Reeves-Stevens Novels

[UncleRogi]

Over on the Discovery boards, I noticed a bit of negativity towards a certain novel. I would like to ask the Community for their opinions of their top 3 R-G novels.
Mine:
Prime Directive one of the best, IMHO, in Trek literature
Federation because it IS that much so-called "Trek Porn"
Memory Prime for the same reason.

Now, I think we should include Shatner-verse novels, but I'm just not so much into them.

Your thoughts, Community mine?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Prime Directive: One of the very best TOS crew adventures ever. Love it.

Federation: A great story written around the 1993 Star Trek Chronology. A fascinating alternate take on WWIII and Zefram Cochrane to that seen in First Contact.

Memory Prime: I remember thinking this wasn't as good as the other two, but enjoyable.

I loved the DS9 Millennium trilogy, but I'm a sucker for dark alternate futures and time travel.

The Shatnerverse I loved on my first read as a teen through to my twenties, but I tried re-reading The Return about a year ago and wasn't impressed. It killed my interest in reading the rest, although I have great memories of the mirror universe trilogy and some of the ideas broached within (duplicate Earths! Duplicate universes! Are we the original or a copy?)

I enjoyed Collision Course when I read it days after seeing Star Trek in May 2009 (and pictured the then-new cast in the roles), and was disappointed when I learned the planned sequel, Trial Run, never happened.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Anything Star Trek they have written is golden.

As for the Shatnerverse novels, the part's they wrote stood in stark contrast to the masturbatory bits Shatner threw together on a long weekend.

 

[UncleRogi]

They're responsible for a large part of Enterprise season 4, from story perspective, I believe.

Christopher would know. He just won,t talk about other writers, and I respect that.

 

[stardream]

Prime Directive is one of my favorite Star Trek books. I read it so much it fell apart and I had to order another copy. I hear it calling me...
I've read the others but to be honest...I don't remember much about them. I think I did like Federation though.

 

[20fridge]

I quite enjoyed Federation. It was a great way to tie TOS and TNG together and explore a period of time only previously hinted at. The Millennium trilogy is particularly fun. I really love the fact that they were able to tell such a big story set around DS9. I particularly loved their use of Sisko in the wormhole as a framing device. Also, the video game based on the trilogy is one of the best Trek games I've ever played.

 

[Christopher]

They're responsible for a large part of Enterprise season 4, from story perspective, I believe.

Christopher would know. He just won,t talk about other writers, and I respect that.

Huh? No, I don't know anything about the extent of their involvement beyond what I can read in the credits and on Memory Alpha. Why would I? I don't work in television, and the Reeves-Stevenses' tenure as novelists was mostly before mine. I've never met them.

Just going by general TV practices, they were part of the season 4 writing staff (though only for the last 16 episodes), so they would've participated in breaking the story outlines, but they were the most junior members of that staff, brought on as executive story editors starting with "The Forge" and graduating to co-producers with "Babel One." (They may have been staff writers earlier in the season, but that's not a credited position, so I don't know.)

 

[UncleRogi]

My mistake.
Thnx though.

 

[UncleRogi]

I quite enjoyed Federation. It was a great way to tie TOS and TNG together and explore a period of time only previously hinted at. The Millennium trilogy is particularly fun. I really love the fact that they were able to tell such a big story set around DS9. I particularly loved their use of Sisko in the wormhole as a framing device. Also, the video game based on the trilogy is one of the best Trek games I've ever played.

I quite enjoyed that as well, especially the ending. Millennium, I mean. Ferengi Profits...:P

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Federation is absolutely wonderful. One of my all-time favorite Trek novels. As far as I'm concerned, Federation is the real story of Zephram Cochrane and First Contact is the fictional version.

 

[Scout101]

Love their stuff, although the Shatnerverse stuff (after maybe the very first one) is just kinda meh. Over the top Kirk is a god kinda stuff. Ashes of Eden is fun on its own, though.

Prime Directive is great, read it a million times. Federation was very enjoyable as well, and loved Memory Prime as well.

They 'get' Star Trek, IMO.

