So What Are you Reading?: Generations

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by captcalhoun, Dec 22, 2011.

  1. Use of Time

    Use of Time Commodore Commodore

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    Just finished Gemini form Mike Barr and am now beginning Across the Universe from the team of Sargent and Zebrowski.
     
  2. JD5000

    JD5000 Captain Captain

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    Maybe it wasn't that clearly defined at the time the novel was written. Greg has commented on the difficulty of using the "series bible" to write characters. In general, that's the only thing Mr. David seems to be flubbing, so I won't complain too loudly.
     
  3. bbailey861

    bbailey861 Admiral Admiral

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    "DTI: The Collectors", by Christopher L Bennett. Gonna read it on the plane to Vegas on Sunday.
     
  4. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^Cool!


    As for myself, I just re-read Peter David's run on DC's Star Trek Vol. 2 comic book, the stories that pick up right after The Final Frontier. I discovered that they're more reconcilable with the modern prose continuity than I'd thought. There are a couple of significant glitches, but I think they can be finessed. The storyline in issues 10-12, "The Trial of James T. Kirk," features a Klingon Emperor, which shouldn't have existed at the time, but it's easy enough to mentally overwrite "Emperor" with "Chancellor" and assume it's Chancellor Kesh (who was the chancellor at the time in the novels). Maybe Kesh liked to call himself an emperor even though he wasn't really?

    The other major problem is in the same story, where Teer Leonard James Akaar appears in Capellan dress to testify for the defense in Kirk's trial. In the novel continuity, Akaar was exiled from Capella at age 5, and since he's a Starfleet ensign in 2289, he must've been a cadet at the time of the comics story. But he's also the rightful High Teer in exile, and I suppose that he could've appeared in the trial in that capacity rather than in a cadet uniform because of the nature of his testimony, and because it was a Federation Council hearing rather than a Starflet proceeding. Okay, it's kind of a reach, but it's no worse a fudge than the emperor/chancellor thing.

    The story also references Eminiar VII being devastated and Vendikar destroyed; I'm not sure if there's anything in the books that contradicts that.
     
  5. Idran

    Idran Commodore Commodore

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    The only post-23rd century reference I can think of offhand for those two is in Doors Into Chaos, which referenced Eminiar VII in the colors-for-a-wedding trivia game the crew of the Marco Polo was playing. That's certainly minor enough that it wouldn't preclude that having happened, unless by devastated you meant rendered entirely uninhabitable? In which case it's somewhat more of a stretch, but still not completely unreasonable.
     
  6. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^The comic says, and I quote, "Vendikar was obliterated and a third of Eminiar rendered radioactive and sterile!"
     
  7. JD5000

    JD5000 Captain Captain

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    I just finished "Rock and a Hard Place". There were moments of absolute brilliance in this novel, and moments that made me wonder why I was reading it.

    "Data acted with machinelike efficiency" - machinelike? Not even a word without the hyphen, and he IS a machine.

    Overall, I liked the book. The fact I feel something after reading it is a vote in it's favor, even if I feel pissed off. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seems like Peter David was trying to invoke his Stone character in his writing style. This novel was too strange to easily dismiss, and definitely deserves a re-read in the future.
     
  8. KRAD

    KRAD Keith R.A. DeCandido Admiral

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    Actually The Chicago Manual of Style prefers the lack of a hyphen in words that have "like" as a suffix, so "machinelike" is perfectly acceptable.
     
  9. JD5000

    JD5000 Captain Captain

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    ^ Not what I was taught in grade school, but good to know.

    It's still unacceptable to use 'xxxxlike' when 'xxxx' = something that the subject of the sentence already is. i.e., you and I are not 'humanlike' - we ARE humans.

    One could probably apply the argument that Data is more than just a machine to justify the use of 'machinelike' to describe his activities, but that's a circular semantic discussion.
     
  10. Saga

    Saga Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    No Time Like The Past by Greg Cox.
     
  11. voyager1

    voyager1 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    Just finished DS9 Unity this week. Taking a break from DS9 with a Delta Quadrant romp with Voyager: Distant Shores.
     
  12. JD5000

    JD5000 Captain Captain

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    Jumping on to Christopher Bennett's DTI novella 'The Collectors' - I've heard good things and the intro hooked me.:bolian:
     
  13. ryan123450

    ryan123450 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I just finished The Captain's Daughter. One of the best non-NF Peter David books I've read.
     
  14. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    I don't think I posted that I started City of Ashes, the second book in Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments series.
     
  15. Trimm

    Trimm Captain Captain

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    Dec 26, 2002
    Just picked up a copy of Robert Asprin's Another Fine Myth. I haven't read it since I was but a small thing, and I'm cracking up at all the references I missed then.
     
  16. Kertrats47

    Kertrats47 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Just posted my review of the first book of TNG's Slings and Arrows series, A Sea of Troubles by J. Steven York & Christina F. York.

    Finished reading Slings and Arrows, Book V: Enterprises of Great Pitch and Moment by KRAD this morning.

    Moving on to Worlds of Deep Space Nine, Volume Two: Bajor: Fragments and Omens.
     
  17. JD5000

    JD5000 Captain Captain

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    Just finished "The Collectors". Christopher, you managed to cram many concepts into a short novella and tell a pretty darn good story while you were at it! Well done. I could expand on this observation.

    Did I catch a "Ringworld" reference in there?
     
  18. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    No, more like an Orbital from Iain M. Banks's Culture series.
     
  19. JD5000

    JD5000 Captain Captain

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    I haven't read that, but I went through Niven's novels a couple years ago. That's where my imagination took me in that scene.

    I'm on to the DS9 novel "Station Rage" by Diane Carey. It doesn't seem very challenging, and my brain needs a break after all the temporal/quantum science. Good reviews though.
     
  20. Brefugee

    Brefugee No longer living the Irish dream. Premium Member

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    I'm currently reading through the Jack Reacher Novels by Lee Child and picked up the new one, Personal last week while in Ireland (as it was signed by Child himself) and it's not as good as some of the others, but I'm about a quarter way through and it is okay so far. Plus the view of St Pauls on the front on the Tate Modern of the Millennium Bridge in London is one of my favorite views of the Cathedral.

    Before that I read the latest Christopher Brookmyre novel featuring Jack Parlabane, Dead Girl Walking and I'm mixed (even torn) on my opinion of the story. It is a good story, well written and his last few crime/thriller novels have added to his writing ability, but, saying that, I miss the old Jack and the way Brookmyre wrote him. It was also a best of Parlabane/Brookmyre with several characters showing up from previous novels and firmly establishing the Jasmine Sharp and Jack Paralabane novels in the same shared universe.

    But then again, Paralabanes life has changed in the eight years since Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks was published as has mine, so it could just be down to the aging process.

    It is one of Brookmyres better novels, but actually my second least favourite Paralabane novel.