Frustrations with Trek lit...

[Jarvisimo]

TNG just needs some time without major events to give the newer characters more care and attention and to end the us and them feel between the TV characters and the rest.

DS9 is a bigger problem. It's already been semi relaunched with the destroying the station books but unlike the original DS9 relaunch almost nothing has been done with the characters. It's amazing the contrast between how vivid the original relaunch characters were compared to this current bunch of nobodies. Losing the two driving forces of the relaunch in Kira and Vaughan, to no good purpose, has really hurt the series.

Yes, I want more time with the TNG characters - Q&A, Greater than the Sum, Destiny, and Losing the Peace were very very good at sketching everyone out.

As for DS9, it's sad how on the money you are - 'the current bunch of nobodies' is unfortunately so true. I miss Shar, Tenmei, etc. The small moments and the focus given to an enormous cast in great detail, in microdetail. Not the just these people on the cover:

But others like Councillor Matthias and all her interesting development, dipping into Keiko on Cardassia in the Lotus Flower, the Bajoran politics that were evoked in the worlds books, etc. It was so lavishly detailed and well done, and whilst some elements remain more broadly - Akaar, especially - with DS9 it feels so ... boring.

I have no problem spending a few years on one year in novel...the reverse at the moment is painful to read. I am not even sure if two weeks have passed in universe or six months...I mean there had to be time for two federation elections, but so much on Ds9 seems to occur in about a fortnight after the new station opened.....and none of it goes anywhere. Who is in charge of the hospital? Did Bashir ever do anything in the hospital before getting stuck in a character cul de sac for all time? Will Sisko ever clear his email inbox because that's basically all I remember him doing for the last few books. We are treading water horribly, and the station itself has less identity than some of the new characters. When Ds9 started it made sure to have stories about locations on the station itself to set up the locale for the station. And it had character. The new station...not so much. Even ignoring my personal dislikes for the design decisions, or the decision to destroy the old station, there is just no geography for a reader to hang the story on. The old station was described as claustrophobic...the new station is decidedly not. Because it's a very badly filled in city. I know there's the ops (or whatever we call it now) which is basically 'the office' and there's Quarks...and a hospital...and a park..the never again mentioned memorial...and the people live somewhere. But there's no mental model for it like you can get with a starship, and because it's not the familiar station, there's no sense of place. Every story may as well take place down on Bajor (as I assumed we were going to get for a while when the old station was destroyed. We also pretty much skipped the grieving for that.) or in San Francisco. It's just occurred to me that in many ways, the closest mental model for the new station is probably one based on Babylon 5. Which means we have skipped a groove and ended up in the wrong franchise, but does explain why only characters that can be analogues for the B5 style of story are getting any work (and quark) in the main ongoing ark. Ro isn't Michelle Forbes...she's Claudia Christian or Tracey Scoggins.

I wanted to disagree, but you are right here. Although I don't mind a city in space with a quarter of a million people hoping for peace, I think that's a rather nice model but I think B5 was quite well defined, there was CinC, the hangers, the big open space, the different coloured areas.

New Ds9 doesn't have that...partly because it's not in a visual form, beyond the covers. But then Vanguard was easier to image. But it did have a simple plan and a diagram

 

[jaime]

Yes, I want more time with the TNG characters - Q&A, Greater than the Sum, Destiny, and Losing the Peace were very very good at sketching everyone out.

As for DS9, it's sad how on the money you are - 'the current bunch of nobodies' is unfortunately so true. I miss Shar, Tenmei, etc. The small moments and the focus given to an enormous cast in great detail, in microdetail. Not the just these people on the cover:

But others like Councillor Matthias and all her interesting development, dipping into Keiko on Cardassia in the Lotus Flower, the Bajoran politics that were evoked in the worlds books, etc. It was so lavishly detailed and well done, and whilst some elements remain more broadly - Akaar, especially - with DS9 it feels so ... boring.



I wanted to disagree, but you are right here. Although I don't mind a city in space with a quarter of a million people hoping for peace, I think that's a rather nice model but I think B5 was quite well defined, there was CinC, the hangers, the big open space, the different coloured areas.

