2387

Discussion in 'Trek Literature' started by woodstock, Aug 28, 2015.

  1. Idran

    Idran Commodore Commodore

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    Confuses me too, but that's what the Treklit authors have been told by CBS.
     
  2. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^As I've said, I'm not sure it's correct that we can't mention things from the movie. There have already been a number of published works that have alluded to concepts from the movie, like transwarp beaming and Romulans with forehead tattoos. The restriction may simply be on depicting specific events or characters from the movie as featured elements of a book. We can mention bald Romulans with tattooed foreheads, but we couldn't use Nero as a character, that sort of thing. At least, that's my impression. I don't even know the exact specifics. So it's best not to jump to conclusions.
     
  3. Idran

    Idran Commodore Commodore

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    Fair enough, but there's still a line of some kind that it appears STO and IDW have been allowed to cross to a degree that S&S hasn't.
     
  4. Ronald Held

    Ronald Held Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I still to not see why time cannot progress even if the author obliquely referenced Hobus and the Romulan Star empire moving its capital?
     
  5. JD

    JD Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Some people think the Prime timeline will be completely wiped out of existence and we won't be able to have any novels moving things forward once they hit Romulus's destruction.
     
  6. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    And I still can't get over how bizarre that is. It's like they don't realize this is fiction. They're assuming that the creators will be forced to do something by events within the stories, as if they were just documenting something happening out of their control. I'm sorry, but that's not how writing works. Sure, writers want to create the illusion that that's how it works, to make the stories feel as if they have their own reality, and perhaps it's a compliment if someone buys into that illusion -- but if they're actually unable to remember that it's an illusion, then that's just taking credulity too far. The writers control the events of the stories, not the other way around.
     
  7. borgboy

    borgboy Commodore Commodore

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    I don't understand why people think the novelverse would be destroyed in 2387 when the comics and online game have both gone past the destruction of Romulus.
     
  8. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Maybe they just want an excuse to be angry at the Abramsverse, so they've created the myth that it's an existential threat to the rest of Trek.
     
  9. RogueVasad

    RogueVasad Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    I don't really feel like reading 18 pages of posts but how I see the situation is this.

    There is a timeline. At some point after the Dominion War and probably shortly after Voyager gets home some event occurs which splits this timeline into two distinct timelines. One of these timelines is the one the vast majority of the post Voyager novels occur in and one is the timeline Star Trek Online occurs in.

    The Narrada is from the Online timeline. It goes back to a point before the timeline split occurs and creates another timeline split which leads to three distinct timelines. One most of the current novels take place in, one Online takes place in and one the Abrams movies take place in.
     
  10. borgboy

    borgboy Commodore Commodore

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    That makes a lot of sense. I'd be all for having that established as the status quo, but it probably needs a book to tell the first split and establish that only one of those divergent timelines went on to split into the JJverse.

    I'm digging the idea of the novels being free to keep moving forward with their own stories and not be restrained by the new movies. Although I doubt this would be allowed to be done.

    Does anybody know how well the 24th century parts of the JJverse comic series mesh with the online game. I believe they don't mesh well with the novels.
     
  11. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    No, that doesn't work. As I've pointed out before, there are alien races in STO that are portrayed incompatibly to the way the novels portray them. They can't be divergent timelines that share a common history. They're just different licensees' speculative extrapolations beyond canon, and no attempt has been made to reconcile them with each other, even though STO has borrowed some ideas from the novels while disregarding others.


    No, it's from the Prime timeline. Online, like the novels and comics, is a conjectural expansion on that timeline.
     
  12. The Wormhole

    The Wormhole Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Actually, they mesh quite well with STO. Countdown even has Starfleet officers wearing the uniforms from STO.

    Although, doesn't the STO novelization allude to Pocket's continuity being a separate timeline?
     
  13. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    It makes that claim, but that's not binding on other works of fiction, any more than its versions of Lucsly and Dulmer [sic] were binding on me in the DTI series. Books, comics, and games in different continuities are under no obligation to follow each other's interpretations of the universe.

    At the very least, if they were separate timelines, they'd have to be ones that diverged millions of years ago so that the Iconians, Species 8472, etc. could've evolved differently and had different natures and histories, even if other events happened to unfold similarly. It still doesn't work to say that the novel and STO timelines were compatible prior to "Endgame" or Destiny or something, which is how the "alternate timelines" rationalization generally goes.
     
  14. Hela

    Hela Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    For some reason editing made a double post.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2015
  15. Hela

    Hela Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Not to resurrect the beaten, shot and sent-to-the-glue-factory horse, but I had an idle thought when rewarching 09 today.

    Nero time travels before Spock Prime. Nero enters the wormhole, then Spock. For the sake of being a post in the Lit forum, the novelisation has this too.

    We actually do see that the Prime Universe continued after Nero emerged and attacked the Narada. Because if the prime continuity just stopped after Nero time travelled, Spock couldn't have followed him into the wormhole, and certainly couldn't have shared the linear memory that we see of everything from 'found out about supernova' to 'Vulcan just imploded. SHIT!'. The timeline would have been erased before Spock himself was pulled in, even if it was less than half a second later.

    So yeah, if anyone can't accept that the rules of fiction are governed by the creators whims and not 'logic', there's that. And I am going to laugh so damn hard if years from now I go on the Kindle store, and see Christopher has put out a post-Hobus novel.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2015
  16. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I expect there will be post-2387 novels eventually (there already are post-Hobus comics and computer games, after all), but the first one would probably come from someone other than me, since I seem to have ended up focusing on earlier centuries lately.
     
  17. Hela

    Hela Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I was mostly joking, but it does underline the point about how you can't put too much emphasis on how 'the universe' binds the writers. How things are handled creatively in the future will depend on who is steering the real life ship, not the finer details of how fictional red matter works.

    We could always get Peter David to have the Borg pull the prime universe through the dimensional floor and assimilate it, necessitating its destruction by the end of the book. That would make everyone happy.:guffaw:
     
  18. Avro Arrow

    Avro Arrow Vice Admiral Moderator

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    Well, we have seen other examples in Trek where the timeline was overwritten, but any people close to the time travel device were unaffected by the change. In "The City on the Edge of Forever", Kirk & Co. were unaffected when McCoy changed history. In First Contact, the Enterprise-E was unaffected when the Borg first used their time conduit. ("Temporal wake", or whatever.) So the fact that Spock, who was already in close proximity to the black hole, was unaffected when Nero fell through isn't really conclusive.

    Granted, the real life reason that this occurs is so that our heroes are still around to go back and fix history. But it is still a precedent.
     
  19. Hela

    Hela Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I did think of the thing in FC, but in both cases the characters could actually see the changes (well, they could in the book anyway).

    Regardless, I was mostly just pointing out that the argument 'we don't see...' isn't strictly true.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2015
  20. Tim Thomason

    Tim Thomason Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Don't count yourself out, Mr. Bennett. You're also the DTI "showrunner". If anyone's going to have to untie the temporal knots supposedly surrounding the Novelverse, Online-verse, and the Abramsverse, you'd be in the running.