DS9 - 'Second Season Cliffhanger' by Diane Carey

[Kinggodzillak]

Browsing Trek book lots/bundles on Ebay, and found a DS9 collection of numbered novels and novelizations, including a book I've never seen before. 'Second Season Cliffhanger', by Diane Carey,





Is this an early version of The Search novelization, or a rare/foreign variant with bonus chapters at the start covering The Jem'Hadar? The Search is included in the lot too, but that book starts off with the DS9 crew running the battle simulations they mention at the start of The Search part 1; there's certainly nothing that could justify the snappy title of 'Second Season Cliffhanger' or the description 'novelization of the cliffhanger' if this is just The Search with a different cover.

Can't find any mention of this book anywhere online, so...anyone have ideas what this is?

 

[F. King Daniel]

The badges are on the wrong side. Cursed book.

 

[Christopher]

Are you sure those are legitimate images? I wondered if the cover might be photoshopped for some reason, though looking at the spine image, there is a bit of creasing visible on the title, suggesting it's for real. Hard to be sure, though.

It looks like some sort of a placeholder cover mockup, though how it could've ended up on a released paperback is beyond me. Not to mention that if the novelization was actually written, edited, typeset, etc., they must have known the titles of the scripts it novelized before the book came out. So it makes no sense that a cover like this would exist.

Another problem is that the second season didn't really have a cliffhanger. "The Jem'Hadar" did have an ominous ending that set up the next season's opening, yes, but it wasn't a cliffhanger in the truest sense. A cliffhanger is a pause at a moment of maximum peril and suspense within a single story (like Riker ordering "Fire" or Voyager's crew being stranded as the Kazon fly off in their ship); this was the end of the story, with the heroes rescued from their immediate peril, but with the warning of other perils to come in the future.

 

[Kinggodzillak]

I cropped out the relevant section of the pictures from the listing. I'm guessing we can't post direct Ebay links here, but if you search 'Star Trek Deep Space Nine PPB Novels Saratoga Siege Tempest Emissary Lot of 27' you should see the bundle auction from 'brightlightbookseller', based in the US, which has the original pics of the full set. They're also offering TOS/TNG/VOY bundles too, so it looks to be a real book and the seller isn't aware they've got something rare there.

It looks like some sort of a placeholder cover mockup, though how it could've ended up on a released paperback is beyond me. Not to mention that if the novelization was actually written, edited, typeset, etc., they must have known the titles of the scripts it novelized before the book came out. So it makes no sense that a cover like this would exist.

Now I want to get hold of it even more, just in case it has a quick recap of The Jem'Hadar followed by 'TBA' and a lot of blank pages!

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I swear I've seen that cover before, and yet it isn't on any of the DS9 novels (I looked). Neither is it on the one DS9 nonfiction book I could see on my shelf.

 

[tgiokdi]

The image is a well used promotional picture for the series.

I'd bet a small amount of money this is an international release of the first two episodes of season three:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Search_(Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine)

 

[Dayton Ward]

Holy crap that's hilarious.

 

[Avro Arrow]

That's bizarre! I'd be tempted to buy it just to see, but it would cost me C$95 to purchase and get it shipped here, so... no.

As @tgiokdi mentioned, the cover is just this promotional cast photo:

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net...ision/latest?cb=20060920143431&path-prefix=en

I'm wondering if it's maybe not an end-of-season cliffhanger? Was a novelization of, say, "The Maquis", parts I and II ever contracted, then cancelled? I also thought of maybe "The Homecoming" / "The Circle" / "The Siege", but the blurb refers to the cliffhanger and the conclusion, so that makes it sound like it's only a two-parter.

If you do end up getting it, please share here what you find out! (I also wonder if it might be worthwhile to contact the seller to see if you can get a photo of the back cover?)

 

[tgiokdi]

@[URL='https://www.trekbbs.com/members/kinggodzillak.8222/']Kinggodzillak [/URL]I'd be super interested in adding that to my site if you happen to win the auction!

 

[Mysterion]

I swear I've seen that cover before, and yet it isn't on any of the DS9 novels (I looked). Neither is it on the one DS9 nonfiction book I could see on my shelf.

It's very similar to the cover of the Emissary novelization - wonder if it came from the same photo shoot. Looks like the cast is in the same set location and this just a different pose.

 

[tgiokdi]

It's very similar to the cover of the Emissary novelization - wonder if it came from the same photo shoot. Looks like the cast is in the same set location and this just a different pose.

Emissary looks like it's on the Promenade, maybe near the spot that Jake and Nog always dangled their feet, while this one looks like it's over by the transporters in ops, right by Dax's science station?

https://www.startrekbookclub.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/2009/03/515BJs1KT3L._SL500_.jpg is the version I'm familiar with at least.

 

[Mysterion]

You're right. And Kira's got a different hairstyle as well. Nevermind.

 

[KRAD]

I've pinged John Ordover, who was one of the editors at S&S at the time, to see if he can shed any light on the subject.

 

[tgiokdi]

My second small bet is this is an advanced reader copy.

 

[Christopher]

My second small bet is this is an advanced reader copy.

If it were an ARC, it would say so on the front cover, including a "Not for Sale" warning.

 

[ATimson]

If it were an ARC, it would say so on the front cover, including a "Not for Sale" warning.

Could that dress be on the back cover instead of the front? I notice that there's no price on the spine either, so it doesn't seem likely to have been an edition meant for sale.

 

[Brendan Moody]

I don’t think every paperback published in those days had the price on the spine. In the full photo of the book spines in this eBay lot, John Vornholt’s Antimatter doesn’t have a spine price either, probably because that many characters in a single word in the title didn’t leave room. Cliffhanger would create the same problem.

 

[Christopher]

Could that dress be on the back cover instead of the front?

I doubt it, since publishers seem to consider it important to make that distinction.

Plus there's still the anomaly that if the book was actually written, then surely the title of the adapted episodes was already known. All I can think is that maybe some early placeholder mockup cover got mixed up with the real cover somehow.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

If so, then we could have the equivalent of the "Inverted Jenny" airmail stamp, that is almost beyond price.

 

[KRAD]

Okay, according to John, who was the junior editor working under Kevin Ryan at the time, the powers-that-be at Simon & Schuster assumed that DS9 season 2 would end with a season-spanning cliffhanger, and the cover was solicited pending revelation of the title. Paramount kept insisting that they weren't doing a cliffhanger, but the cover was made anyhow and given the September slot, eventually replaced with the novelization of "The Search."

John has no idea how that cover got on an actual book, since there were only solicitation cover flats done. It's possible that some copies of The Search had that cover put on it somehow -- or the eBay seller got his hands on a cover flat and wrapped it around another book.....