News R.I.P. - Margaret Wander Bonanno - 2021-04-08

[JWolf]

Very close. Different font for "Star Trek," different way of handling Margaret's name at the bottom. I'm having trouble embedding the image, but it's here on my server. The lighting in my office isn't great, and the cover is a bit reflective.

Given that the cover for the HC version is very similar, I'll stick with the cover I have. Thanks.

Yeah, I read "Music," I guess, twenty years ago, and I could never for the life of me figure out why Richard Arnold had such a tantrum over this book. Especially since the outline had been approved and the Star Trek office knew what they were getting.

My guess is that it was done because Richard Arnold is an ass. Music of the Spheres is much better then Probe. Probe was meh at best.

Cool. I'll probably swap in the Standard Ebooks stylesheets. I like the look and feel of their books, and I've been using that as a code base for some personal projects the last two years or so.

The Standard Ebooks CSS is not all that good. There are actually some errors in the CSS that cause the entire CSS to be dumped if you are using ADE 2.0.1 or earlier. Also, they break the golden rule of Keep it simple and go way too complicated. Take a look at the CSS from the updated version (I just updated it tonight) and you'll see a major difference. The formatting for Music of the Spheres does not need complicated CSS. I would stay away from the CSS used by Standard Ebooks because I don't like it.

I am likewise baffled by poorly formatted ebooks. I sometimes wonder if the publisher (which is sometimes, but not always, the author) even looked to see how the ebook actually looked on an ebook reader.

If you look at the CSS in a lot of these eBooks, it's awful. They use a house CSS and they just through it in including (sometimes) hundreds of unused CSS styles. Fortunately, I know what I'm doing and can fix the mess they made. Most of the time it's rather simple. Sometimes it takes a little bit more effort. I've been doing this for years and because of this, I've learned a lot about eBooks.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Rest in peace Margeret / Garamet

Strangers from the Sky was the book that first got me into reading Trek fiction as a kid, and remains one of my favorites. I loved Music of the Spheres, Caralyst of Sorrows, and Burning Dreams as well.

I always admired and enjoyed her passionate arguments here and on other forums as Garamet. She gave as good as she got in a debate but was also extremely kind and caring to those in need.

My condolences and best wishes to her family.

 

[T'Bonz]

I had hoped to meet her one day.

Gone way too young.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

The Standard Ebooks CSS is not all that good. There are actually some errors in the CSS that cause the entire CSS to be dumped if you are using ADE 2.0.1 or earlier. Also, they break the golden rule of Keep it simple and go way too complicated. Take a look at the CSS from the updated version (I just updated it tonight) and you'll see a major difference. The formatting for Music of the Spheres does not need complicated CSS. I would stay away from the CSS used by Standard Ebooks because I don't like it.

I use an older version of their CSS as my starting point. They made a change within the last two years that breaks on my really old NOOK Simple Touch. For whatever reason, the NOOK can't deal with a margin: 0 0 0 0; without losing its mind; it wants all four borders defined separately. It's tricky; ereaders are limited to what parts of the CSS spec they implement. I made a really complicated design last year, that replicates the look and feel of a book from 1944, that relies on some CSS3 selectors that most ereaders can't even interpret properly.

For what it's worth, I made a few tweaks your version 2.5 CSS instead of swapping out the stylesheet entirely and got a book that "feels" the way I like. Your code's really clean. I wanted a little more padding on chapter titles, and the scene extract between Kirk and Sarek that leads off the book felt to me like something that would have been formatted differently.

Specifically:

.chapter {
font-weight: bold;
text-align: center;
margin-top: 3em;
margin-right: 0;
margin-bottom: 3em;
margin-left: 0;
text-indent: 0;
}
.chapter1 {
font-weight: bold;
text-align: center;
margin-top: 3em;
margin-right: 0;
margin-bottom: 3em;
margin-left: 0;
text-indent: 0;
}
.preview {
margin-top: 3em;
margin-bottom: 0;
margin-left: 15%;
margin-right: 15%;
font-style: italic;
}
.subchap {
text-align: center;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 135%;
text-indent: 0;
margin-top: -3em;
margin-bottom: 3em;
}

After doing that, I started on the thing I wanted to do a long time ago and never did -- a formatting and copy-edit of "Music," I'd forgotten the whole "Sulu as Jack Ryan" element. And the prose is exquisite.

