No need to justify that you had a different take on it! Exposition is one of the trickiest parts of sf, I reckon. The key is deploy it at the exact right moment; Ann Leckie has a good piece on it here, and I think she's very good at it in practice too. Yes, she has infodumps in a sense, but because she delays them until the exact moment you need them, they don't feel disruptive to your immersion. The exposition comes thick and fast in DTI sometimes, and some of it comes too early, and some of it you don't need at all.
The Next Generation: The Stuff of Dreams by James Swallow Published: March 2013 Time Span: 2384 ("some months" after The Body Electric) I can't claim I ever wanted a follow-up to Generations. "What was the nexus?" is a question I never even thought about. But The Stuff of Dreams brings the Enterprise crew back into contact with that phenomenon, several decades early-- no longer does it pass through local space every 39.1 years, but now it's returning 25 years early... and coming within the reach of the Typhon Pact, who might like to have some easy access to time travel. At first, I will admit I really didn't see the point of all this. The nexus (always lower case, which feels wrong to me, like it's just some nexus, when surely it's the Nexus) is kind of a maguffin. The Enterprise has met up with the science vessel Newton, which has been studying the nexus for months; with the nexus about to enter Kinshaya space, the Newton is going to destroy it so that no one can get their hands on it. But there's a saboteur on board: it felt like this could have been any space thing in any Typhon Pact story. But then Picard returns to the nexus about halfway through the novella, and the story gets wistful and melancholy and true. Picard has to convince another man to give up the fantasies of the nexus while once again confronting his own. The writing is tight and evocative and character focused; as it goes on, it becomes genuinely moving, and I found myself tearing up as I finished the novella over lunch. (Warning: parenthood makes you into a total sap.) The reappearance of a certain Generations character seemed obvious once it happened, but I didn't expect it, and I really like what was done with him. It gave him good closure. Swallow has a good grasp on Picard, and this is the first Destiny-era story to convince me that there's something interesting in marrying Picard off and giving him a family, the first one to tell a story that could not have been told before. And, I must admit, the more thriller-focused elements in the first half work well; the culprit seems obvious, so I was surprised to be wrong-footed. (And then Swallow puts a second surprise on top of the first-- sneaky!) It's quick, and that's to its advantage. One of the things I like about these novellas is that they read like episodes of the television series; Destiny-era fiction can often feel bloated, but The Stuff of Dreams gets right to it and never really wastes any time. It kind of makes me think all Star Trek tie-in fiction should be novella-length! Another thing I like is its perspective. A lot of Star Trek books jump from character to character to character in a way that makes it hard for the book to maintain any real throughlines; the choice of viewpoint feels like it says more about the plot than anything else. The Stuff of Dreams focuses primarily on Picard, using him as the focal character for the majority of its scenes. But not every scene is a Picard one; we'll segue into Worf or whoever when it's needed, but we always quickly come back to Picard. So while this might read like an episode in terms of pacing, in terms of character focus, I think it plays to the strengths of prose instead of trying to emulating tv-style ensemble storytelling. So despite my initial skepticism, this turned out to be nice little adventure of the kind I wish we saw more of. I think all of Swallow's Destiny-era books were Titan ones outside of this, so it's nice to get to see him do something different. I'd like to read more TNG by him. Continuity Note: One character, Kolb, is an old friend of Picard; it's mentioned they met when the Enterprise-D saved his planet, Styris IV, from Anchilles fever. I vaguely recognized those names, so I assumed he had appeared on some old episode of TNG that I had mostly forgotten. I was surprised when later I discovered he was an invention of this book-- Styris IV was where the Enterprise was going after "Code of Honor." I do wonder if there's a pre-established character Swallow could have used again to give things slightly more oomph. I am not a huge fan of the never-before-mentioned-old-friend trope!
