I don’t know, man. I find it so much easier to believe that no one reads those books anymore but everybody sees that movie. And no one reads all 15 or however many there are. And I’ve read a few of them myself! New kids aren’t reading it en mass. If Wizard of Oz ensures at all, it’s only because of the movie. Also, didn’t Baum hate natives?
Absolutely! I get that you love the books and I get that you wish they hadn't been eclipsed by the film, but that doesn't mean that film is not, in and of itself, separate from the books and on its own terms, a brilliant work of art and an enduring classic beloved by millions of people. It is arguably Golden Age Studio Hollywood at its absolute best, and it deserves respect on those terms.
I well recall fannish friends reading the "Star Trek II" novelization, after seeing the movie - and loving all the additional scenes and characters added by Vonda McIntyre. Later, Australia suffered through a six-month delay getting "Star Trek III" into our cinemas. The sea-freighted novelization for that turned up three full months before the movie. We devoured it, of course. Then some people felt cheated that all the additional scenes and characters added by Vonda McIntyre were not in that movie.
I had that experience with BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES back in the day. I missed the movie in the theaters (I think it played for all of one week in my hometown), so I had to make do with the novelization by David Gerrold, which has lots of extra stuff that was apparently cut out of the movie. When the movie finally turned up on TV one night (back in the days before HBO or home video), I was disappointed that it was "missing" all this great stuff from the novelization.
As I recall, the novelization for Futureworld, the sequel to Westworld, added whole new characters and subplots that weren’t in the movie. Made the movie seem really simple and straightforward by comparison.
Someone resurrects this thread and I saw your old post here. But I felt that way about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and the novelization. The novel came out about a week before the movie here in the US. I bought the novel the day it came out and read it before seeing the movie. I thought the novel was really good so I thought the movie would be really good as well. While I don't hate any Star Trek movie, and TFF does have a soft spot for me, I still rank it about the bottom of all the films. Definitely a case where the book was superior. I always point out that I did the same thing for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Like TFF, TUC novelization came out about a week before the film and I read that too. Oops. I knew who dunnit before seeing the movie (in that case I thought the movie and the novel were on par with one another--the book obviously had some more detail but it wasn't 'better' like with TFF).
Since the thread was bumped, I decided to reread it for a delightful trip back to the before-times, including my favorite sensation, having a thought while reading something, and scrolling further and seeing I already posted that same thought. It's more disturbing the older the thread is, who wants to find out the hard way they think the same exact way after ten or fifteen years? Makes the whole concept of "discussion" feel pointless... But I digress. My point is, did this ever happen? Aside from the animated Short Trek, I don't recall seeing any official art featuring the TOS cast Disco-ized in any context, and I've recently seen new "Star Trek Universe" promo art for all nine (jeeze) shows, and the TOS characters are depicted in TOS costumes and not photoshopped or redrawn into the DSC versions. But Xavi claims there was already art depicting it at the 2020 Toy Fair, and Googling pictures of those exhibits, I can't find anything like that.
To the best of my knowledge, no company other than S&S has been granted a license for the North American rights to publish original English-language general audience novels based upon Star Trek in the past year.
Kind of beating a dead horse here, aren't we? Xavi hasn't even posted on Trek BBS since June of last year. And I can point to revelations made by other supposed insiders on this BBS last year which did not turn out to be true either, only in this case those supposed insiders still post here.
I don't really follow Future of Trek-- is that where the other "insiders" post? This thread is the only substantive engagement I've had with one. I found his confidence about something that has still not eventuated amusing. Where are my canon novels from Nickelodeon? And TOS merchandise in the Disco style sounds fun!
Yeah, that's where most of them are, with a few who hang out in the Disco forum. One of the more notable predictions that did not turn out was that a Deep Fake Leonard Nimoy Spock was going to have a role in a Disco season 3 episode. In the end, all we got was footage of Nimoy from Unification viewed as a recording in one episode. Xavi himself also frequented Future of Trek where he claimed, repeatedly that the Pike spinoff would be titled Star Trek Enterprise, in spite of there already being a series titled that. Well, we now know otherwise.
There was that one person who had a friend who worked on DSC and was pretty on-the-money about the Enterprise bridge and war(d)room sets from the season two finale.
Indeed. That one and Morpheus who provided a lot of info about Enterprise back in the day are the only two legitimate insiders we've ever had on Trek BBS in all the time I've been here.
Penguin Random House made an offer of two billion for S&S. It probably shouldn't go through for antitrust reasons, but it will because that's the world we live in.
I was thwarted by "Cinefantastique"! After spoilerizing myself on ST II, ST III, IV and V (researching gossip articles to create regular "sealed sections" for our club newsletter), I decided to avoid all spoilers for ST VI. CFQ came out about a week before the movie's sneak preview - I was invited to see it early in the Paramount theatrette in Sydney - and I decided not to read the article, just the photo captions. And that's where they revealed the surprise Starfleet villain. If I had read the article and ignored the captions, it would not have been a problem.
Smart move. For Star Trek V it wasn't a big deal because it didn't involve a mystery. I mean, it still gave the ending away and all, but in that case it just didn't seem like a big deal. But obviously for VI there was this big mystery and I already knew going in what it was.