Spoilers DSC: Dead Endless by Dave Galanter Review Thread

Have you read the book? :-)

 

I was speaking in the context that the Axanar disaster was trying to sell people: that it was named that as the first "war ship" Starfleet ever created.

 

You said that you'd ignore it if the actual shows had hypothetically done it. My point is that they have already named a lot of ships after warlike entities, so I don't see any reason why they wouldn't name a ship after a god of war as well, especially one that had a whole planet named after him.

Starfleet has always had a weird dual identity as a military and exploratory force. TNG tried to retcon it as a purely scientific body, but Kirk always considered himself a soldier, sometimes to the point that he forgot he was also an explorer and diplomat. And even TNG later retconned things by saying that Starfleet had been at war with Cardassia during the early seasons, overwriting the early seasons' portrayal of a Federation that had been at peace for so long that Picard had little experience with taking life ("Conspiracy") and considered war games a needless atavism ("Peak Performance").

 

Yes. *I* would ignore it. Meaning, I'd not write about that. I'd not think about that. I'd not mention that. I often just ignore things I don't care for when writing a story. I am not saying another writer can't choose to do it differently. They can. They should. But in a Starfleet *I* would write about, I wouldn't be making note of them making a WAR ship named Ares. That's me. Like I said, these are ALL just stories. Star Trek isn't a documentary. It's a way to tell stories and when I have one to tell, that's all I do. It probably won't include references to "Spock's Brain" or Warp 10 Iguanas or people somehow "de-evolving" or any number of silly things that "happened" within the mythology that I wouldn't need (or want) to tell a story about.

 

Okay, so it's the "warship" part you're objecting to. I get that, but it's more about the purpose of the ship than the name. I mean, if Starfleet did create something specifically to be a warship, it makes sense that they would give it a martial name. Let's see... I can think of two unambiguous Starfleet warships in canon -- the Defiant in DS9 (although as Sisko said, it's officially an escort vessel and only unofficially a warship) and the Vengeance in Kelvin (though that's specifically a Section 31 ship).

 

Again, I'm not saying I object to you going down that narrative road as an author. You do you. I just wouldn't. That's not the place I would go. I'll walk my path, and you walk yours.

 

That's not even what I'm talking about. Like you, I prefer to name the Starfleet vessels in my novels based on the history of exploration rather than military history, which is why I named Kirk's first command in The Captain's Oath the Sacagawea instead of the Saladin. However, it is an objective fact that many Starfleet ship names, most notably Enterprise, are rooted in military history. And objective fact outweighs personal preference.

 

You argue against a point I didn't make. I'm not arguing about any "fact" as far as Trek mythology overall is concerned. All I said was a Starfleet *I* would write wouldn't be talking about a "war ship" they named after a god of war. It's not a narrative path I would chart. I'd talk about something else. I've never felt I had the ability to write about everything, so I get all choosy like that.

 

The latest Literary Treks is up, in which we speak to the author, Dave Galanter, about Dead Endless! I really enjoyed doing this episode, and this novel is a unique entry in the Trek lit library. We very much enjoyed it!
Literary Treks 292: More of a Culmets Book

 

Are you saying that

Spoiler

Ephraim is some kind of hive mind or memory transfer that also includes its offspring?

 

That may be a too-human conceptualization of a process far more unique and esoteric than actually takes place. Hard to discuss here without getting too specific but:

Spoiler

Ephraim isn’t a he/she as we conceive of it, nor does Ephraim see Culber or Landry or even Paul that way. I think his conceptualization of identity and his nature is more inline with Q and the Wormhole Prophets, both of which he alludes to as being similar in their nature to “himself.” I think his understanding of the multiverse actually exceeds that of both the Q and the Prophets, as does his wisdom, IMO. All that said, what you saw in the cartoon, to my mind, is similar to what you might be offered by Q as a representation of what you can wrap your head around of the Continuum. Does that help?

 

Glad to see this novel is getting good reviews. I still have to pick up my copy, which I will. The Discovery novels have been excellent reads so far. My favorites up to this point have been "Drastic Measures" and "The Enterprise War".

I was reading this debate between you and Christopher and one of the nice things about Star Trek novels is we have different writers with different things they like to emphasize, or just different writing styles.

Now I'm a continuity nut--I like things to be consistent in the story (though I understand it's impossible to be 100% consistent in a fictional universe--priorities change, times change and sometimes simple mistakes happen). But that doesn't mean I like the stories told the same way. On another thread I noted how different writers have different styles. David Mack's books seem to focus a lot on action and intrigue. Uma McCormack's novels seem more character driven (which probably made her a good choice to write the first Picard novel since she has to set up a lot of new characters). You can tell Christopher likes science in his stories. And so on. There's overlap of course. Christopher can have plenty of action, David Mack can develop good characters.

But variety is the spice of life. I like that each writer has their different styles. It'd be boring if you were all the same.

 

I honestly don't think there's a bad writer or Trek writer among the current stable of folks. Each story and each story teller has something unique to show people, I think. :-) (Also, I've met many if not most of them--and are friends with a lot of them--and there's not a bad peep among them.)

 

Wow! That' s a tie-in writer's dream!

 

Well, there is

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MADE YOU LOOK!

 

Yeah, agree. It's been years since I read a Star Trek book that was printed that I didn't at least like. And honestly, over the last 15 years at least I would rate almost all of them at least above average.

Sadly, we've lost a couple good authors over the years like KRAD, Peter David and Margaret Wander Bonanno (among others), some I'm sure by choice because they moved on to other things and some maybe not. But I'd hate to lose any of our current authors and hope they all continue writing. I know they're not canon but I've come to consider the novels as part of the overall Star Trek story and where they don't conflict with canon I consider them part of the larger Star Trek continuity (when they do I just consider them basically an alternate reality then). The fact that I'm saddened that large parts of the 24th century relaunch may be overwritten by Picard (even though at the same time I'm looking forward to the new show) can attest to the fact that I've enjoyed the books written by the current authors. In fact, as unrealistic (and probably impossible) as it might be, in my own perfect world the show would pick up where the novels left off.

But this is about Discovery. And it's nice to see in this case their is an attempt by the showrunners to at least consider the novels as part of a backstory (as opposed to ignoring them all together). Obviously the show has conflicted with some tie-in stories (Desperate Hours comes to mind--though I give JJ Miller kudos for trying to salvage some of that in his "The Enterprise War" novel). And I look forward to finding out more about Stamets and the characters in this novel, and future novels. There's still a number of characters that can be fleshed out more.

 

Why when I click do I see a mirror!?!?

 

Just picked the electronic version up based on the praise here and by Wilson Cruz.

 

About a third of the way through. Outside of...

Spoiler

Having a tough time taking Ephraim seriously because all I see now is how he appeared in "Ephraim and Dot".

...I wish we could have had this for the second season. It seems far more "stable" and intriguing that what we we're actually given in the show.