Where Have All the Prospects Gone?: The State of TrekLit in 2017

Does anyone think its possible that Trek books have officially been cut down to 9 or 10 books a year, as opposed to 12 as we've had for the last decade? I know the Voyager novel has alot of delays, but what to make of the other gaps in this years schedule?

 

Is one of them for the Discovery novel? I thought it might have been separate from the regular twelve, but the fact that we do have gaps makes me think I might have been mistaken.

 

IIRC the original schedule was Architects of Infinity in the slot that was now filled by Control, which was supposed to come out in late April. Since originally the Discovery novel was supposed to come out in the middle of May (May 12th or something?) I guess Ed Schlesinger and Margaret Clark felt it wouldn't hurt too much if the late April slot wasn't filled with another book. Of course then Discovery was delayed, leading to the gap month we are in right now.

No idea about the late July and late October slots, though, although I guess Discovery could still take the October slot.

 

Hey Defcon it might make sense to add a column to your release date pages that shows the official month of release, since thats different than the release date month. Just one guys suggestion.

 

Thank you, I knew something like that had happened, but I couldn't remember the exact details.

 

I'll think about it.

For Pocket releases it is relatively easy, I'm not really sure if the late November date for Titan's Prometheus means it is a December release for Titan as well, though, or if this is a Pocket Books only thing...

 

I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised if this could most all be traced back to the delay on Discovery and subsequent novel rescheduling causing a lot of stuff to need to be shuffled around.

If the 2018 schedule is similarly sparse, then I could believe this, but the Discovery thing really seemed to pull the rug out from under Pocket a little. I'd say wait and see still before worrying too much about this.

 

In the new Literary Treks podcast, David Mack mentions that it's license renegotiation time for Pocket's Star Trek line, so nothing has been officially set for '18 yet. I'd imagine there's an unofficial slate waiting for the go-ahead, but that and Discovery would both explain why we aren't hearing about things quite as far as in advance as we have in the past.

 

why no TOS? That is my #1 show

 

To be fair, you've had like half of the schedule to yourself for years.

 

I'm kind of astonished there wasn't a big TNG event for its 30th this year.

Maybe Prey was meant to serve as that, but it came out last year.

 

And the Captain Picard autobiography due out October 3.

I suspect the lack of TOS (or Seekers) novels this year might be related to the fact that Discovery will be set in the 23rd century, so all novels set in that century are suspended for the year while Pocket tries to figure out how to work around Discovery of if they even need to. Kind of similar to how there were no TOS or Vanguard novels in 2008 as no one was yet sure what Trek XI meant for the 23rd century either.

I assume Headlong Flight was more or less meant to be the 30th anniversary novel for TNG. It does include the entire TNG cast, even Tasha and Dr. Pulaski.

 

I've been reading Trek Lit since the 1970s when James Blish, who never saw the TV series, wrote episode stories based on the scripts. Since then I have read hundreds of novels; some are brilliant, some are so-so and some are pure drivel written for snotty punks. What's needed are some blockbuster novels written by genuinely talented writers, not minor-league fiction writers who can only get published by writing formulaic dime-novels, which is what we are dealing with here. Space opera. Adventures in Space. Action. Daring. Heroes. I like this stuff, but let's face it, many readers dismiss it. So, CBS, hire better writers!

 

Did you ever read Kirsten Beyer's VGR relaunch novels?
And what exactly do you mean by blockbuster novels?
(and, just for the record, I disagree with everything you said about the current writers)

 

Hi

Hi,

What are the VGR novels? I apologize for my ignorance, but I'm a TOS guy, a fan of TOS since the original run in the mid-60s, when I was a kid watching black and white TV.

In the 90s I enjoyed the Romulan series of books by Diane Duane, or was it Diane Carey? Also the Margaret Wander Bonanno books. Great name.

Do you agree that Trek novels are formulaic genre writing? I love them anyways!

 

Uh, yeah, I forgot that I was the only person in existance who uses that abbreviation. It stands for Voyager. Beyers Voyager novels are generally praised for making characters like Chakotay and Harry Kim interesting [link to a recent post in the review thred] and being really good in general, so I wondered if you had included them in your assesment about the novel's writing.

That was Diane Duane.

I am not entirely sure wether or not you read many non-TOS books or none at all, but under the presumption that you don't I think that we haven't read the same novels. Literally. The only TOS novels I read that I can think of from the top of my head are From History's Shadow, Elusive Salvation, the Eugenic Wars duology, the first two My Brother's Keeper novels, Mudd In Your Eye and Twilight's End. Most of these deal with the past (either 20th century past or character background past) and IMO definitely not formulaic. Most of what I have read are the relaunch novels which I wouldn't exactly call formulaic. As I said I haven't read many novels set during the series, so maybe there is more formulaic writing in those, but judging from the books I read I disagree with you.

 

Fair enough. I read all of the numbered TOS novels from 1 to 97 and was disappointed when the series failed to reach 100! The novels are formulaic because they adhere to a formula. The same plot devices. The same themes, even when they flesh out a character's back story.

I'm looking for intelligent TOS novels that are not written for adolescents. And I have not enjoyed the few non-TOS novels that I have read.

Time to read up!

 

It's actually the abbreviation preferred by the show's staffers and used in the Chronology and Encyclopedia. But for some reason, the general public and various websites prefer VOY.

 

It's going to be fun to see how people abbreviate Star Trek Discovery...

 

Yeah, I only heard about that a while back when a tweet (I think) from CBS showed the three letter abbreviations for all Trek series. Personally I prefer abbreviations that don't consist of the first three letters of a word.