plagues of Night the other day and then jumped right into this. I finished it in less than two days! It was fantastic! Thanks for all your hard work Christopher. After reading this I really hope that more DTI books penned by you are in our future

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Sci wrote:

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Since the timeline of ST09 branched off of the Prime Timeline, that means that information from 2387 only ever travelled downtime to 2233 and 2258 -- nothing ever came uptime.

I wonder if there were actually two different alternate timelines created - one in 2233, and one in 2258 branching off from the first. So there's the prime timeline (unaltered), the first alternate (created by Nero's appearance), and the Abramsverse (Spock Prime).

[Fer]

I love TMP, TAS and time travel stories, so this book easily lands in my top 5 favorite Trek books ever.

I nearly started jumping up and down when it included Life Support Belts!

Thank you, Christopher, for such a fantastic read!

[EliyahuQeoni]

I just finished reading this book and loved it. I'm a sucker for good time travel stories and a HUGE TOS fan, so this seemed perfect for me & it was.

I very much enjoyed the revisiting of Kirk's time travel adventures and seeing them from a somewhat different POV.

I think my favorite parts were those taking place just prior to and just after TMP, and era that I've been hoping Christopher would revisit for some time now. I've read several versions of how the 5YM came to a close and why Kirk accepted promotion and why Spock left Starfleet and it always seems that authors want to give Spock some traumatic reason for persuing Kolinar. I liked that your Spock made the descision based not on one incident, but many of his expiriences during the mission. It seemed much more believable to me somehow.

I also appreciated how you made some references to the characters established in Roddenberry's TMP novelization. Very nice touch.

There were many nice inside jokes/references that made me smile, but weren't destracting from the story. The mention of Will Decker serving on the USS Boston was one, which I think is a reference to the original "In Thy Image.." version of the TMP story.

I loved Kirk's characterization, which seemed spot on to me. My favorite part was his speech in defence of his interpretation of the Prime Directive. I found myself agreeing 100%. It illustrated some of the issues I've had with the TNG era interpretation of the PD.

The only thing I had issue with--and this may be my fault, not yours--is that I still don't quite understand how the changed history in Yesteryear came to be. I can grasp why, due to how the Gardian works, Spock was not able to save his younger self, but I'm still not seeing how he first came to save his younger self. If he was killed as a child, there would have never been an adult Spock to come and save him... But that;s a minor quibble. That episode has never made any sense to me & I was hoping you would make sense of it, Christopher.

Overall, an outstanding Trek novel.

[Christopher]

EliyahuQeoni wrote:

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I just finished reading this book and loved it. I'm a sucker for good time travel stories and a HUGE TOS fan, so this seemed perfect for me & it was.

Thanks!

The only thing I had issue with--and this may be my fault, not yours--is that I still don't quite understand how the changed history in Yesteryear came to be. I can grasp why, due to how the Gardian works, Spock was not able to save his younger self, but I'm still not seeing how he first came to save his younger self. If he was killed as a child, there would have never been an adult Spock to come and save him... But that;s a minor quibble. That episode has never made any sense to me & I was hoping you would make sense of it, Christopher.

There is no "first." "Before" and "after" are just points along the timeline, so you have to step back and look at the timeline as a whole. And it's possible for a timeline to loop back on itself in a self-consistent way, for an event in the past to be caused by an event in the future. That's not a "change" to the "original" history, it's just a loop that's part of the shape of that portion of the timeline. The original history was the one that involved intervention from the future. There's nothing in the equations of physics that forbids an object from influencing its own past, so long as that influence is self-consistent -- so long as it causes the events of its established past rather than preventing them. It only becomes a problem, physically speaking, if a time travel causes events to happen differently, and that's when parallel timelines are necessary to resolve the paradox. In this case, though, you got a sort of Moebius loop effect, as I said in the text, where the discovery of a timeline where an event failed to happen was necessary to make it happen in the first place.

[Lonemagpie]

Is Admiral Delgado named after Roger? I couldn't help picturing him...

[Christopher]

Lonemagpie wrote:

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Is Admiral Delgado named after Roger? I couldn't help picturing him...

Yes, and Anthony Ainley. That was originally just a placeholder name for the character, but I never got around to changing it. And actually the mental model I settled on for the character was Hector Elizondo.

[EliyahuQeoni]

Christopher wrote:

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There is no "first." "Before" and "after" are just points along the timeline, so you have to step back and look at the timeline as a whole. And it's possible for a timeline to loop back on itself in a self-consistent way, for an event in the past to be caused by an event in the future. That's not a "change" to the "original" history, it's just a loop that's part of the shape of that portion of the timeline. The original history was the one that involved intervention from the future. There's nothing in the equations of physics that forbids an object from influencing its own past, so long as that influence is self-consistent -- so long as it causes the events of its established past rather than preventing them. It only becomes a problem, physically speaking, if a time travel causes events to happen differently, and that's when parallel timelines are necessary to resolve the paradox. In this case, though, you got a sort of Moebius loop effect, as I said in the text, where the discovery of a timeline where an event failed to happen was necessary to make it happen in the first place.

Ok, I think I'm understanding. Non-linear thinking is a little hard for me, so my lack of understanding likely isn't a reflection on your writing.

Is there real-life science behind this? If so, can you suggest any books on the topic?

[Christopher]

EliyahuQeoni wrote:

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Is there real-life science behind this? If so, can you suggest any books on the topic?

Well, you can start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov...ency_principle

The "References" section can point you to more detailed works.

[EliyahuQeoni]

Thanks, Christopher! One of the side-effects of reading your two DTI books is wanting to know more about the real-world science you used as inspiration.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Christopher, I'm curious about something...

Now obviously there was no DTI during the time of Enterprise, but having just watched the excellent episode "Twilight" I wonder where this ep would fall, in terms of the rules of time travel that your novels (plus ST XI) have established.

Meaning: When the timeline was reset at the end of the ep, was the original one (where Archer lost his memory and Earth was destroyed) overwritten? You establish that there is an alternate timeline created, which does NOT replace the original, if there is a one-way exchange of information between the two timelines. (Thus, in ST XI, the Abramsverse does not overwrite the prime timeline, because no information leaks back - it's just a one-way trip through the black hole.)

If I interpret this correctly, the end of "Twilight" DOES overwrite the original timeline, because there is information that is passed back to the 'present' - meaning, Phlox can tell that history has changed because he sees that the parasites have disappeared from every scan he ever took. And thus, when the timeline is put back to the one we're used to, the dystopian future where Earth is destroyed, is overwritten. Am I getting warmer here?

[Lonemagpie]

Christopher wrote:

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Yes, and Anthony Ainley. That was originally just a placeholder name for the character, but I never got around to changing it. And actually the mental model I settled on for the character was Hector Elizondo.

Always liked Elizondo...

[Christopher]

Mr. Laser Beam wrote:

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If I interpret this correctly, the end of "Twilight" DOES overwrite the original timeline, because there is information that is passed back to the 'present' - meaning, Phlox can tell that history has changed because he sees that the parasites have disappeared from every scan he ever took. And thus, when the timeline is put back to the one we're used to, the dystopian future where Earth is destroyed, is overwritten. Am I getting warmer here?

Yeah, I'd go with the interpretation that that timeline was terminated, since we actually saw aspects of it get altered. That one's a bit of a mess to make sense of, though.