He's on hiatus. Meanwhile...
https://web.archive.org/web/20141112075432/http://www.well.com/~sjroby/lcars/
Where and when you started reading Trek....
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
He's on hiatus. Meanwhile...
https://web.archive.org/web/20141112075432/http://www.well.com/~sjroby/lcars/
I spotted Shell Game and Emissary on a New Releases display in Waldenbooks in 1993. Would've been February probably, judging by the publication dates. I think I actually read Shell Game first, since I thought Emissary was just the written version of the episode. Didn't know about extra details being added to novelizations at the time.
Thanks, Ian. Yeah, the old setup was getting to be too old and creaky for the modern web, I was paying for a Well account I wasn't using any more, and my interest in Trek has decreased a lot over the last few years. There's a hell of a lot of work in that site so I'd like to revive it somehow someday, but not just yet.
Anyway. I saw a couple of reruns in the very early 70s and got a Gold Key comic but the first actual book, probably at Christmas 1971, came as one of a few of Whitman's TV novels. I was more excited about the Rat Patrol and Hawaii Five-O movels but I was happy enough to get Mission to Horatius. But it didn't change my life.
But in late 1973 or early '74 I moved from the kids' books section of a bookstore to the SF section and James Blish's Star Trek 3 caught my eye. That was the one that changed things. I was hooked, even though it was months before Trek reruns made it back to TV, so I was often reading adaptations of episodes I'd never seen. I got loads of Blish books, then the Foster books started, and I rediscovered my almost forgotten Mission to Horatius, and Gerrold's books and The Making of Star Trek and Star Trek Lives... all of that in the first year or two. And here we are.
I used to watch Star Trek on BBC 2 when it was on at 6pm. However my dinner was alway around the same time so I usually saw the firts five minutes and the final twenty. Around 1999 I decided to get back into it again and Sky started showing three TNG episodes in a row at the weekend. I didn't have Sky so gave my friend a VHS tape every Friday and he gave me back the recorded episodes in school every Monday.
At the same time I started to get into the books. I started with the novelisations of First Contact, All Good Things and Caretaker, as well as Dominion War: Book 1. And that was the beginning of my Trek reading which coincided with me starting my first job and my disposable income went up. So I was able to get a new book every week for a long time!
At the same time I started to get into the books. I started with the novelisations of First Contact, All Good Things and Caretaker, as well as Dominion War: Book 1. And that was the beginning of my Trek reading which coincided with me starting my first job and my disposable income went up. So I was able to get a new book every week for a long time!
My grade school library had a bunch of the old Fotonovels, which I devoured. (Although now that I look and see the publication dates, they must've been brand new purchases at the time. Curious choices for a school librarian on what I have to assume was a very tight budget, but no point in questioning it now.)
Is there any way of sending your files to someone else? It seems like at least three sites tracking novel data or releases of some kind have shown up over the last couple years...I bet it's pretty likely you could find someone else to convert that data to a new form if you are sure you don't want to yourself.
(I say this because I used your site all the time and I mourn its loss!)
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My first Trek books were those "Best of Trek" books. I remember I had somehow stumbled onto one and it had a Time line of the Mirror Mirror Empire where the point of divergence was the Challenger explosion which I found very cool. I also enjoyed "Star Trek Mysteries Solved" where someone would take production nitpicks and figure out in universe explanations.
I eventually sought out more and read most of the ones available. Around the same time someone had given me a bunch of dog eared copies of the Blish Novelizations but once I realized those were just the episodes I had seen I didn't read them all (I know know now he added some extra stuff but I was a kid...
).
The first actual professional fiction I read was Spock Must Die.
I eventually sought out more and read most of the ones available. Around the same time someone had given me a bunch of dog eared copies of the Blish Novelizations but once I realized those were just the episodes I had seen I didn't read them all (I know know now he added some extra stuff but I was a kid...
).The first actual professional fiction I read was Spock Must Die.
The Mystery of the Missing Crew starring Cadet Data. I borrowed it off a kid on the bus.
I remember those and still have a few of them. Those along with Starlog magazine were like the Internet of the day. They were the next best thing to panel discussions at Trek conventions where fans explored all sorts of ideas.
I really enjoyed those books and at the time collected them all.
Great time to be a fan then.
