A Lit-verse based TOS chronology

[Vern1701]

The print copies were edited to remove some time references, yes, but it's because the chronology was compressed, not extended. While some specific timespan references were removed, stardates were edited from early-2377 to late-2376 so that they could place Wounds within the Worlds of DS9 series at the end of 2376. Which is absolutely ridiculous pacing.

And as for the reference in Grand Designs, I'm not sure if it survived to the print version, but in the eBook version it's in Chapter 2, fourth paragraph down.



Also, minor irrelevant correction: Gomez isn't chief engineer, she's first officer and commander of the SCE detachment. Conlon's the chief engineer.

As far as Grand Designs goes, I don't have that one. My latest book is (going from Voyager's #) is Pocket Full Of Lies (Jan. 2016). This is for another thread...

Onto the Stardates here, I've noticed that the novels are actually a few years behind in terms of the 24th C timeline. Let me expand:


There are sites out there with varying calculators out there for Stardate calculation. At the end of the first season of TNG (The Neutral Zone) on May 16, 1988, the O.E.C. date was set as the year 2364.

I tend to follow Mike Okuda's line of thinking in that a year is 1000 stardates, with 1/1 at 00:00:00 as the xx000.0 point. Each second of the day is equal to .0000317 stardates. Dragging the calculation out, for each 1.0 Stardate, there are 31,945 seconds (or 8:52:25 in h:m:s format). A stardate of 41986.0 would put the date as December 26th, 2364 at 21:21:35 as the date and time of the log entry for The Neutral Zone.

That is 376 years, 7 months and 10 days of difference. Disregarding the months and days at this point, I have the year pegged at 2393, not 2386/7 as the novels seem to be at this point. This should put the SD at 70xxx and not 63 or 64xxx.x. As of today, the SD should be 70167.5.

 

[Jbarney]

Whoops on the Gomez comment.

Just finished Failsafe by David Mack. Holy Cow that man has excellent pacing to his writing. I bet you didn't feel the need to compress that story at all. On page 357 Gold tells Gomez that they will reach the Teneb system in 68 hours....and by my calculation Chapters 3-10 (er...most of 10) take up at most two days, maybe a hair more. The last section of chapter 10 says gives post surgery recovery times....so Failsafe, tops, unfolds over a week. At least based on what I could find.

 

[Jbarney]

I just checked the reference at the start of chapter two btw....page 252....."We have been here nearly a week now"

 

[Vern1701]

Whoops on the Gomez comment.

Just finished Failsafe by David Mack. Holy Cow that man has excellent pacing to his writing. I bet you didn't feel the need to compress that story at all. On page 357 Gold tells Gomez that they will reach the Teneb system in 68 hours....and by my calculation Chapters 3-10 (er...most of 10) take up at most two days, maybe a hair more. The last section of chapter 10 says gives post surgery recovery times....so Failsafe, tops, unfolds over a week. At least based on what I could find.

I'm actually on the Full Circle novels by Kirsten Beyer right now. That series jumps around a bit!

 

[Idran]

As far as Grand Designs goes, I don't have that one. My latest book is (going from Voyager's #) is Pocket Full Of Lies (Jan. 2016). This is for another thread...

Onto the Stardates here, I've noticed that the novels are actually a few years behind in terms of the 24th C timeline. Let me expand:


There are sites out there with varying calculators out there for Stardate calculation. At the end of the first season of TNG (The Neutral Zone) on May 16, 1988, the O.E.C. date was set as the year 2364.

I tend to follow Mike Okuda's line of thinking in that a year is 1000 stardates, with 1/1 at 00:00:00 as the xx000.0 point. Each second of the day is equal to .0000317 stardates. Dragging the calculation out, for each 1.0 Stardate, there are 31,945 seconds (or 8:52:25 in h:m:s format). A stardate of 41986.0 would put the date as December 26th, 2364 at 21:21:35 as the date and time of the log entry for The Neutral Zone.

That is 376 years, 7 months and 10 days of difference. Disregarding the months and days at this point, I have the year pegged at 2393, not 2386/7 as the novels seem to be at this point. This should put the SD at 70xxx and not 63 or 64xxx.x. As of today, the SD should be 70167.5.

Well, yeah; the books have never gone with one in-universe year per real life year. 2376 lasted something like three or four real life years. They've never even tried to do that correspondence, because there's no reason for them to force in-story chronology to fit real life elapsed time. The 24th century stuff isn't even all at the same year right now; Voyager is still a few years behind TNG and DS9.

For what it's worth, though, authors in 24th century stuff nowadays, when they do calculate a stardate/calendar date correspondence, do use 1000 SDs per year with XX000 at the start of the year as you did there.

I just checked the reference at the start of chapter two btw....page 252....."We have been here nearly a week now"

Oh, thanks! Haha, perfect, then.

 

[Christopher]

2376 lasted something like three or four real life years.

Five years from Avatar to Warpath. Six years if you start from A Stitch in Time.

 

[Vern1701]

Well, yeah; the books have never gone with one in-universe year per real life year. 2376 lasted something like three or four real life years. They've never even tried to do that correspondence, because there's no reason for them to force in-story chronology to fit real life elapsed time. The 24th century stuff isn't even all at the same year right now; Voyager is still a few years behind TNG and DS9.

