Diane Carey, Diane Duane, J.M. Dillard, John Vornholt, L.A. Graf, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger and Susan Wright used to be prolific Star Trek writers but they haven't written any new Trek stories in many years. I know that Berman and Braga didn't like Diane Carey's novelization of Broken Bow, but they haven't been the showrunners in a long time. And what about the others? Does anyone know why they're no longer writing Star Trek?
Star Trek writers of decades past - where have they gone?
- Thread starter Extrocomp
- Start date
These are my favorite writers. From the Age of Star Trek classics! And throw in Margaret Wander Bonnano! A great name! A great writer!
When men drank ale, not tea!
When men drank ale, not tea!
I drink both, I also find you boring and very familiar.
One of the L A Graf team - Karen Cercone - retired from writing to go back to teaching full-time, IIRC.
Susan Wright moved to writing urban fantasy romance, I think.
The others are still around in tie-in-land I believe.
Susan Wright moved to writing urban fantasy romance, I think.
The others are still around in tie-in-land I believe.
Robert Greenberger wrote/compiled "Star Trek: The Complete Unauthorized History" in 2012 and it has since been reprinted in trade paperback.
"Star Trek: The Complete Unauthorized History" by Greenberger on Ian McLean's Flickr
Robert, Diane Duane and Michael Jan Friedman are all quite active on Facebook.
Why the haven't written Star Trek in a while is probably a mixture of them wanting to move on to other things, and changes in the editorial team, which often lead to a changing of the guard with authors as well.
As for what they're up to these days, I've googles a round a bit (for Friedman and Greenberger no googling was necessary as I follow them on social media):
Diane Carey
Tried her hands in politics some years back. AFAIK Her last published novel was Banners, a novel set in the War of 1812
Diane Duane
As @Therin of Andor said very active online. Seems to focus on her original series writing wise these days. http://www.dianeduane.com/all-works
J.M. Dillard
Seems to be writing historical novels under her real name Jeanne Kalogridis these days.
John Vornholt
As far as I'm aware his latest novels were "Chick-Lit" under the pseudonym Caroline Goode.
L.A. Graf
Writing team consisting of Karen Rose Cercone and Julia Ecklar, Melissa Crandall was involved for one or two of their novels as well IIRC.
Both Cercone and Ecklar seem to have stopped writing. Crandall's big current project seems to be what she calls a narrative non-fiction book about Roger Henneous, who was the senior elephant keeper in Orgeon Zoo for thirty years, called The Man who loved Elephants. https://melissacrandall.com/category/writing/man-who-loved-elephants/
Michael Jan Friedman
Still very active writing especially for Crazy8Press (joint publisher run by him, Robert Greenberger, Peter David and other authors). Recently started a Kickstarter for his latest project, a collection of short stories written by him https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ible-invocations-of-the-m?ref=profile_created
Robert Greenberger
Still very active as well. Recently made the announcement that he is writing a Captain America novel http://bobgreenberger.com/im-writing-a-captain-america-novel/
Susan Wright
Seems to be writing erotic fiction these days.
As for what they're up to these days, I've googles a round a bit (for Friedman and Greenberger no googling was necessary as I follow them on social media):
Diane Carey
Tried her hands in politics some years back. AFAIK Her last published novel was Banners, a novel set in the War of 1812
Diane Duane
As @Therin of Andor said very active online. Seems to focus on her original series writing wise these days. http://www.dianeduane.com/all-works
J.M. Dillard
Seems to be writing historical novels under her real name Jeanne Kalogridis these days.
John Vornholt
As far as I'm aware his latest novels were "Chick-Lit" under the pseudonym Caroline Goode.
L.A. Graf
Writing team consisting of Karen Rose Cercone and Julia Ecklar, Melissa Crandall was involved for one or two of their novels as well IIRC.
Both Cercone and Ecklar seem to have stopped writing. Crandall's big current project seems to be what she calls a narrative non-fiction book about Roger Henneous, who was the senior elephant keeper in Orgeon Zoo for thirty years, called The Man who loved Elephants. https://melissacrandall.com/category/writing/man-who-loved-elephants/
Michael Jan Friedman
Still very active writing especially for Crazy8Press (joint publisher run by him, Robert Greenberger, Peter David and other authors). Recently started a Kickstarter for his latest project, a collection of short stories written by him https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ible-invocations-of-the-m?ref=profile_created
Robert Greenberger
Still very active as well. Recently made the announcement that he is writing a Captain America novel http://bobgreenberger.com/im-writing-a-captain-america-novel/
Susan Wright
Seems to be writing erotic fiction these days.
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Gene DeWeese passed away in 2012. His last Trek novel was "Engines Of Destiny" in 2005.
Was this book literally unauthorized, or just called that to sound rebelious?
Presumably it means it wasn't published under license from CBS, which is often the case with nonfiction books about Trek.
I
I apologize for my shortcomings. I prefer the horn dog space hero type to the cooperative Chrome Dome by-the-book bureaucrat. Call me a fan of Space Opera!
What's the point of the whole Kirk vs. Picard quarrel anyway? They're completely different characters who just happen to be in the same command role, one isn't essentially better than the other.
Picard should more reasonably be compared to Pike anyway, not Kirk. The captain with the long history and established reputation in the Federation in the evening of his career, not the dawn. Kirk was literally just starting his reputation in TOS, Picard had already established a reputation by TNG. And that's not meant as denigration towards Kirk, I just don't understand the comparison beyond the "RAH TOS" vs. "RAH TNG" attitude that hasn't been relevant since DS9.
