Classic Star Trek TOS novels

[Lt. Tyler]

Hello everybody. I was wondering what most people would consider the classic era in Star Trek literature as far as Star Trek novels go. Would it be like say 1967-1991 or something like that? Interested in hearing some opinions. So far I have collected the TOS books from 1967-1986. Thanks!

 

[tomswift2002]

I would say 1967-2000 with some overlap between 1997 & 2000 with “New Frontier” launching in 1997, and its stories tying into the Relaunch era. Plus you also had a few books published then that were retroactively added to the Relaunch (like DS9#27 “A Stitch In Time”). Of course a few books from the classic era got sequels in the Relaunch era like “Vendetta” (1991).

 

[Smiley]

If the question is for collecting purposes, then the cutoff is whatever feels right to you. The method of writing a TOS novel has not changed much since Pocket has had the license. If I had to pick a point, it might be when the covers started saying The Original Series on them.

I would still recommend to anyone to go for a collection of great stories than a complete collection of a specific time period.

 

[Daddy Todd]

My collection of hard copy books goes from 1967-2016 -- a nice, round 50 years.

My favorite period is 1967-1980 -- basically, Trek in the fandom years, until TMP came along and fundamentally changed what Star Trek is forever.

Stopping at 1986 or 1991 gives a round 20 or 25 years. So, it's up to you, really.

ETA: It also matters if you're interested in Star Trek (the original series + their movies) or Star Trek (the entire franchise, including all spin-offs.) I went franchise-wide, so I have literally thousands of Star Trek books filling up every nook & cranny of my house.

 

[Lt. Tyler]

My collection of hard copy books goes from 1967-2016 -- a nice, round 50 years.

My favorite period is 1967-1980 -- basically, Trek in the fandom years, until TMP came along and fundamentally changed what Star Trek is forever.

Stopping at 1986 or 1991 gives a round 20 or 25 years. So, it's up to you, really.

ETA: It also matters if you're interested in Star Trek (the original series + their movies) or Star Trek (the entire franchise, including all spin-offs.) I went franchise-wide, so I have literally thousands of Star Trek books filling up every nook & cranny of my house.

Yeah for me its only the TOS novels. I agree with you on the different direction Star Trek went in from TMP onwards. I don’t even think Star Trek: The Motion Picture can even exist in the same universe as the TOS and TAS.

 

[Christopher]

I don’t even think Star Trek: The Motion Picture can even exist in the same universe as the TOS and TAS.

There are some TOS episodes that couldn't fit in the same "universe" as other TOS episodes if you take it that literally. Roddenberry's own intepretation of the differences was that TOS was an imperfect dramatization of the "real" adventures and TMP was a somewhat more accurate dramatization. These are all just stories. We suspend disbelief to pretend they happened at all, knowing full well that it's just a bunch of actors on a set reciting lines from a script. So we can suspend disbelief about the inconsistencies too and accept the imaginary conceit that the stories all represent a common reality.

Heck, reality itself is much the same. If you ask a dozen eyewitnesses about an event, you'll get a dozen different accounts. Every storyteller presents a different version of the story. You reconstruct what happened as best you can by disregarding the inconsistencies in their accounts and focusing on what they have in common.

 

[Daddy Todd]

Yeah for me its only the TOS novels. I agree with you on the different direction Star Trek went in from TMP onwards. I don’t even think Star Trek: The Motion Picture can even exist in the same universe as the TOS and TAS.

The “refit” Enterprise was certainly jarring to me, as a first-generation fan, when it showed up in TMP. Of course, nowadays, I consider it the best-looking Enterprise in franchise history. So, I guess I eventually got over the disconnect.

 

[Damian]

This is a hard question to answer. I've read Star Trek novels for all the series (including book series only novel like New Frontier) going all the way back to "Mission to Horatius". I'm a huge fan of Trek novels.

But for the original series-only based novels if you wanted a 'classic' period I'd probably say from the time Pocketbooks picked up the license until maybe around the beginning of the time TNG started.

I don't really consider the Bantam novels of the 1970s to be 'classic'. With the exception of "The Galactic Whirlpool" and maybe one or two others, those novels were very uneven, and some downright awful (the "Phoenix" novels come to mind)

And once TNG came out many of the questions about Star Trek continuity started getting answered within canon. And novels are always secondary to canon so outside a very few limited exceptions (Diane Duane's Rihannsu novels for instance), they had to adhere to the continuity within the canon. But when all you had was just the original TV series, the animated series (if an author decided to use material from that series) and a few movies, there was a lot less continuity built up in the canon so the stories had a bit more freedom to interpret Star Trek continuity (such as alternate explanations for the different Klingon appearances).

Though, to be clear, I don't consider this a quality viewpoint, what I mean is that I still love books that even come out today. Christopher's "The Higher Frontier" is an original series novel (movie era BTW) that I consider excellent. Greg Cox's 3rd Khan book, "To Reign in Hell" is another excellent read. So I still find excellent books even today. On the other hand there were some books in the 'classic' era that weren't so hot. I recently read "Mutiny On The Enterprise" which is what I would call a classic era novel, but not such a great book (better than some Bantam era novels, but not a great story overall).

But as to a 'classic' era, I would say the numbered era of original series novels through about 1990 give or take.