New Ds9 doesn't have that...partly because it's not in a visual form, beyond the covers. But then Vanguard was easier to image. But it did have a simple plan and a diagram

Nice. But to extend my point on B5 (which I agree was a very well defined locale.) it's not that it's like B5, it's that it literally occurred to me as I was writing that comment, that what I was describing...was b5 in broad terms. Once yours start thinking about Ro, the Ascendant stuff, machinery found on a nearby moon.....it's horrifying to an extent. Years of b5 vs Ds9 back in the day, accusations of who is ripping off who...white star vs defiant....after all that is put to rest, and the closest model for current Ds9 is B5. I am already likely to quit the Ds9 novels if the next novel or two don't do something good, but it's really gonna be harder for them now I can't shake that thought.

 

[jaime]

Why would a reset even be needed? Trek novels have never had a single all-inclusive continuity. The novelverse ties most modern books together, but there have always been exceptions that stood apart from it -- the Shatnerverse, Crucible, a number of the TOS standalones. I think that a couple of years ago there were two TMP-era e-novellas that came out close together, and one of them directly contradicted Ex Machina while the other was consistent with it. There's no mandate that everything has to be consistent with the novelverse, so there's theoretically no reason that there couldn't be more out-of-continuity novels existing alongside the main novel continuity.

All the 24th century novels are in continuity with each other, and sometimes crash into each other as a result...Tuvok and nog both being airlifted out mid story to go do service in other books. There hasn't been a shatnerverse novel featuring the 24th century for ages...though it was fun trying to work out precisely how busy the day after the enterprise d crashed was...particularly for Riker and Worf, with Imzadi 2 and the shatnerverse novel taking place in that time frame.
Voyager is the only 24th century line firing on all thrusters at the moment, TNG has seen an improvement, particularly with the Prey books....but is cruising at a list.....Ds9, my favourite of the three shows, is not my favourite novel series, and is suffering horribly from being picked apart. It needs fixing, because it's sinking. On the plus side, recent standalone shave been good...but they featured TV crew front and centre, and notably could have occurred anywhere in the Ds9 chronology. Anything on the main station and part of the ongoing arc...despite nominally starring my young teen selfs second biggest crush with Ro...is just not working. Prophets need to handwave the Christmas ornament through the nearest anomaly and tech the tech out of there.

 

[JD]

I don't really see B5 in the new DS9 stories.

Books do indeed work on a different system. But these are Star Trek books, so the system is different again. Not least as half the world and half the characters are already made for you. You just have to tell a story with them, and add the bits you need that don't already exist. You can argue no one wants a paint by numbers Trek story, except some of the books coming out are that, and this thread clearly illustrates that sometimes, yes, yes we do want that. We want five guys staring at a big screen, (the Cross gender variant of guys here) wondering at the mystery, getting stuck in, getting stuck, getting out and home for replicated tea. We want the people we like, the ones that come with the banner on the front of the cover as promised, and we want them to do stuff.

Even with the main world building done for you, it still takes time to come up with a story, arcs for the characters and if you need to develop a new planet or culture, then you will still have to do a bit of world building there. And even in non tie-ins by the time you get past the first hand full of books most of the major world building has been done, so it really wouldn't be that different from something like Star Trek once you hit the fourth book, and especially once get into the double digits for longer series like Dresden Files.

Game Of Thrones (it's much shorter to type than its proper grand and pointless title.) is not a good example, firstly because it's pretty awful (opinion) but mostly cos it's one dude writing it and making it all up. Trek has half a dozen authors or more and could easily find more. Granted most of them have other jobs too. Where the two are similar is that GRR Martin is neve happy working with what he has and keeps putting more stuff in till the whole lot seems to spiral a bit out of control. He also likes to kill his toys when he gets bored with them, but only after making sure the reader is probably bored of them too (unless he's just messing with readers favourites...but then he's not a fan of the reader/writer promise that's sort of implicit in this sort of work.)