That Archer joke I made in the other thread was only half a joke; all five captains have their good points, and all five captains have their bad points. Who cares who's "better"?
Plus you're really oversimplifying them both here. Kirk could be thoughtful, quiet, and contemplative on TOS, and Picard could be romantic, impulsive, and intuitive on TNG. (Plus the "horn dog" thing is overblown in popular culture; TOS Kirk wasn't a horn dog, he was a guy that happened to love sex without letting it dictate his actions. And I literally don't know where you get the "bureaucrat" thing from for Picard. Look at his interactions with Nechayev, for example, or the entire thing with Satie in "The Drumhead".)
Neither is as simple a character as you present. For the better for both of them.
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Because as long as fandoms exist everything will be compared to everything else? So, who owould win in a fight, graphene or the Planck constant? Wait, sciences aren't fandoms, are they? Interestingly pretty much all the people I know who later want to study chemistry or physics absolutely hate biology.
But wasn't he already known to be the youngest CO in starfleet? Memory Beta lists him as the Captain of the Oxford, the Lydia Sutherland and the Saladin before he came onboard the Enterprise. I don't know if any of these can be in the same continuity, but I recall Kirk (or someone lese) mentioning that he was the CO of Gary Mitchel on a ship prior to their assignment on the Enterprise in the second pilot.
I think the Kelvin movies didn't do Kirk a favor with that. I find the "real" Kirk to be a lot more interesting than the one pop culture sees.
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Defcon has a list of deceased writers and editors on his blog. I find it a bit... Saddening, but I guess that should be obvious.
I'm pretty sure that list is not complete. I would be surprised if whoever edited for Bantam is sill around for example, but I just don't know who was editing back then. I think I read somewhere that Fred Pohl was involved somehow back then, if so I would have to add him to the list, for example.
ETA: I checked, it was in Voyages of the Imagination where I read about Pohl. I have checked about others I might have missed and that leads to three new entries to the list:
Shirley Maiewski (1920-2004)
"Mind-Sifter" (Short story in The New Voyages)
Rebecca Neason (1954-2010)
Guises of the Mind
Frederik Pohl (1919-2013)
Editor for Star Trek at Bantam Books
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Sad to hear that Rebecca Neason passed away. We'd lost touch over the years but I remember hanging out with her at conventions in the Pacific Northwest back in the day.
This discussion reminds me of a Star Trek comic in which Q had Kirk and Picard switch places to see whose command style was better. Supposedly, this was to be a match-up of Kirk-the-fighter and Picard-the-diplomat. However, Kirk ended up solving his crisis through diplomacy, and Picard ended up solving his crisis through fighting. The message was that these captains lived in very different eras (Kirk from a more wild west era and Picard from a more developed era), and they were both good enough captains to know when to adapt to their circumstances.
Do you remember the comics name? I would love to read it.
I did some searching online. I believe it was ST - Unlimitedcomic: "An Infinite Jest" (January 1998). It's been a while, so my synopsis might not be perfect. For instance, I forgot that the catalyst for the story was an argument between Q and Trelane.
Haha, fair point. I guess it's the fervency that I don't get; I love a good "who would win" argument (Death Battle is honestly a favorite channel of mine for the level of research they try to put into things, even if I don't always agree with the results), but it's all in good fun to me.
Oh, he was? I knew he had some previous commands in Treklit, but I didn't remember any references in screen stuff to it, I thought it was up in the air if the Enterprise was his first or not. They might've said something like that, I'll have to check.
Even if so, though, that's maybe 2 or 3 years? Vs. over 20 years for Picard. Different environments, different metrics. They're both great captains.
Not canonically. The Making of Star Trek (the source of a lot of fannish conventional wisdom) said that he was the youngest-ever captain of a starship-class vessel (i.e. a large capital ship like the Enterprise rather than something smaller like his destroyer-ish first command). But that was probably just a handwave to reconcile Hollywood's desire for mid-thirties leading men with the fact that command of a top-of-the-line ship would usually fall to more seasoned officers. It was never actually a story point in TOS itself.
Elizabeth Dehner said that Kirk "asked for him" (Gary) "on your first command." That phrasing implied that it was a previous ship, though some fans have assumed she meant the Enterprise, because the only other mention of Kirk having a prior command was in TMoST.
Those three ships are all different tie-ins' separate conjectures about what his prior command was -- the Saladin from DC's "First Mission" annual, the Lydia Sutherland from Vonda McIntyre's near-contemporary but incompatible Enterprise: The First Adventure, and the Oxford from DC's later "Star-Crossed" storyline -- which doesn't necessarily contradict either of those, because it shows the beginning of Kirk's command of the Oxford, while the others show the end of his tour aboard the ship in question and his transfer to the Enterprise. So he could've commanded as many as two of the three.
I don't think the Kelvin movies show a single version of Kirk, though. The intent was always to show his growth from an unruly renegade toward the gifted captain we knew from TOS. The Kirk of ST '09 was very much the womanizing-rebel stereotype of Kirk. The Kirk of STID started out that way, still short of deserving the command he'd been given, but the events of the film forced him to start growing up. And the Kirk of STB, three years into the five-year mission and about to turn 30, has essentially become the Kirk we know, the more disciplined and thoughtful captain who has a lot of self-doubt but is a capable and confident leader nonetheless, and who still has a roguish man of action not far beneath the surface. Note that STB is the only film of the three that doesn't show Kirk as a womanizer. He's all business, all about the mission.