Yeah, I recall that novella. It was a good read. I was kind of surprised to see the Nexus make a reappearance but it was a good story. And I always like a redeeming moment for a character that maybe wasn't seen favorably before. It's one thing I liked about one of the "Mere Anarchy" stories where Admiral Morrow is with Spock and apologizes to Spock about the whole TSFS thing, that he would have given Kirk a ship with his blessings had he known. Spock, in typical Spock fashion, tells him no apology is necessary, he had no way of knowing, But Morrow obviously isn't looked upon favorably and it's nice to have that redeeming moment for him. This one was a bit different, but it gives you more perspective. The last book of the "Crucible" trilogy also has a story tied to the Nexus, though unrelated. That was pretty interesting as well. But I'm one of those few fans that liked the Nexus plot device. It's not too popular apparently, but I actually liked the idea and thought it was a bit different than the usual Maguffin. So while I was a bit surprised to see it resurface after all this time, I was happy to see something more about it.
Thanks for your comments, I'm glad you liked the story! One of main reasons I wrote Stuff of Dreams was because I wanted to get a handle on writing Picard, and I'm pleased it worked for you.
I wouldn't say I disliked the nexus... it's just that there was never a time when watching Generations that I thought, "I'd like to see that again."
Department of Temporal Investigations: Shield of the Gods by Christopher L. Bennett Published: June 2017 Time Span: April 2385 This, the final DTI book (thus far, anyway, but probably also forever) wraps up the "Vault trilogy" in a tale of the DTI trying to track down Daiyar, the rough Aegis agent who staged the heist in Time Lock. The book starts decently if not excitingly, with the DTI undertaking some policework to track down Daiyar. Unfortunately, the policework never really goes beyond policework. In their best moments, Watching the Clock and The Collectors were fun because they transposed police procedural tropes to time travel shenanigans. For the most part, though, this is just an actual police story; the DTI is hunting down a fugitive, and there's not really any temporal shenanigans at all. They stake out a place she might go, shake down known contacts: it's all too familiar and all too uninteresting as a result. The book feels like it's building toward a climax at least, but in the end, it all fizzles out. Daiyar has kidnapped DTI agent Ranjea and taken him into the past with her; our heroes don't know if the timeline has been changed because they're in a subspace bubble. They inch their way out of it and learn... yes, everything's fine. Then we have a lengthy flashback where we learn that Ranjea just kind of talked her out of it. It's a huge anticlimax. It also felt morally reprehensible. The end of the book means that Daiyar has to just accept that genocides happen. Ranjea lectures her: "sometimes adults who go out into the world meet terrible fates. There is no avoiding that in every case." "And sometimes they go out and choose to inflict terrible fates on others." "Yes. That cannot be helped either. Once they are given the choice, the choice is theirs, and that means there is no guarantee that it will be the one you wished for. That is the self-determination prized by the Aegis, and by the Federation in its own way: The right, not only to succeed, but to fail. Not only to make the right decisions, but to be free to make the wrong ones. There cannot be one without the other. But what matters, what both our civilizations prize, is that all beings have the right to choose for themselves. To take responsibility for their own fates, and the fates of those they affect." That last line there does a lot of work. "Those they affect" is really those they commit genocide against! I know Star Trek's Prime Directive is pretty often dumb, but this felt like a particularly egregious example. I am perfectly fine with infringing on a species's right to self-determination if it stops them from committing a genocide, just like I'm perfectly happy with infringing on an individual's right to self-determination if it stops them from committing a murder. Yet this is supposed to be a positive outcome! You can't even plead that usual Star Trek canard, "the timeline must be preserved" because the species in question wouldn't have survived to commit its genocides without temporal interference! But I felt like the book wants me to accept that Daiyar did the right thing here, when in fact it seemed pretty clear to me that Ranjea and the DTI were morally the villains of the piece. This left a sour taste in my mouth. This is a plodding, lecture-heavy book-- The Collectors showed that the DTI e-novellas had real promise for telling entertaining time travel stories, but I feel that Time Lock and especially this book hugely squandered that potential. Continuity Notes: Shield of the Gods digs some into the Aegis, the mysterious alien backers of Gary Seven. There's some interesting logistics and such here that Bennett picks out; I wish the story had used them slightly differently Other Notes: There's this one scene at the beginning where Dulmur updates the temporal agencies of all the other local powers on Daiyar and the DTI's search for her. It's really there to provide exposition (none of these other powers are relevant to the story), but it rankled me when Dulmur justifies why the DTI won't just let the Aegis handle it internally: Daiyar stole the time drive from the DTI, so it's their responsibility to get it back. But why should the other temporal powers be persuaded by the that Dulmur's pride is important? There's a bit where the DTI agents call out the fact that people mistake the Federation for a Starfleet dictatorship: "Sometimes it seemed that the rest of the galaxy--and even some Federation citizens--mistook Starfleet for the whole thing." This feels more like an out-of-universe complaint than a plausible in-universe one (we usually only see the on-screen Star Trek universe via Starfleet), except of course Captain Pike claims in Star Trek (2009) that the Federation is a "humanitarian and peacekeeping armada," so clearly some very smart people can't tell the difference in-universe either!