Your argument about that specific strand of words story is true...but only for that strand. Very rarely was stuff left outright dangling, usually a new status quo was reached. (Worf is discommended, Worf has his family name back, oh he's lost it again, martok has adopted him etc.) later, a different story is told and his status quo is changed again. That's narrative. At no point did he wander off mid episode to do something, or put events in motion, and then you wait years for that to be followed up on with absolutely nothing in the interim. The books scheduling on the other hand means this is happening all the time. (Dax in the stockade, vic in his odd holostory which is being doled out at the rate of one paragraph a year across three titles. Data is back...but may as well not be because that story is totally unresolved and doesn't fulfill that writer/reader promise because cake is being eaten in a quantum state there, Bashir is stuck in some kind of odd loop and is totally stuck, Sisko has been almost but not quite leaving on a mission, but is mostly walking down corridors and looking at padds....for four years.) They are also suffering from Beverly Crusher syndrome (lines and scenes that should really be given to her character are given to the producers favourite guest star...like Tenmei helping Bashir escape...when his best bloody friend in the world gets one line from engineering. In a book that also guest stars Katherine Pulaski. Sigh.) Even the literature only characters are suffering from that now...as you mentioned, Elias Vaughan was on life support for a about a billion years before finally being put out of his misery with a ghost moment. It's really really noticeable in the Ds9 books. You can blow up the enterprise, and give the crew a new one, because it's the same crew. You can incrementally change the crew by about half, and it just about works, because it's mostly the same lead characters (about half) and the same ship. Ds9 is a different station, and only about ten percent of the series crew (at an absolute stretch...really it's just quark) is still actually on the station. The rest are cameos or shoehorns. (Rules of accusation is the best Ds9 book in years...but hoops were jumped through to let Odo do what he does.)

The thing to keep in mind here is that they pretty much seem to be leaving specific stories to specific writers.
We've got DRGIII with the main DS9 arc focused on Ro, Kira, Sisko, ect.
David Mack with Bashir and S31.
Una McCormack with Cardassia and now Pulaski and Alden.
Dayton Ward with the 20th Century stuff.
Jeffrey Lang (and David Mack) with the Data story.
Kirsten Beyer with the Voyager Full Circle fleet story.
So if you pick up a book by a different author then there's a pretty good chance you won't see one of those stories.

It's a mess. And what is realistic in the real world (hey man, people move on all the time and do new things) isn't realistic in Trek (because crews stay together for ten, twenty, thirty years or more, unless a totally catastrophic event kills some and drives wedges between others....before getting reset by time travel.)
The next big event needs to be a quasi reset in exactl the way the great 'return to exploration' at the end of The Fall wasn't. You need to get those characters back where they are meant to be, even if they have changed in some way or their positions aren't quite the same. Because when a book has the title of a given series on the front, you expect to rea about those characters....and you can see the writers straining to follow up on each other's work (ro and quark, ro and doctor lost in time chap, then have to flip flop in the next book a bit because no one got the memo...including quark. Bev crusher guest starring as a locus for Bashir, but no one quite sure why, but hey, we get to have her face to face with Pulaski who is there because....reasons. Who then get to live through a season one Ds9 story.) and keep it all coherent while juggling balls they didn't know existed.
The prophets need to smack some reset in so it can stop being such a mess and ironically get some linear time going again over there.
Man.
I rant sometimes.

I disagree mostly, I'll admit that the books aren't quite as good as they were in the Avatar-Destiny (Ok, this time I actually meant Destiny) era, but I don't think a reset is necessary. The fact that the books now are so different from those shows that changes in direction are possible without a reset. I want to see the books continue to move forward, not backward. It's also worth noting that the books appear to be selling pretty well right now with several making it onto bestseller lists and now they've even expanded it to include audiobooks, so I don't see them making much of a change unless something drastic happens.

We could try writing to Pocket books and ask them to do a massive reset on the 24th century books. I wonder if that sort of thing even works anymore?

If you guys did that, then I would start a petition to keep the books how they are.

Did it ever?
It does need sorting out though. At the very least they need to increase the publishing schedule so they can normalise a status quo.

