Meh, this is why I think Japanese sci-fi anime had the right idea with hiding the exact date of the story by changing the calendar at some unspecified time in the future.
The Reeves-Stevenses description of how stardates actually work given in the DS9 'Millennium' trilogy are a thing of beauty, however.
I completely agreed myself when I first read it in high school, but I've finished a math degree since then, and unfortunately it's one of those things where if you have a background in the field it makes no sense, so it doesn't really hit me the same way anymore. Which I honestly feel a little bad about, but ah well.
Haven't several Star Trek stories, time travel or otherwise, had Starfleet officers scan for a local Federation relay to calibrate the shipboard clocks?
*COUGH*Andorian Reproductive Crisis*COUGH* Hey, it was awful. I've only seen it twice, like six years ago. Can you blame me? It is still very possible that he witnessed something he misunderstood. I won't go into specifics that could be considered story ideas, but off the top of my head I can think of at least three possibilities that would allow for Romulus's survival, that would have looked to Nero as an observer as if the planet had been destroyed.
We can't just keep circling the wagons and dragging out the next 18 months of narrative time forever and ever, it's going to be 2376 all over again and we'll never get resolution on plots that have a time factor associated with them, such as character relationships, aging of kids, and the like. Avoiding 2387 isn't a viable option, but at the same time it will really suck if JJ Abrams's nonsense should have to flare over and bork up the litverse too. Something must be done. The line must be drawn here, etc.
It's not a horrible idea at all. It's certainly wouldn't be the first time the books have retconned cannon by claiming it wasn't from a reliable perspective.
There's no reason to think it was not reliable, especially with Spock who not only has mad science skills but is profoundly well-motivated to demonstrate to Nero that he was mistaken. I'm not fond of the destruction of Romulus myself, because I like the Romulans. What happened happened, though, happened plausibly, and does not need retconning. Terrible things have happened to other worlds before. Why not Romulus?
They're saying it needs retconning because if it isn't retconned, the books are basically stuck in staying before December 31st, 2387 unless Bad Robot changes their mind, as Treklit literally isn't allowed to reference the Abramsverse, and literally isn't allowed to go against established canon. Either that or just no one mentions Romulus again. Though I'd think that even violating the second part and just saying "that didn't happen" would still be breaking the first, the same way TGTMD is still referencing TATV even without the framing story. An explicit retcon is still a reference, it's just not as direct of one. If you say "Romulus isn't destroyed *wink*", you're still referencing the 2009 movie in a sense.
I think that's making a lot of unsupported assumptions. For one thing, the DS9 relaunch (and the SCE series running alongside it) took seven years to cover a year of story time. For another thing, there are already plenty of novels that don't mention Spock or Romulus. It's a big universe, after all. Also, as I've mentioned before, just because you don't have a license to tell stories specifically about an idea, that doesn't necessarily mean you're forbidden even to mention it. I have seen a few references to ideas from the Abramsverse in the novels; I know I saw transwarp beaming referenced by name in a recent one (maybe The Missing?), and I featured bald, tattooed Romulans in Typhon Pact: The Struggle Within. So there are ways to acknowledge a thing peripherally even if you can't use it as the focus of a story. And licensing agreements change. Marvel didn't have the rights to anything but TMP in their first Trek comic (and yet they managed to sneak TOS references into nearly every issue), but they had the rights to everything in their second Trek comic. So the current status quo isn't necessarily eternal. More to the point, just because you're not licensed to use a part of canon, that does not mean you're allowed to contradict it. I discussed this already in post #50 of the thread.
I was just explaining that the comments about retconning it weren't a comment on quality. And I said explicitly that authors weren't allowed to contradict canon; it was in the first part of my post that you quoted, that's what I meant by "even violating the second part".
I think I've calculated in either this thread or another that we can easily stretch out the novel line-up to avoid hitting 2387 until around 2019 or so at the earliest, when the licensing issues have cleared up. The 24th century continuity is only one small aspect of Pocket's Trek line. There's plenty of other areas they can focus. Voyager novels are in fact set a few years earlier than the rest of the 24th century continuity and can therefore go on longer before they have to deal with this 2387 glass ceiling. Hell, they can avoid the issue altogether since presumably the destruction of Romulus doesn't have much of an impact to the Delta Quadrant. Likewise, the continuing storylines for Enterprise's post-finale continuity doesn't need to worry about 2387. TOS 5 Year Mission novels are Pocket's bestsellers, and 2387 will never be an issue for them. Plus The Seekers runs concurrent to the 5 Year Mission (more or less) and also won't have to deal with 2387. Other options for the Trek novel line include revisiting the Lost Era or even doing more novels set during the TV run of the 24th century shows. At the very least, I think TV show era TNG novels could do nearly as well if not exactly as well as TOS 5YM do.
Out of curiosity, is that to avoid hitting the start of 2387, or the end? Because technically, like I mentioned before, we could go all the way up to late December 2387 without issue; they never said when in 2387 Romulus was destroyed.
The start. 2019 is now long we can easily stretch out 2386 to. Especially once you take the 2376 precedent into account.
So the novels can go past 2387, they just can't reference the Romulan storyline? That sounds somewhat workable, but I would love to see what happens next. Do the Romulan survivors become ruthless pirates or something, or ban together to form a new Empire stationed out of their colonies? I'd think reunification with Vulcan would be even more appealing to some Romulans.