If you look at the CSS in a lot of these eBooks, it's awful. They use a house CSS and they just through it in including (sometimes) hundreds of unused CSS styles. Fortunately, I know what I'm doing and can fix the mess they made. Most of the time it's rather simple. Sometimes it takes a little bit more effort. I've been doing this for years and because of this, I've learned a lot about eBooks.

I completely get where you're coming from. Been there, done that, have physical and psychic battle scars.

 

[JWolf]

I use an older version of their CSS as my starting point. They made a change within the last two years that breaks on my really old NOOK Simple Touch. For whatever reason, the NOOK can't deal with a margin: 0 0 0 0; without losing its mind; it wants all four borders defined separately. It's tricky; ereaders are limited to what parts of the CSS spec they implement. I made a really complicated design last year, that replicates the look and feel of a book from 1944, that relies on some CSS3 selectors that most ereaders can't even interpret properly.

I remember reading about the nook ST having trouble with the margin shorthand. I never did like the margin shorthand. Oneof the problems we have with Readers is that the reading software is not always updated to the latest version. A lot of Readers that use RMSDK are not using the current version.

For what it's worth, I made a few tweaks your version 2.5 CSS instead of swapping out the stylesheet entirely and got a book that "feels" the way I like. Your code's really clean. I wanted a little more padding on chapter titles, and the scene extract between Kirk and Sarek that leads off the book felt to me like something that would have been formatted differently.

The smaller spacing is a design choice and it's a choice I like. There's nothing wrong with your choice of spacing. As for my code, I like it to be simple. Most eBooks do not need anything complicated.The previous code wasn't bad. It's just that I've changed the way I do things since then. IMHO, when the chapter title has too much white space, it looks lost.

After doing that, I started on the thing I wanted to do a long time ago and never did -- a formatting and copy-edit of "Music," I'd forgotten the whole "Sulu as Jack Ryan" element. And the prose is exquisite.

I don't remember how good the Word document is or not. I do remember that Margaret was pleased and had copies she could give out that were true eBooks and not just a Word document.

I completely get where you're coming from. Been there, done that, have physical and psychic battle scars.

Vellum and InDesign can generate some pretty lousy code. I've seen some self published eBooks from Amazon that are just plain awful. The author needs to learn HTML/CSS or find someone else to make their eBook(s). The problem is some programs that are used to generate the eBooks do so very poorly. I've also seen some from Word that are just plain awful with a lot of garbage code. Word can be OK if used properly (styles styles and styles) but when used without styles, that's when we can get a real nightmare.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

I don't remember how good the Word document is or not. I do remember that Margaret was pleased and had copies she could give out that were true eBooks and not just a Word document.

I remember her Word document was 99% clean, but there are some obvious mistakes, like "aid" for "aide." Then there's "attach," with a comma when the text really should be "attaché." Plus, there are a couple of places where ship names aren't italicized, like the Clarke and the Excelsior. Nothing super major.

 

[Dayton Ward]

Many years ago at a Shore Leave con, a friend gifted me with a hardcover edition of Music they'd had made. No dust jacket, but it sits on the shelf next to books like the Starfleet Library edition of Best Destiny, etc.

 

[Admiral Rex]

Dan Gunther and I had the pleasure of interviewing Margaret this past August on our Positively Trek podcast. She was our first guest of our Book Club episodes to discuss Strangers From the Sky and her other experiences in Star Trek. This could possibly be her last Star Trek interview or certainly one of her last. She will be missed.