Not really, 12 books is plenty, they just need to slow down how much time we skip between books. That is one thing that has been bugging me with the books the last few years, that they are jumping over so much time between books.

I find it almost impossible to read a book on my phone screen but don't mind reading a forum on it for a few minutes. I feel the same way about my desktop unfortunately. It's entirely a situation of my own preferences.

They do make e-in screens which work differently from computer/tablet/phone screens. I've never used one so I'm not sure exactly how they work, but I believe it's supposed to be at least a bit closer to a paper book.

Star Trek: The Next Generation turns 30 next year.

1996, when Star Trek: The Original Series turned 30, we got 4 books set during the Series, as well as a Shatnerverse book.

Fast Forward 20 years..

What book will be out on the shelves that month?? When September comes around.. what will be the showcase book of the month during the TNG 30th Anniversary? A Voyager book. The month before? An Enterprise book.

Based on the current release schedule, during the TNG 30th Anniversary month the most recent novel to have the words Star Trek: The Next Generation emblazoned on the cover will have been released at least 4 months previously. And while I am looking forward to "Hearts and Minds" immensely... it is hardly being touted as a celebration of all things TNG.

At this point, I feel that the novel line is really losing touch with the source material.

We are getting Prey this year, so they probably didn't want to do another big TNG event just a few months after it ends. We only know of one DTI e-book and the last few years have had several, so there's a pretty good chance we might get some TNG ones.

 

[The Wormhole]

What book will be out on the shelves that month?? When September comes around.. what will be the showcase book of the month during the TNG 30th Anniversary? A Voyager book. The month before? An Enterprise book.

Based on the current release schedule, during the TNG 30th Anniversary month the most recent novel to have the words Star Trek: The Next Generation emblazoned on the cover will have been released at least 4 months previously. And while I am looking forward to "Hearts and Minds" immensely... it is hardly being touted as a celebration of all things TNG.

There's still four months in which nothing has been announced yet, July, October, November and December. I will be very surprised if a TNG anniversary story is not released in any of these slots. In fact, I kind of expect October-December to be an anniversary trilogy, it's the same time frame during which Clod Equations was released in 2012 to celebrate the 25th anniversary.

 

[RandyS]

If you guys did that, then I would start a petition to keep the books how they are.

Why? Change for change's sake is never a good thing. It's destructive.

 

[David Mack]

it's the same time frame during which Clod Equations was released in 2012

"Clod Equations"? If that's a Freudian typo, it's a darned funny one. I'll try not to take it personally.

 

[The Wormhole]

Oh, shit! Obviously I meant Cold Equations, that's nothing more than a typo. This is embarrassing. Funny, but embarrassing.

 

[DeepSpaceYorks]

I've tried with ebooks, I really have and I want to like them but I just find that I can't enjoy the process of reading with the devices I have. Maybe if I had a tablet or ereader it would be easier (cost is prohibitive for me). It really is a damn shame as there are a couple of TMP era ebooks I'd love to read.

 

[Nyotarules]

I enjoy the episodic nature of the DS9 relaunch novels. I only started reading them last year and I am up to Warpath novel. Shame after reading this site I know what happens to Commander Vaughn in the future but I don't mind knowing the end of a story before I complete the book.

 

[jaime]

I enjoy the episodic nature of the DS9 relaunch novels. I only started reading them last year and I am up to Warpath novel. Shame after reading this site I know what happens to Commander Vaughn in the future but I don't mind knowing the end of a story before I complete the book.

Apologies. (Pretty sure it was me.) I will be more careful in future. Have never really managed to get the hang of things like spoiler tags (or ANY bb code or Whatever we are calling it.) Ironically Ds9 spoilers itself by telling stuff in flashbacks now.

 

[stardream]

It's really hard to do the spoiler thing with the books. I mean with the movies and the TV shows someone could argue it's been over ten years but a person could have just picked up Destiny yesterday. I know, it's been almost ten years for that too but it's still...different.

I was accidentally spoiled for Places of Exile and decided against reading it because the subject matter doesn't interest me. I was also sorry because I like most of CB's stories.

