He was one of the big reasons I was excited for Axanar.
Spoilers Star Trek: Prey Trilogy - general discussion thread
- Thread starter Kertrats47
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I don't have any information about Jackal's Trick going to a second printing (although that's welcome news). I'll keep an eye out when my next batch of copies comes in.
On the other hand, I can at last report that my production notes for Star Trek: The Next Generation - Takedown are now online at my site. Behind-the-scenes commentary about the book's genesis, followed by chapter-by-chapter trivia and notes. I'd meant to get them online long ago but now's a good time, since Jackal's Trick refers back to that book's confrontation between Riker and General Kersh. Hopefully my notes for Prey won't take a year and a half to write up!
On the other hand, I can at last report that my production notes for Star Trek: The Next Generation - Takedown are now online at my site. Behind-the-scenes commentary about the book's genesis, followed by chapter-by-chapter trivia and notes. I'd meant to get them online long ago but now's a good time, since Jackal's Trick refers back to that book's confrontation between Riker and General Kersh. Hopefully my notes for Prey won't take a year and a half to write up!
^ Speaking of errors... I know mistakes happen, and it's really no big deal. But I saw one that threw me for a bit of a loop, so I thought I'd mention it, just in case it can be corrected for future printings. I'll have to spoiler-code it, because it is very spoiler-ific.
Again, no big deal, and once I realized, I just continued on with no problems. But I just thought I'd mention it. No offense is intended to the author.
In Chapter 62, in the part where the Enterprise recovers Worf's mek'leth, it is mentioned that the bird-of-prey that Worf was on was probably the one that had rammed the Jarin. At first I was very surprised, because I didn't think Rodak had been anywhere near Jarin. It took me a few seconds to realize that this was probably just a simple error, and it was probably supposed to say V'raak instead of Jarin, rather than a surprise reveal (since at this point in the story, we didn't yet know who was responsible for Jarin's destruction).
Again, no big deal, and once I realized, I just continued on with no problems. But I just thought I'd mention it. No offense is intended to the author.
You're correct. In an earlier draft she didn't go with Geordi and Tuvok; we changed it in later drafts so she did. Must not have caught the reference on our sweeps. Those are the hard ones to catch (especially when my PDF reader is finicky about searching for her name with the special characters in it)!
As to Avro's note, yes, I mentioned that one on the previous page of this thread. That one's already been sent through for fixing in ebook and next printing.
And no offense taken at all: it's an occupational hazard. The initial draft on a 100,000-word novel will require something like 1000-1500 revisions on average; the first proofreading round suggests another 200-300 or so; the second round suggests something like 100, and then the final round will result in about 20-40. And even then, you'll still find errors that missed every pair of eyes -- but usually it's down to the single digits. It's particularly aggravating as an author because I guarantee in the case of the two errors above, I read those pages at least 10 times each, in multiple formats -- but you tend to hit diminishing returns after a while: an error you miss in 10 readings you will likely miss in 20.
Fun little artifact -- I tweeted this image a few months back to show myself how much paper a single revision round for a trilogy generated. Fortunately, I live near a tree farm...
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Oops, sorry about that. I was sort of glossing over the thread once the discussion turned to The Jackal's Trick, since I didn't actually read it until this past weekend. My apologies.
I finished The Jackal's Trick and loved it.
The final chapters did surprise me a lot and made the story even more interesting, I am looking forward to reading the end.
But still, there is a detail nagging at me about the part with the Enterprise-A in Hell's heart: it is said that they find the unsung on the ship's first trip. But according to The Final Frontier, the first trip was to Nimbus 3.
I may have misunderstood but would like to know.
The final chapters did surprise me a lot and made the story even more interesting, I am looking forward to reading the end.
But still, there is a detail nagging at me about the part with the Enterprise-A in Hell's heart: it is said that they find the unsung on the ship's first trip. But according to The Final Frontier, the first trip was to Nimbus 3.
I may have misunderstood but would like to know.
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Actually, Harve Bennett has said that there was a 6-month shakedown period between the launch of the Enterprise-A at the end of The Voyage Home and the Nimbus mission in TFF.