For what it's worth, though, authors in 24th century stuff nowadays, when they do calculate a stardate/calendar date correspondence, do use 1000 SDs per year with XX000 at the start of the year as you did there.



Oh, thanks! Haha, perfect, then.

Just trying to get perspective here. It looks pretty chaotic in the Full Circle series especially. I think it's early 2386 (SD 63xxx) as of "A Pocket Full Of Lies"

 

[Idran]

Just trying to get perspective here. It looks pretty chaotic in the Full Circle series especially. I think it's early 2386 (SD 63xxx) as of "A Pocket Full Of Lies"

I wouldn't say chaotic, it just doesn't line up precisely with the other runs.

And no, A Pocket Full of Lies is in June and July 2382, as per the Historian's Note.

 

[Vern1701]

Just trying to get perspective here. It looks pretty chaotic in the Full Circle series especially. I think it's early 2386 (SD 63xxx) as of "A Pocket Full Of Lies"

I goofed. VOY is way behind the timeline at July 2382. TIT is the 2386 entry. VOY needs to catch up. The question becomes: Should it be done with one novel or multiple novels?

 

[Idran]

I goofed. VOY is way behind the timeline at July 2382. TIT is the 2386 entry. VOY needs to catch up. The question becomes: Should it be done with one novel or multiple novels?

The question to me is why does it have to catch up at all? Who says all the novels in the same era have to be on the same year? That's why we got the time jump in DS9, and I don't think anyone liked that.

If anything, having it further behind is a good thing thanks to the 2387 issue.

 

[Vern1701]

I'm new to the board, so I might be behind as well. I guess I need to keep reading...! I'll get to the DS9 section, eventually.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah, I've never gotten the attitude that the books need to be in sync. Even at the height of the "Relaunch era," only DS9, SCE, and Gorkon were really synched up in 2376 -- and SCE raced ahead of DS9 until that weird decision was made to retroactively compress the timing of SCE so that a DS9 crossover wouldn't spoil anyting from future DS9 books. Around the same real-world time, VGR was in 2378 and TNG was in 2379, followed by TNG and Titan both being in 2380 but not really coordinating their timing in any way.

 

[Idran]

I'm new to the board, so I might be behind as well. I guess I need to keep reading...! I'll get to the DS9 section, eventually.

Aha, okay. To catch you up on the 2387 issue, basically Pocket Books is in a catch-22 where a) they have to be consistent with the Prime Universe stuff established in the Abramsverse in 2387 (Spock, Romulus, etc.), but b) they don't have the license to any Abramsverse stuff so they can't reference or allude to any of it.

To answer the first questions that'll come to mind: Yes it's a weird situation, no it's not necessarily permanent because licensing agreements could always change, yes it's part of why the chronology has been slowing down since they hit 2386, no it's not necessarily going to be an issue for a while yet thanks to that slowing down.

 

[Vern1701]

Why not just erase all reference to the Abramsverse altogether? Has that been done? That would eliminate this confusion. Until Pocket gets permission, can that be done? The only book that can allude to it after that would be The Needs Of The Many, which is set in the Star Trek Online game.

 

[Idran]

Why not just erase all reference to the Abramsverse altogether? Has that been done? That would eliminate this confusion. Until Pocket gets permission, can that be done?

Depends what you mean.

If you mean pretend it didn't happen and just have Romulus still around after 2387 or something: Nope, they have to be consistent with what's shown on screen.

If you mean just don't even mention Spock or Romulus or Nero a big supernova or red matter, either consistently or contradictorily: Yep, that would work, and that's another proposed solution. But with how involved the RSE is with recent events, for now they're taking the "slow down" tack to stave off the problem instead.

 

[Jinn]

Why not just erase all reference to the Abramsverse altogether? Has that been done? That would eliminate this confusion. Until Pocket gets permission, can that be done? The only book that can allude to it after that would be The Needs Of The Many, which is set in the Star Trek Online game.

The Novelverse already contradicted The Needs of the Many.

 

[Nyotarules]

Or pretend what happened to Spock took place in another universe, so there was no Hobus supernova at all. Our Spock is alive and well and living on Romulus with his Romulan-Human wife. The novel verse does not need to match what is on screen does it?

 

[Jinn]

The novel verse does not need to match what is on screen does it?

It does.

 

[Idran]

Or pretend what happened to Spock took place in another universe, so there was no Hobus supernova at all. Our Spock is alive and well and living on Romulus with his Romulan-Human wife. The novel verse does not need to match what is on screen does it?

It does.

Yep, that's why it's an issue in the first place. The novelverse can't outright go out of its way to contradict what's on screen. Even the TATV/TGTMD loophole was skirting the edge in a way that, while technically not contradicting, was still only allowed to come as close as it did because TATV was so widely disliked.

 

[Dayton Ward]

With regard to "These Are the Voyages..." Pocket made its case for being able to use Trip, using the episode itself and pointing out the dangling plot thread, and the reasoning was supported by the general view that Enterprise likely wasn't going to be revisited on screen, anyway. So, guidelines were eased up with respect to ENT novels as was done previously with DS9 and VGR.

The Abrams situation is different, and much more clear cut: We're not supposed to reference anything put forth in the Abrams films, period. So far as current novels go, those movies don't exist. Whether that changes remains to be seen, but it's not like the topic hasn't come up.