I admit though I have wondered if Picard will eventually be 'retired' from Starfleet. That doesn't mean the end of his adventures, though, I'm sure someone will constantly be bothering for his help with one thing or another.

 

[Nyotarules]

^Well Picard is Earth's Ambassador to Vulcan in the comics....I like the idea of killing of a main canon character in the novels since TNG crew are never coming back on screen why not?

 

[Idran]

Why? Change for change's sake is never a good thing. It's destructive.

Exactly, so why change how the books are for change's sake?

More seriously, that's not an argument, it's an aphorism. Change for change's sake can often be good, often be bad, and often be neither. It varies from situation to situation and there is no accurate generalization about it, you need to appraise each individual case and you often can't actually know if the end result is good, bad, or neither until after the fact anyway, you can just make a best guess based on available evidence.

And also, JD would do that because he likes the books as they are, the same way you mentioned wanting to do that because you would like them being brought back to the show era. You mentioned a petition to make things how you would like them, so he mentioned a petition to keep things how he likes them. I can understand that you want the books to return to the show era, Randy, but you have to acknowledge that there are fans that would not like that. Not that wouldn't like it as much, but that wouldn't like it at all compared to the current situation.

 

[SevenJetC]

I am really frustrated by how one dimensional and OOC most characters feel in Before Dishonor.

 

[Idran]

I am really frustrated by how one dimensional and OOC most characters feel in Before Dishonor.

I think most everyone feels that way about that book, so you definitely aren't alone there.

If it helps, the continuation of events immediately past Before Dishonor (Greater Than The Sum, Destiny, the Beyer Voyager run) really makes up for that one.

 

[Thrawn]

I think most everyone feels that way about that book, so you definitely aren't alone there.

If it helps, the continuation of events immediately past Before Dishonor (Greater Than The Sum, Destiny, the Beyer Voyager run) really makes up for that one.

Very much so.

 

[flandry84]

Part of the problem might be the number of iterations of Trek that need to be serviced in a very restrictive schedule,thus making the time between visits to say,DS9 too long.Go too long without an Enterprise book for example and those fans feel ignored.
The sporadic visits and the number of characters to be "serviced" can lead to a disconnectedness and I think that's just what is being expressed here.
How Pocket solves this..I don't know,the extended run of SD Perry DS9 books seemed to work some years ago.

 

[SevenJetC]

I think most everyone feels that way about that book, so you definitely aren't alone there.

If it helps, the continuation of events immediately past Before Dishonor (Greater Than The Sum, Destiny, the Beyer Voyager run) really makes up for that one.

Well, Destiny was frustrating at times by its length, if I were the editor, I would have crossed out some parts of it - or rather the length itself would not be such problem, but it had some boring chapters. As I was originally going through the post-Nemesis books, I have read only two chapters of Before Dishonor and then skipped on the next book. However, I was assigned it to work on (it was either that or Golden's take on Voyager and I am not sitting through magical unicorn Libby Sue and all of Chakotay's family rising from dead again), so this time there is no escape. Still frustrating, though

 

[RandyS]

Exactly, so why change how the books are for change's sake?

More seriously, that's not an argument, it's an aphorism. Change for change's sake can often be good, often be bad, and often be neither. It varies from situation to situation and there is no accurate generalization about it, you need to appraise each individual case and you often can't actually know if the end result is good, bad, or neither until after the fact anyway, you can just make a best guess based on available evidence.

And also, JD would do that because he likes the books as they are, the same way you mentioned wanting to do that because you would like them being brought back to the show era. You mentioned a petition to make things how you would like them, so he mentioned a petition to keep things how he likes them. I can understand that you want the books to return to the show era, Randy, but you have to acknowledge that there are fans that would not like that. Not that wouldn't like it as much, but that wouldn't like it at all compared to the current situation.

Well I wasn't really making argument, just offering an opinion. And the petition thing was really just to see how other people felt about it. I wouldn't start one myself, but I would sign one.

I understand people mostly disagree with me on this issue just fine. Sure there are a few others here who do, but yeah we're the minority which is why I always add the disclaimer "I'd like to see it happen but don't expect it to." or a variation thereof.