Thanks Christopher, I didn't know this
Yeah, the movie does kind of imply it picks up just after the previous one. It's pretty unclear.
No problem, Avro -- thanks for making the catch.
And thanks, Christopher! I had always assumed there was a cruise of some length, regardless of V's implications: they clearly went somewhere at the end of IV. My recollection was also that the post-IV DC comics issues picked up from right after the -A's launch, so I think those creators assumed some trips were in there.
Something I checked before writing was J.M. Dillard's adaptation of Trek V, which describes McCoy having insisted on shore leave because Kirk had been petulant and irritable during the time aboard ship since getting his command back. The Hell's Heart segment would land right in the middle of that cruise, and that's the Kirk we see.
And thanks, Christopher! I had always assumed there was a cruise of some length, regardless of V's implications: they clearly went somewhere at the end of IV. My recollection was also that the post-IV DC comics issues picked up from right after the -A's launch, so I think those creators assumed some trips were in there.
Something I checked before writing was J.M. Dillard's adaptation of Trek V, which describes McCoy having insisted on shore leave because Kirk had been petulant and irritable during the time aboard ship since getting his command back. The Hell's Heart segment would land right in the middle of that cruise, and that's the Kirk we see.
Thanks, it works for me now.
I had kind of figured that was the case and under normal circumstances probably wouldn't have mentioned it figuring that it's already been caught by now, but in a trilogy that seems to feature identity theft and questions of identity so centrally I did wonder for just a second if it was actually a meaningful detail being underplayed.
Also, Hell's Heart establishes that there were "several adventures" that had already transpired between the Enterprise-A's launch and its encounter in the Briar Patch from the book:
This basically allows for several of the post-TVH stories in the first volume of the DC Comics series (from issue #37 onward) to take place beforehand, if one chooses -- as John notes, those tales pretty much pick up immediately following the events of the fourth movie, and there are some decent storyline "gaps" between a number of the arcs that this tale could believably fit into.
One interesting thing about both Dillard's STV and STVI adaptations is that she went with dating-cues that later sources subsequently disregarded -- for example, she has the Yosemite vacation occurring just days after the Spacedock launch at the end of The Voyage Home, and in her Undiscovered Country novelization, she has Sulu noting a decade had passed since he first assumed command of the Excelsior, as of the Praxis explosion (which outright contradicts the actual onscreen dialogue in the film noting only a three-year anniversary).
Very likely Dillard was working off of earlier screenplay drafts for some of these, and these artifacts carried over into both books due to the deadlines involved.
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And my thanks to you for all your advice! I feel the series is stronger for it.
Besides the captivating story, I am very pleased about revisiting the beautiful Briar Patch. ST: INS is my favourite Trek movie because of the idyllic and eye-candy setting, and we haven't seen much of the Patch other than snippets in ST: Armada, STO, MU: Rise Like Lions, and the ENT Augmrnt trilogy.
I greatly like the Briar Patch, too, and it really helped that its properties tied into several plot elements. I admit some initial confusion when I saw that Star Charts had the Klach D'Kel Brakt and the Briar Patch as separate locations versus Stellar Cartography, which merged them -- I'd forgotten that in between, the Enterprise story had a line officially connecting the two.
On a related item I saw the other day that there's now a redlink on the book's Memory Beta page for Bok globules. They're actually a real phenomenon, and quite peculiar; it seemed natural they would appear in a place like the Briar Patch.
On a related item I saw the other day that there's now a redlink on the book's Memory Beta page for Bok globules. They're actually a real phenomenon, and quite peculiar; it seemed natural they would appear in a place like the Briar Patch.
In advance of the release of The Hall of Heroes, I was invited onto the official Star Trek blog today to speak about Kahless the clone and his connection to the trilogy. Kahless's lit history got collapsed a bit for space -- I didn't get into the DS9 novels circa 2003 -- but it should suggest why I found him interesting to write about.
(Also, now that the third book is about to ship I have added full sets to my webstore, for those who can't get to my events.)
(Also, now that the third book is about to ship I have added full sets to my webstore, for those who can't get to my events.)