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I picked up a copy of Star Trek 9, one of the James Blish novelizations at a school book fair. I think I was about 8 and and it would've been about 1974. I read through a couple of those; it was a small central Kentucky town in the 1970s and waayyyy before the Internet as we know it and Amazon, and they were prety hard for a kid to come by.
I started reading regularly when I was in college in the mid to late 80s, reading through the numbered novels; mostly TNG with the occasional TOS thrown in for good measure. In the 90s I read mostly the hard cover novels with only the occasional numbered novel thrown in. I gave up the habit altogether in the late 90s and wasn't reading very much period except for items for work. Luckily, I fell off the wagon again when I stumbled upon Vanguard: Harbinger in my local library and fell in love with the cover image. A big thank you to David Mack, Doug Drexler and Masao Okazaki for leading me back to the fold. I've read a lot, Star Trek and non-Trek since then. I'm not certain why I ever stopped.
I started reading regularly when I was in college in the mid to late 80s, reading through the numbered novels; mostly TNG with the occasional TOS thrown in for good measure. In the 90s I read mostly the hard cover novels with only the occasional numbered novel thrown in. I gave up the habit altogether in the late 90s and wasn't reading very much period except for items for work. Luckily, I fell off the wagon again when I stumbled upon Vanguard: Harbinger in my local library and fell in love with the cover image. A big thank you to David Mack, Doug Drexler and Masao Okazaki for leading me back to the fold. I've read a lot, Star Trek and non-Trek since then. I'm not certain why I ever stopped.
In 2011, I read DS9: "The 34th Rule." Later that same year, I read DS9: "A Stitch in Time." Currently, that is the entire story of my experience with the litverse. It is a feeble one indeed. I'm almost done with ENT: "The Good That Men Do", though!
I think it was a Dutch translation of the first numbered TNG novel. Got a few more of those.
Then it was either New Frontier or the DS9 Relaunch.... I think New Frontier. That was all i read for a while. New Frontier was getting less and less good, and my interest in Star Trek got less.
Then, somehow, I started getting back into the shows, started re-reading what I got and decided to get back into it. Ordered a whole lot of books, starting with Destiny and some of the novels set before it, everything after Destiny (except for Articles of the Federation), the A Time To series, The Lost Era series, the Section 31 novels.....
Then it was either New Frontier or the DS9 Relaunch.... I think New Frontier. That was all i read for a while. New Frontier was getting less and less good, and my interest in Star Trek got less.
Then, somehow, I started getting back into the shows, started re-reading what I got and decided to get back into it. Ordered a whole lot of books, starting with Destiny and some of the novels set before it, everything after Destiny (except for Articles of the Federation), the A Time To series, The Lost Era series, the Section 31 novels.....
Enterprise: The First Adventure (the German translation to be precise) sometime in the early/mid nineties. It was actually my brother who bought it, but he didn't like it so I "inherited" it.
Liked it well enough, but i wasn't instantly hooked, so over the next couple of years I bought a book every couple of month, until in the late nineties I started to get really into it when I had much time to kill during my Grundwehrdienst (mandatory basic military service) both on the train rides to the base and back on the weekends and in the evenings during the week.
Liked it well enough, but i wasn't instantly hooked, so over the next couple of years I bought a book every couple of month, until in the late nineties I started to get really into it when I had much time to kill during my Grundwehrdienst (mandatory basic military service) both on the train rides to the base and back on the weekends and in the evenings during the week.
I started with New Frontier, when it became less good I stopped reading trek for a few years.
Until I read Avatar and came back in trek literature and never left
Until I read Avatar and came back in trek literature and never left
The Price of the Phoenix and the Fate of the Phoenix, from a charity bookstore in the 90's. Not a terribly good start! Luckily I didn't give up there. I remember soon after getting Worf's First Adventure and loving it. Then after Atlantis Station and a few other Academy books I moved back to 'adult' Trek with a novel by one of the Diane's (either Duane or Carey), which I very much enjoyed. Been regularly absorbing Treklit ever since.
Comic book: the first issue of the TNG miniseries, purchased off my hometown grocery story's spinner rack.
Novel: Either Strike Zone or Rock and a Hard Place because I loved Peter David's work on the Incredible Hulk comic. He was the gateway drug for my Treklit experience. I bought both at the Waldenbooks in the mall.
Novel: Either Strike Zone or Rock and a Hard Place because I loved Peter David's work on the Incredible Hulk comic. He was the gateway drug for my Treklit experience. I bought both at the Waldenbooks in the mall.
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