No, it's supposed to be a morally ambiguous outcome, an exploration of the ethical questions that arise from the Aegis's actions. I was interested in the question: If the Aegis saves species that were going to destroy themselves, doesn't that select for the survival of the more aggressive and dangerous species? There must be a reason why they do it anyway. After all, don't forget that the Aegis, through Gary Seven, saved us from destroying ourselves. We're pretty damn dangerous. If they'd decided we were too dangerous to exist and let us destroy ourselves, the Federation would never have existed. No entire civilization has a purely positive or negative impact. European culture is responsible for more genocide and mass destruction than anything in human history, exterminating 95% of the population of the Americas and wreaking centuries of atrocities and mass murder on the indigenous and diasporan African populations -- but we also pioneered modern democracy, figured out relativity and quantum mechanics, went to the Moon, and invented Star Trek. So are we good or evil? Both. You can't reduce our entire existence to a monovalue. It's like the saying: Nobody is as bad as their worst act, or as good as their best. By the same token, the Fethetrit have good in their future as well as bad. They were part of the alliance that protected civilizations in the Gum Nebula from cosmozoan threats, as seen in Orion's Hounds. So they prevented genocides in that part of their history, even though they caused them in other parts of their history. Just like humans. My original idea behind the Fethetrit, back when I created them for an original-SF war story I wanted to tell (before I realized I have zero interest in writing war stories), was to explore the lesser of evils. I wanted to create a situation where the enemy being fought was so monstrous and devastating that the defenders ended up allying with a civilization that would have been a horrific enemy themselves in any other circumstance. As bad as they were, they still helped defend against something even worse. That's basically the role they played in Orion's Hounds, and it's the reason the Aegis saved them.
The Next Generation: Q Are Cordially Uninvited... by Rudy Josephs Published: October 2014 Time Span: 2380 / some indeterminate anniversary* Picard and Crusher entered into a romantic relationship in Death in Winter and got married "off-screen" between Before Dishonor and Greater than the Sum. Q Are Cordially Uninvited... opens on their anniversary, where Picard and Crusher are forcing La Forge and Worf to watch a holo-recording of their ceremony. (They must be good friends indeed to suffer through such a thing.) This leads into a revelation that they did not have an uneventful little ceremony as we were told, but that Q showed up on the night of the wedding to whisk Picard away on an adventure. But why? Why did there need to be an untold adventure on the eve of the wedding? After reading Q Are Cordially Uninvited..., I still don't know. This book doesn't really tell us anything about Picard, Crusher, or their relationship. Q brings Vash into the adventure; at first this seems to be because he wants to try to reignite the Picard/Vash thing, but instead it turns out that Q is the one who wants to be with Vash again. Most of the book is spent with Picard, Vash, and later Crusher searching for some ancient archaeological treasure on an alien planet, but the book doesn't exactly have the thrills of Indiana Jones. It's a pretty generic Star Trek ancient mystery, and it's hard to care about any scenario that is orchestrated by Q, where anything can happen, and does. I did think Rudy Josephs had a good handle on the voice of Q; there were a a couple lines in particular that really nailed John de Lancie. But Q is actually off-screen for big chunks of it all. At the end, Q