Now you tell me That's one reason I'm enjoying re-reading the older Pocketbook novels from the 1980s. It's a look at Star Trek through the eyes of someone writing a story with only the original series, maybe animated series (I generally find that's more the exception than the rule in early novels), and a couple of movies. It's a fun look at how Star Trek was seen when there was no spin-offs, and only a fraction of the continuity we have today. In many ways those early authors probably had more freedom as a result. I read that novel after seeing First Contact. While there are significant parts that can't be reconciled, it's not 100%. I always thought the parts about the Optimum Movement and Adrik Thorsen (forgive me if I misspelled that, I'm going by memory and it's been years since I read it) that could fit, particularly the role they played in WWIII and the movement itself could fit in the very limited information we were given in Enterprise "Terra Prime". In the brief snippet of Colonel Green's speech that sounded very similar to the objectives of the Optimum Movement (and IIRC Adrik also had a chronic condition that ironically would make him less than, well, optimal). Say with a good imagination about half could fit in continuity as we know it today--though I'm not suggesting any re-writing--it's fine as is. Just saying some parts of the book could still be consistent with canon. I agree, I'd leave them as is. Sometimes a future novel writer will adapt a prior story to fit the continuity as we know it today, but usually that occurs when most of that prior story is still consistent with canon and there are maybe a few things out of sync (and it usually involves a continuing story like the relaunches). Then a later author may either let it go and pretend it never happened (basically ignoring the out of sync thread), or realign it in some fashion--usually through some creative storytelling to make a square peg fit in a round hole. But the current 24th century litverse is so far out of sync with Picard that there's probably no way to make the two storylines sync up from about Destiny-on. Saying it's 95% inconsistent may be generous. It almost seems like the show runners read all the litverse novels and intentionally did everything they could to make Picard inconsistent. I mean, I know that's not how it works. I know the show runners wouldn't do that (if they even read the novels in the first place) but if I were more prone to conspiracy theories it almost seems too incredible to think every single storyline in the litverse was upended by Picard. I mean, I knew probably a good chunk of the litverse would be upended going in, but I guess I figured there might be a few salvageable elements. But literally almost nothing syncs. The only running novel series that might bring the 2 together might be the DTI novels because they have dealt with some of that already. Perhaps there's a workable story there, I don't know. That's why Christopher gets paid the big bucks ---and I pay the big bucks to read those stories (ok, maybe not big bucks). Or any other author that wants to tackle that schism. Any takers? But again, I do not believe that was on purpose. And given the hints we were given by some, maybe the litverse will live on in some fashion in new novels. But back to the original point, I prefer to leave the older novels-ebooks as is. Later stories can reconcile them to the current continuity if there's a need.
I recall David Gerrold had to update "When HARLIE was 1" because tech had surpasssed the book's predictions and it wasn't getting a reprint without an update.
Didn't Diane Duane also update the early books in her Wizards series? I don't think that would even be possible once you get past Destiny. It looks like the Borg Invasion never happened in the Picard Universe, so you'd have to try to figure out a way to rewrite Destiny without the Borg Invasion, and get rid of all references to it in books after it. That means no Typhon Pact, so A Singular Destiny and the entire Typhon Pact miniseries would need to be rewritten. We haven't seen any signs of a Picard/Crusher wedding, so Q Are Cordially Uninvited would have to be rewritten, and every reference to them being married would need to be removed, and they never had a kid, so everything involving Rene would also have to go. Data was never resurrected, so The Cold Equations trilogy, The Light Fantastic, and Control would need to be rewritten to remove Data.
Yes. The series was written over the course of a couple of decades of technology evolution, yet the characters only aged a couple of years, much like Marvel Comics time. So she revised the earlier books to take tech advancements in computers and mobile phones into account, and made other tweaks along the way. Lots of authors have revised their older books when given the chance. Sometimes they rewrite them so completely that they become new books, like Arthur C. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night and The City and the Stars. The first half of my upcoming novel Arachne's Crime is a revision and expansion of my first published story, updating scientific elements that I've since learned were conceptually flawed. But such updates are optional, not obligatory. And they don't necessarily replace the original. I still have my copies of both the aforementioned Clarke novels, side by side on my shelf.
I'll cop to revising one line when THE Q CONTINUUM was reprinted as an omnibus some years back. I changed a reference to "the original Enterprise" to "Kirk's Enterprise" just to avoid confusion with Archer's ship, which hadn't been part of the continuity when I first wrote those books. But that was just for clarification, not an attempt to massively rewrite the plot to make it compatible with later "canon" or anything like that. And I only did it because I had to proofread the text for the new edition anyway. It wasn't part of any deliberate effort to update those books, on my part or the publisher's. Oh, one other funny example. When a non-Trek story of mine got reprinted in a kids' horror anthology, years after its first publication, I deleted a reference to "mimeographed" homework sheets just because modern-day kids would have no idea what that meant.
Not to mention her Rihannsu novel series, which began in a pre-TMP Phase II-ish second 5 year mission, were moved back to TOS for the 3rd and 4th novels, then the whole lot were pushed to post-TMP for the last novel and the omnibus.
I think that was more under the impetus of the different editors in charge of the revivals than Duane herself. And it wasn't quite "the whole lot," because the omnibus excluded The Wounded Sky and Spock's World, which were part of the same continuity.
We only know its title has the initials DTP and it will be out in May. https://www.simonandschuster.com/bo...med-Gallery/Star-Trek-Discovery/9781982157548
I'd be shocked if it wasn't some kind of tie in to Season 3, either a Book origin story, or maybe something exploring The Burn.
Not likely. Based on prior precedent, these are always abbreviations of the titles. For example, the upcoming Picard novel The Dark Veil had previously been listed as TDV and the upcoming DS9 novel Revenant is currently listed as STR (which in that case would mean Star Trek Revenant). Given they've been following this pattern for at least the past year, I find it more likely DTP is an abbreviation of the title rather than Discovery Trade Paperback.
Also supporting the title abbreviation theory, there's also a TOS novel currently listed only as OATW.
Even though we don't know the actual titles yet, do we have enough information to build a tentative release schedule? I know The Dark Veil kicks things off in early January; what follows from there, as far as we know?
January 5 - Picard: The Dark Veil by James Swallow April 13 - SHO May 18 - DTP June 15 - OATW July 27 - STR And a new non-fiction book I had heard about before: August 3 - Star Trek: Designing the Final Frontier: The Untold Story of How Midcentury Modern Decor Shaped Our View of The Future by Dan Chavkin
That's five known novels, with three remaining to be announced., likely to be released August, October and November if they follow the same pattern as this year.
*Potentially* a Litverse finale trilogy. We know one of these three unannounced books is by David Mack.