Spoilers TOS: The Higher Frontier, by Christopher L. Bennett - review thread

You put two fans in a room, and you'll be lucky if you only get three opinions.

 

That's a Truth of Fandom!

 

New interview on StarTrek.com:

https://www.startrek.com/news/star-treks-higher-frontier-is-out-now

 

...which is why any given timeliner might as well settle on specifics if they're so inclined. Doing otherwise might line up more closely with nonfictional historiography, but (IME) leads to a bunch of loose threads which keep a chronology from really coming together.

One particular manifestation of this is that there are certain...let's call them load-bearing dates in a fictional timeline upon which the placement of many other events depend, requiring you to draw those threads taut around those dates to make a timeline cohere. When the FYM happens is one of those in Star Trek, for instance--so even though I don't care for the Okudas' choices around that, I can't really blame them for not saying, "Well, it's in this range."

 

The esper topic is quite interesting. Telekinetic powers are quite popular in the horror ans SciFi genre:

1. Kings Carrie - using her powers with deady force after being bullied.

2. Star Trek TNG novel The Battle of Betazed - Betazoids fighting back Jem'Hadar with mental powers - at a deadly cost of lives.

Using such forces comes along with physical stress and strain for the mentally gifted. Even Tuvok taught Kes how to handle her powers. And there is Lon Suder.....

 

Don't forget Diane Duane's novels about early Vulcan/Romulan history.

 

long, long time listener here (i've been browsing the lit section of this site for over ten years), but as i've been online more and more since the lockdown began, i thought hey, get an account and start posting.

i've collected TOS movie-era fiction since i was a kid back in the 80s. pretty much movie-era exclusively. so naturally i enjoyed Christopher's latest higher frontier as much as his earlier movie-era works. it's also nice to find authors like him and Greg Cox, among others, who not only seek to address or "plug leaks" in continuity in increasingly sly ways, but also honor internal consistency and continuity across their own published works.

lastly, the attention to detail in referring to johnson's mr. scott's guide to the enterprise, or kimble's TMP blueprints to accurately describe and stage movement within the refit enterprise is just such a joy to read. congrats on this latest effort! though i am bemused by the new gallery books trade form factor which makes my mass market paperback collection—carefully arrange in chronology that i have often referenced from these boards—alas more disheveled than shelved.

i look forward to the next one!

 

Welcome to the forum!

 

thanks! it would appear i actually joined back in 2014. i just haven't gotten around to posting until now. better late than never, i guess.

 

Finished it. Voted outstanding of course. I could see Kirk, Spock and Miranda interacting in my mind's eye.

 

I'm a little more than halfway through the novel, about 2 chapters past the Interlude. Finally a novel that explicity tells the story of how Kirk returned to the Admiralty in some detail, including how Spock became Captain. "Mere Anarchy" touched on it on broad strokes and the "New Earth" series gave fleeting glimpses at the transition, but I don't recall any novels diving into it in any great detail.

I also like how Christopher described some of the changes made to the Enterprise and he addressed one of the criticisms of the torpedo loading seen in TWOK (how it seemed slow to load). He also addressed the changes made to the engineering section between the two films in a way that you could buy. It's a teaching vessel so it's refitted to be a teaching vessel.

I also noted some references to some other novels, most of them from Christopher of course, like "Ex Machina", his "Mere Anarchy" story, one of his "DTI" novels, but some others like "The More Things Change" by Scott Pearson (as he noted he would do since Pearson referenced "Ex Machina" and is basically part of that continuity) and "The Captain's Daughter" by Peter David (the early years of that novel when Demora is still a child and Sulu declines a position on the Bozeman). I'm keeping my eyes open for some other references as I go along, but those are some I've picked up so far. Oh, and it includes references to the 4-sex nature of Andorians that was established I believe in the DS9 novels (though I forget exactly when this is first brought up--I don't think it's something that ever came up on screen in Star Trek). So sort of a tie in to the relaunch novels.

But a great story thus far. I love continuity building stories and this one does not disappoint.

 

Data once mentioned in TNG that "Andorian marriages require groups of four people unless—," which is where the whole thing spun out from.

 

And it's been a pretty consistent part of entire Novelverse, not just the DS9 books.

 

Oh, ok. I was wondering if there was some canon basis for the 4 sex Andorian unions.

 

No, just one idea that stuck for the prose fiction. (I mean, the LUG RPG books invented their own take on the marriage ceremonies.

 

I completely forgot about the "unless—."

 

Several things the book had to say about deception, power, and treatment of minorities definitely reminded me of some current events here in America.

I enjoyed the book, and I treasure the optimism and the struggle to better one's self that are in this author's Trek books.

 

I think at least one or two of IDW's comics have also used the novels 4 gender system for the Andorians. I know the Alien Spotlight: Andorians issue did, and I think I remember hearing about one or two others that did too.

 

I always like how Christopher throws in little nods to other elements of the litverse. I'm in the latter half of the book and in one paragraph he managed to give a nod to the 24th century relaunches (the growing Andorian reproductive crisis--at this point an earlier stage) and the 22nd century Enterprise relaunch listing some of what the Andorian Guard assisted with in the early days of the Federation

 

THE HIGHER!!!!
THE LOWER!!!!

That title always reminds me of that.