makes a special wedding for Picard and Crusher, the big one they won't "actually" get. This felt more like fannish wish fulfillment than anything anyone should have actually written. And then the book... just stops. I literally said "that's it?" when I turned the "page" on my Kindle, so abrupt was it (the frame story is not returned to), and so pointless did it all seem. This seems to mostly exist to plug a gap, but I'm not convinced anyone actually wanted this gap plugged. Continuity Notes: Weirdly for a book seemingly designed to plug a continuity gap, the body of evidence seems to indicate Rudy Josephs knows little about the Destiny-era continuity. The only Enterprise crew to come to Picard and Crusher's holo-recreation of their wedding are La Forge and Worf, screen characters both, and at the actual wedding we're just told the "Picard's current crew" are there. Couldn't even look up Kadohata and Leybenzon on Memory Beta? Picard and Crusher only know of Q's wife from Voyager logs... but they met her in The Q Continuum trilogy. Additionally, Picard doesn't seem to remember that he learned there were reasons behind Q's various visits to the Enterprise in Q & A. Greater than the Sum said that Guinan officiated Picard and Crusher's wedding, which is not what we see go down in the official ceremony here. Can we blame Q's interference for this somehow? * The frame story doesn't specify what anniversary it is for Picard and Crusher, who got married in September 2380 as per Greater than the Sum. I think I picked here to read it assuming it was the fifth, but that would overlap with The Fall. If it's the fourth, that would put it before The Stuff of Dreams, either just before or just after The Body Electric, which takes place in September 2384. I think it could literally take place on any anniversary, though.
It's sort of the other way around -- the gap existed to set up this story, or one like it. Margaret Clark told me to start Greater Than the Sum with Picard and Crusher already married, so as to pique the audience's curiosity about some future tale that would fill in the wedding. I guess it's the same logic she used in jumping DS9 forward and then filling in the gap in flashback a few years later.
Interesting. I wouldn't have guessed it, because there's nothing at all interesting about what Greater than the Sum says about the wedding. Not in a bad way; I mean, in GttS it just basically seems to be, "they went and got married," like normal people do. (As I recall, anyway; it's been over a decade, but I did skim some of the relevant bits and reread the your annotations while writing this.) There's no hint that there's a gap to fill.
Even though I've been curious to see Picard and Crusher's wedding, and I'm a big Q fan, I've never bothered with Q are Cordially Uninvited. Pretty much every reaction I've seen it get has been "meh", and I've got a lot of other books that have a much better reaction that I want to read.
Oh, I meant to say, that's it for now! Past evidence suggests it could be as few as one month or as many as fourteen before my overcomplicated reading system cycles me into the next set of five. (The average interval is seven months, so I will see you all in May, I guess.)
Oh my God, what has happened. After my crazy-long gap between phases four and five, here I am already all ready to tackle: Phase Six: 2385 26. The Fall: Revelations and Dust by David R. George III 27. The Fall: The Crimson Shadow by Una McCormack 28. The Fall: A Ceremony of Losses by David Mack 29. The Fall: The Poisoned Chalice by James Swallow 30. The Fall: Peaceable Kingdoms by Dayton Ward This is the first time one of my units of five actually nicely aligns with the actual series. Anyway, this is just what I need in these times of political turmoil and radical strife and foreign interference in politics, some light relief!