Positively Trek: 25: Book Club: Strangers From the Sky (libsyn.com)

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[JWolf]

I remember her Word document was 99% clean, but there are some obvious mistakes, like "aid" for "aide." Then there's "attach," with a comma when the text really should be "attaché." Plus, there are a couple of places where ship names aren't italicized, like the Clarke and the Excelsior. Nothing super major.

If you do find any errors while reading, please let me know so I can fix the ePub. Thanks.

 

[Arpy]

She was one of my favorites. I will miss her.

The original first contact novel Strangers From the Sky.

Dwellers in the Crucible.

The Pike novel Burning Dreams.

I liked Catalyst of Sorrows a lot, too.
Head canon.

LLAP everybody.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I always enjoyed our interactions in TNZ and over at WF. I wish I could've met her in person.

 

[publiusr]

Me too

 

[TJ Sinclair]

While we may have had a lot of different interpretations of aspects of the Trek world, I always found her books to be fascinating to read, and greatly respected her as a writer and for contributions to this forum and her love for the fans.

Strangers from the Sky was one of the first Trek books I read as a kid, and it's always stuck with me. Strangers, Diane Carey's Final Frontier, Diane Duane's My Enemy, My Ally, and JM Dillard's The Lost Years were pretty much my "Holy writ" novels back then, and even as later canon went against aspects of them, I still prefer them in my head canon.

Probe as published left me so underwhelmed, but we all know what happened there. Music of the Spheres as written is really masterful. I love Catalyst of Sorrows and while Burning Dreams is a vastly different take on Pike's background than my Early Voyages and Vulcan's Glory-influenced headcanon, it's a masterfully written "biographical novel."

I need to reread Music and finally get around to reading Unspoken Truth.

Margaret is going to be missed. I grieve with thee.

 

[DEWLine]

Amen.

I grieve with you all.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

My guess is that it was done because Richard Arnold is an ass.

Please don't insult perfectly good animals who have likely done nothing to offend you, by comparing them to Richard Arnold.

 

[Neroon]

I always enjoyed our interactions in TNZ and over at WF. I wish I could've met her in person.

She was quite intelligent and sweet, but she could also give as good as she got

 

[Corran Horn]

I have the Word document, too, and had been thinking of doing this very thing off and on for the last year or so. I'll take a look!

A friend had ten or so copies of Music printed up as a hardcover, another did the layout and designed the dust jacket. I have a copy, she autographed it at Shore Leave 2006, and she wrote, "With my eternal gratitude." I remember Marco Palmieri saying to me at that Meet the Pros Party, "I can't see that, but I want to see that." I handed it to him, he flipped through it, and smiled.

I remember somebody asking Marco on the psiphi boards (likely around this same time) about publishing the original version of 'Probe' and him saying that any business driver to do so was removed because it had been freely available online.

(Years later John Scalzi did the same thing with Old Man's War but hey, who's counting?)

 

[Ghost]

Oh yeez.
This is sufficient new to make me post here again.

I just spoke to her a couple of weeks ago on Facebook, and I was wondering why I had not received a response.

I got into contact years ago because I wanted to talk with her about writing.

 

[daedalus5]

Well, this is very sad indeed. I remember back in the early 2000's contacting her on her website and encouraging her to join TrekBBS after reading about her horrible experiences at Pocket Books. I hoped that she would be able to see what John Ordover was like at the time as he was in charge of Trek Pocket Books at the time and posted here very regularaly. Well, she came and joined, they talked, and it led to her first Trek book in a long while being published. I was very flattered to be in her acknowledgements section of "The Catalyst of Sorrows." i met her twice, 1st time in 2002 when she was assisting Lawrence Montagnue's autograph table and the 2nd time was at a LA con in 2004 (picture here) where she met us on the Santa Monica Pier where we had dinner together. She was terrific and a good Facebook friend. I am very sad to hear of her passing. Thank you to ghost for saying

 

[JD]

I had said I was going to read Catalyst of Sorrows, now I'm not sure if that is the one I want to read.
Out of Catalyst, Unspoken Truth, and Burning Dreams, which would you guy recommend the most? Those are the three of her books I own but have not read.