 

[Jedi_Master]

I have to go and re-read my copy of Prime Directive now.
@JonnyQuest037 - I am with you when it comes to the history of Zefram Cochrane. I hated the First Contact version and have chosen to ignore it in my head canon.

 

[tomswift2002]

I haven't read all their books, but "The Ashes Of Eden" I found to be rather uninteresting. Otherwise the Mirror Universe Trilogy and the Millenium books are probabky their best books. The Reeves-Stevens also wrote the Making of Deep Space Nine non-fiction book that is also really great.

 

[ronny]

Prime Directive is one of my favorite Trek novels. Federation is great. I don't remember Memory Prime very well but I think I remember a conversation from years ago where I was telling a friend liked it. I'm about to re-read it soon.

The Deep Space Nine novels started out great but I thought the follow ups went down hill some.

I'm not going to judge them on the Shatnerverse novels because I'm would assume Shatner had tons of input. They all seemed well written but the plots were sometimes ridiculous. That's what those were though.

So overall I give them a big thumbs up. I definitely think it would be cool if they wrote another one.

 

[Desert Kris]

Prime Directive was a really enjoyable story.

Federation is an all-time favorite ST novel, one of those stories that feels like an "ultimate" ST adventure. The kind you wish they had made into a movie, when comparing to ST Generations. I still like the ST First Contact movie very much, and regard that story and Federation as interesting alternatives to each other.

I'm looking forward to Memory Prime, but it's kind of a "save it for a rainy day" as well as being slated for later in a read-through of 80's continuity novels.

I read Ashes of Eden and enjoyed it, but the premise of The Return sounded too busy to me to be interesting. The return of Kirk, the Romulans, and the Borg?! Too much. I didn't read any of the Shatner novels after that, but I'm sure their great fun. I just couldn't get past The Return.

I enjoyed Federation and Prime Directive so much that I chased down books from a fantasy novel series they wrote; The Chronicles of Galen Sword. Pretty interesting series, the first book sets up an interesting premise and it gets pretty dark (but still very good).

 

[Timewalker]

Over on the Discovery boards, I noticed a bit of negativity towards a certain novel. I would like to ask the Community for their opinions of their top 3 R-G novels.
Mine:
Prime Directive one of the best, IMHO, in Trek literature
Federation because it IS that much so-called "Trek Porn"
Memory Prime for the same reason.

Now, I think we should include Shatner-verse novels, but I'm just not so much into them.

Your thoughts, Community mine?

I haven't read the Shatnerverse novels (they're on my bookshelf; I just never got around to them). But Federation is on my Top Ten list of favorite Star Trek novels. It's a shame it never got adapted into a movie (actually there's enough material there for a whole TV series - especially if you use the very last part as a jumping-off place).

Federation is absolutely wonderful. One of my all-time favorite Trek novels. As far as I'm concerned, Federation is the real story of Zephram Cochrane and First Contact is the fictional version.

Agreed. The only part of First Contact I liked was Lily.

 

[publiusr]

Federation is absolutely wonderful. One of my all-time favorite Trek novels. As far as I'm concerned, Federation is the real story of Zephram Cochrane and First Contact is the fictional version.

This.

To me, the space shuttle in the TOS timeline flew earlier--was a two stage affair, and the 1990's from TOS more advanced that what we actually have now.

 

[Starbreaker]

I really love the Millennium Trilogy. That's one I'd like to reread. Federation is also really great, even though it's contradicted in 'canon' now. Avenger, Ashes of Eden, and The Return are all good pulpy fun, but probably nothing I would ever read again.

 

[Sybok Was Wrong]

I opened "Spectre" at a used book store today and it was absurd!

Too ridiculous to read even as a lark!

"Ashes of Eden"was good at the time- but Shatner clearly got out of control. As if Shatner had ANY clue who the TNG and VOY characters were.

 

[Saul]

I noticed a bit of negativity towards a certain novel

Which one?

I like all Reeves-Stevens works. Even their weaker novels are still very entertaining. I always felt they got what Trek was about and it showed in their writings.