The Fall: Revelation and Dust by David R. George III Published: September 2013 Time Span: 22 August–1 September 2385 As much as I have often been critical of Destiny-era fiction, I would say that it has all reached a basic level of competence: they are all stories about people trying to accomplish things against obstacles placed in their way. Now, this might seem like damning with faint praise... but it's praise one cannot bring to Revelation and Dust, a book where almost nothing happens for the first 250 pages. No one is trying to accomplish anything and encountering obstacles; rather, we just get a series of dull scenes intended to establish what all the Deep Space Nine characters have been up to since they were last seen in Raise the Dawn. Sisko thinks a lot while Yates makes dinner in a replicator. Ro thinks a lot while looking at a park. Quark thinks a lot while looking at his bar. O'Brien thinks a lot while putting on his dress uniform. Nan Bacco has meetings that don't really go anywhere, but I assume are meant to set up things that will happen in later installments of The Fall. There seem to be an interminable number of scenes where people go to memorials or other ceremonies. But nothing actually happens. A lot of the book seems to be there to set up the new Deep Space 9. There are paragraphs about things like turbolift design and the layout of Ops and what the new hospital is like and what the names of every counselor assigned to the station are. Quite frankly, I don't care what it all looks like if there's not a story it's all in support of. The one exception to this is the Kira subplot. Kira was on a runabout that exploded in the wormhole in Raise the Dawn (I guess? I actually totally forgot about this), and we find out what happened to her here. First she spends her time observing a, I shit you not, 25-page line-by-line recap of every single wormhole scene from "Emissary." It is so boring. I have seen "Emissary," and whatever new spin one might gain on it is quickly drained away by the fact that Kira is way behind the reader in terms of what is happening. I have no idea what this was supposed to be in aid of. I should have counted my blessings, because soon Kira is in the ancient past of Bajor, inhabiting the existence of someone named "Keev," and it is 100% people you don't care about with space names interacting with other people you don't care about with space names. The novel never gives you a reason to want Keev to succeed, and I quickly turned to skimming these chapters when they appeared. SPOILERS: Two thirds of the way into this book, Federation president Nan Bacco is assassinated. You might thing this would kick the book into high gear, but instead, people sit around and think about how sad they are. The investigation has little sense of urgency, and not all the actions Ro and Blackmer take make a lot of sense. (Ro announces Bacco is dead, and it doesn't occur to her that all the other heads of state might have security concerns until they contact her.) The lack of urgency is exacerbated by the fact that at this point the Keev chapters increase in frequency, now alternating with present-day events, so every time something does happen, you're promptly jerked to something you don't care about. I like David R. George III as a writer-- Twilight and Serpents among the Ruins rank among my favorite Star Trek books-- but his Destiny-era stuff started out feeling misguided, and seems to keep getting worse. Continuity Notes: The O'Brien family moved to Cardassia in 2376, if I recall correctly; O'Brien was then assigned to build the new Deep Space 9 in 2383. That means he lived on Cardassia for seven years... as long as he lived on the original Deep Space 9! To be honest, I just don't feel it, and I don't know if I ever will. Also, why has Nog essentially been demoted in responsibility? Before his assignment to the Challenger in Indistinguishable from Magic he was chief engineer of Deep Space 9; now that he's returned, he's assistant chief engineer! Other Notes: Copy editing is a bit poor. On p. 45, for example, we're told Kira "didn't care much for the sport [of baseball]-- or really even understand it," and then two paragraphs later that Kira "[a]lthough she had eventually learned the rules of the sport, she had never really understood it." Yes, I got it the first time! There's also some very clunky dialogue, such as a sequence where O'Brien, Nog, Bashir, and Sarina discuss how many heads of state are on the station: "'I'm not talking about worlds,' O'Brien said, 'I'm talking about empires and unions and hegemonies.' 'Don't forget alliances,' Nog said, doubtless speaking about his Ferengi origins" (p. 239). To be honest, I feel like it's hard to justify Ro and Blackmer keeping their jobs. They had one station sabotaged out from under them, and then on the day the next one opened, the president of the Federation was killed! What kind of operation are they running?
On the upside, this is the low point of The Fall, and you're in for a McCormack Cardassia novel next time, so there's that!
I finished The Crimson Shadow last night actually (my reviews are lagging behind my reading). Review coming soon, I hope!